Legal Guide to Social Media


Book Description

How should you respond to a request to remove copyrighted materials from a Facebook page? If you create a Twitter handle at work, who owns that handle when you change jobs? Can you be sued for libel if your posts are defamatory? If you’ve ever asked yourself these kinds of questions, this pioneering legal handbook is for you. Despite the enormous growth in social media, scant legal advice is available to help the many people who are posting online. Easy-to-understand, comprehensive, and current, Legal Guide to Social Media provides the latest information on case law and statutes. It covers everything from privacy laws to copyright issues to how to respond to employers’ requests for your social media passwords. This plain English legal companion offers examples of and solutions to the kinds of situations you can expect to encounter when posting online content, whether for personal enjoyment or on behalf of an employer. You’ll learn how to avoid liability for defamation and third-party posts, the legalities of copying and linking to content, how to protect your own content, and much, much more. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, business owner, new media manager, or simply one of the millions of social media users in the United States, this must-have guide will help you to understand and mitigate the most common legal risks inherent in social media use.







User Generated Content


Book Description

This guide will provide information on issues arising from user-generated content. It will deal with issues faced by hosts and by creators of user-generated content like liability for infringing material, ownership of user-generated content and risk management strategies.




Navigating Social Media Legal Risks


Book Description

The plain-English business guide to avoiding social media legal risks and liabilities—for anyone using social media for business—written specifically for non-attorneys! You already know social media can help you find customers, strengthen relationships, and build your reputation, but if you are not careful, it also can expose your company to expensive legal issues and regulatory scrutiny. This insightful, first-of-its-kind book provides business professionals with strategies for navigating the unique legal risks arising from social, mobile, and online media. Distilling his knowledge into a 100% practical guide specifically for non-lawyers, author and seasoned business attorney, Robert McHale, steps out of the courtroom to review today’s U.S. laws related to social media and alert businesses to the common (and sometimes hidden) pitfalls to avoid. Best of all, McHale offers practical, actionable solutions, preventative measures, and valuable tips on shielding your business from social media legal exposures associated with employment screening, promotions, endorsements, user-generated content, trademarks, copyrights, privacy, security, defamation, and more... You’ll Learn How To • Craft legally compliant social media promotions, contests, sweepstakes, and advertising campaigns • Write effective social media policies and implement best practices for governance • Ensure the security of sensitive company and customer information • Properly monitor and regulate the way your employees use social media • Avoid high-profile social media mishaps that can instantly damage reputation, brand equity, and goodwill, and create massive potential liability • Avoid unintentional employment and labor law violations in the use of social media in pre-employment screening • Manage legal issues associated with game-based marketing, “virtual currencies,” and hyper-targeting • Manage the legal risks of user-generated content (UGC) • Protect your trademarks online, and overcome brandjacking and cybersquatting • Understand the e-discovery implications of social media in lawsuits




Media Law and Policy in the Internet Age


Book Description

The Internet brings opportunity and peril for media freedom and freedom of expression. It enables new forms of publication and extends the reach of traditional publishers, but its power increases the potential damage of harmful speech and invites state regulation and censorship as well as manipulation by private and commercial interests. In jurisdictions around the world, courts, lawmakers and regulators grapple with these contradictions and challenges in different ways with different goals in mind. The media law reforms they are adopting or considering contain crucial lessons for those forming their own responses or who seek to understand how technology is driving such rapid change in how information and opinion are distributed or restricted. In this book, many of the world's leading authorities examine the emerging landscape of reform in nations with variable political and legal contexts. They analyse developments particularly through the prisms of defamation and media regulation, but also explore the impact of technology on privacy law and national security. Whether as jurists, lawmakers, legal practitioners or scholars, they are at the front lines of a story of epic change in how and why the Internet is changing the nature and raising the stakes of 21st century communication and expression.




