Unlike traditional newsroom journalists, “citizen journalists” have no formal way to ensure that everyone maintains similar quality standards.  Which does not mean that quality standards are necessarily (or consistently) maintained at traditional newsrooms, but rather that a traditional hierarchical editorial structure imposes at least theoretical guidelines.

By definition, citizen journalism’s inherent difference from the traditional editorial process is the dispersion of responsibility for editorial choice.  Nonetheless, “trustiness” in journalism is a concept still heavily dependent on a reporter’s or editor’s reputation.  Is the New York Times trusted because it’s trustworthy?  Or is it trustworthy because it’s trusted?

The “Generated By Users” journalism blog recently reported the results of its reader poll, “Do you TRUST user generated content in news?” Continue reading

Earlier this month, Dropbox spawned a new kerfuffle in internet-land with changes to its Terms of Service (TOS).

The outrage was fast and furious.  A nice deal of blog and Tumblr and other commentary zeroed in on changes Dropbox announced to its TOS before the 4^th of July holiday, and in particular how this or that provision “won’t hold up in court”.  See for example J. Daniel Sawyer’s commentary here.

Sawyer was referring to language in the TOS for cloud-server services granting ownership rights to Dropbox or other cloud services.

At least I think that’s what he was referring to, because the Dropbox TOS did not actually grant those ownership rights to Dropbox.  Dropbox’ TOS – like similar TOS for SugarSync and Box.net – granted limited use rights to enable Dropbox to actually provide the service.  Here is the offending provision:

… you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service.

To be clear, if Dropbox actually claimed ownership rights to customer files – and actually provided for the same in its TOS – there’s no particular reason such a grant “won’t hold up in court”.   There are certainly cases of unenforceable contracts – contracts that are fraudulently induced or in contravention of public policy, for example – but a fully and clearly disclosed obligation in exchange for a mutual commitment of service is enforceable. Continue reading

BitTorrent has been in the (copyright) news lately – and not surprisingly – after the movie studios set their sites on bringing down yet the latest iteration of file-sharing technology.

2 great background sources on what BitTorrent is and how it works can be found here and here.  In short terms, BitTorrent is a file sharing technology, different from Napster and its peer-to-peer progeny in that it draws down pieces of large data files from multiple computers – rather than single computer to single computer peer-to-peer – based on a “community” structure of participating individual users.  The two biggest distinctions are (1) no single source for the compiled total file contributes more than a very small portion of the total file and (2) the distributive structure finesses the constant file-sharing problem of large data transfers demanding large broadband resources.

Why is bitTorrent in the (copyright) news?

BitTorrent is in the news not simply because Netflix’ CEO stated that “we’ve finally beaten bitTorrent.”  (“We”, by the way, presumably refers to Netflix’ full-file streaming capabilities.)

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A privacy policy?  Who needs a privacy policy?  Privacy is a mess.  You’re building an online business, and you figure you have to have a privacy policy.  But why?  Is “because everyone else has one” a good enough reason?  Ever wonder what you really need to know about privacy law?  I mean … what you have to comply with as a business operating in an online environment?

Here, then, the first of several Frequently Asked Questions about privacy policies.  Or to be more precise, here now some practical answers on privacy practices:

FAQ #1: Can I simply post a privacy policy and forget about it?  Short Answer: No.  Longer Answer: No, because as between posted statements and actual compliance, actual compliance is what’s required.   Continue reading

Podcast #1: December 30, 2010

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In today’s podcast, we discuss the Federal Trade Commission’s recently issued privacy proposals. My guest is Karen Neuman, a founding partner of St. Ledger-Roty Neuman & Olson LLP, a Washington, DC law firm that focuses on regulation of information technologies and communications law, including privacy & data security, mobile communications, the Internet, media, telecommunications and related transactional matters.

At the core of the new privacy proposal is the idea that the current system of self-regulation does not provide enough consumer protection.  Basically, from the FTC’s perspective, people do not pay enough attention to the data-collecting activities of websites and not enough companies are up-front about the data they do collect from visitors to their sites.  The FTC says that while many companies detail their data collection through privacy policies, consumers bear too much of a burden in having to sort through such long, legalistic documents.

Among other proposals, the FTC’s new framework would require a “Do Not Track” option, much like the one we currently have to avoid telemarketers.  “Do Not Track” would essentially prevent companies from tracking things like your browsing history and buying habits, making it much more difficult for them to target consumers with personalized ads.  The proposal also aims to have companies incorporate more consumer protection into their business practices through simpler, more transparent options and by allowing consumers more access to the data being collected about them.  The FTC issued its proposed rules just last week, and requested public comment from both businesses and the public.

Please click play on the audio player below to hear the podcast.

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What is the legal significance of a website’s privacy policy?

That question lingers when reviewing such policies for legal compliance and for consistency with a company’s actual practices.  Problem is, lawsuits involving claims of breaches of privacy policies have failed even in cases of clear and egregious violations by the service provider, where there was an absence of a showing of actual damages.

Eric Goldman cites a number of cases in his blog, including a prominent class action in 2005 against Jet Blue Airlines for voluntarily turning over passenger names to a government contractor, in clear violation of the airline’s stated privacy policy.  Policies commonly permit the service provider to disclose information in response to a government demand.  Yet, Jet Blue won dismissal despite any such disclosure right in its policy. Continue reading

Last week, Facebook joined the social media craze of “checking in,” with its new service called Places. The move indicates an increasingly popular trend, pioneered by services like Four Square. Whether at a famous historical landmark or their local Starbucks, people use location check-ins to let friends know where they are and earn badges for covering more ground.

Some think the next phase in the check in revolution is coming soon to a couch near you. Entertainment could be the next big thing that draws users to check in and share what they’re doing with others. Services like GetGlue, Miso, and Philo encourage you to share what you’re watching and engage with people doing the same. Besides the social networking incentive to interact with fellow fans of your favorite shows, these applications offer tokens and badges for every time you keep up with the Kardashians or tune in to see what Snooki will do next on Jersey Shore. Continue reading

Publishers are worried about cookies, specifically talk of regulatory action on the privacy front.  What’s the story here?

A Privacy Policy might typically say something like this:

“A ‘cookie’ is a small text file on your computer’s hard drive that our Web site uses to collect information about how you use our site.  The cookie transmits this information back to our Web site each time you visit a page on our site, thus allowing us to identify our most popular pages, features and data.”

To someone not working for an ad agency or at a publisher or for, say, Google, reading these terms, what they might read could be summarized like this: “Software … embedded in my computer … I have no choice … it stays there forever and ever … it will watch my every move and report back to its masters and possibly the government … my wife might find out.”

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First, what data?  This comes up in various contexts.  First example: an agency contracts with an ad campaign client for marketing, issue advocacy, corporate branding, what have you.  It used to be that creative was a “work for hire” (or assumed to be) owned by the advertising client.  With some sort of understanding that the client wouldn’t end-run the agency.

In other words, expectations were governed by historical industry practice.  Copyright and contract law didn’t play much a part.

But what about campaign performance?  What about reports and research and metrics and all the “data” compiled by the agency to make its case?  Forrester and Gartner Group and Corporate Executive Board and their ilk have been selling research reports for years on these sorts of things, but agencies typically didn’t bother with industry best practices-type studies or reports.  Work was done for clients, and work product was owned by the clients (or again, was assumed to be).

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