Principles of the Digital Services Act


Book Description

Numerous questions were at the heart of parliamentary discussions over the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU's new regulatory framework for digital services in Europe. How should liberal democracies prevent illegal and harmful activities online and protect fundamental rights? How should digital service providers assess the impact of their technology on others? And how should technology companies moderate user-generated content? Principles of the Digital Services Act analyses the DSA's key provisions, dissecting its mechanisms and components, to understand the new law's likely impact on digital services in Europe and beyond. The book puts the new legal framework into its political, economic, and social contexts by explaining its grounding within the frameworks of economic regulation and human rights. It examines the European legislature's approach to the DSA, offering a detailed historical account of the legislative and pre-legislative process. The book argues that the envisaged regulatory system has the potential to boost trust in the digital environment. However, its mechanisms must be able to rely on the robust network of civil society organisations and the regulators should follow a set of principles. In this way, the DSA's goal can be achieved through means that are firmly aligned with respect for individual liberties, including the freedom of expression. Combining academic research with practical insights, Principles of the Digital Services Act offers a robust analysis into how to apply and further develop the most important tools of the DSA to rebuild trust in the digital environment.




E-Commerce and Convergence: A Guide to the Law of Digital Media


Book Description

Since the last edition ten years ago the pace of technological and legal change has stepped up even more than before with previous editions. New legislation is in force such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK Data Protection Act 1998 and from 1 January 2021 "UKGDPR". The UK Information Commissioner has been looking closely at "Ad Tech" and what has become known as "big data" and how data are gathered on-line. Intellectual Property law in the ecommerce area has also changed. There is a very recently agreed new EU copyright directive which is due to be implemented in the 27 EU member states (but not the UK) in 2021. The post-Brexit transition period expired on 31 December 2020 which has implications for the application of ecommerce law in a number of different areas which are all addressed in the new addition. The 2010 EU vertical regulation and guidelines have recently been built on with the EU "geo-blocking" regulation and the related EU Commission's initiatives in relation to ecommerce in the anti-trust area. In 2020 the UK implemented changes in relation to EU law in the revised 2018 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS) through the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2020 which are addressed in the new edition as post-Brexit the UK is retaining this legislation. Other updates include the distance selling legislation in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which came into force since the last edition.




Gringras: The Laws of the Internet


Book Description

The free flow of information and services around the world via the Internet constantly creates new issues and problems, such as rules of jurisdiction and applicable law, how new products and services should be regulated and many more. The sixth edition is updated with numerous new practical examples, cases (court cases and ICO complaint cases), laws and developments, including the following: · new Brexit legislation across all areas from January 2021 (post Brexit on 31 December 2020); · new Data Protection Act replacing Data Protection Act 2018; · new ePrivacy Regulations (PECR); · new ePrivacy Regulation (EU); · transition of EU registered trade marks and designs into new UK IP rights from 1 January 2021 creating new UK IP rights and new UK rightsholders; · changes in seeking IP protection in EU for UK residents; · changes in UK rightsholders seeking to take infringement actions outside of UK; · status of unregistered IP rights post Brexit; · different impacts on different IP rights; · status of UK commercial contracts, interpretation, and enforceability, · status of pre-existing contracts created prior to Brexit and which refer to EU and UK being in EU; · status, extent and scope of new contracts after Brexit; · UK torts and insurance law as impacted by Brexit; · changes in crime, data retention and international issues; · taxation changes, international relations, international Treaties, and EU · competition, internet, and regulator changes – including Brexit; · new UK caselaw; · news UK regulator cases, decision, sanctions and fines; · new EU caselaw. This title is included in Bloomsbury Professional's Intellectual Property and IT online service.




Peer-to-Peer Privacy Violations and ISP Liability


Book Description

Since the adoption of the e-Commerce Directive, web hosting has dramatically changed. User generated content is usually uploaded into platforms that facilitate and support users in preparing content and making it available. Such platforms are run in most cases by commercial companies who make profit by associating advertisements with user-generated materials. This paper will address the issue of the legal framework applicable to the ISPs managing platforms for user-generated contents. Can they be considered as mere host providers, even though their activities include not only distributing user-generated content, but also indexing it and linking it to advertising? As user-generated-contents often concern third parties, the paper tackles the question whether liability exemptions are applicable also to data protection violations regarding third parties' information uploaded by users. This issue is addressed through a comparative analysis of cases on liability of providers of user generated content, in particular with regard to data protection violations. We will take into account ECJ's decisions, EU and non-EU states' case law, as well as opinions of the national data protection authorities.