Legal Issues Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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The big 'idea' news last week was Oracle's launch of Oracle Listens. A campaign where they solicit ideas from end users. Charlene Li blogged about it and gave Oracle kudos for the effort. My big question is what does legal think of this? Oracle does things a bit differently than the other idea-submission sites like Dell's Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea. We'll come back to that difference in a second.
Many corporations have a number of legal hang-ups when it comes to social media. Among entertainment and media organizations a special concern is idea submission. For example, I want to sue NBC, because six years ago at a conference reception I told an executive about my idea for a TV show based on regular folks who are superheroes. Just kidding, but you get the gist.
Enter the new concept in social media sites, the ideastorms. I name the genre after Dell's launch of the self-titled Ideastorm last year. Dell asked for your ideas and then allows the community to vote on them. The top vote recipients hopefully get the nod from Dell and enter production. But what about those lawyers and idea submission?
In Dell's case you need to register and agree to their terms of service before submitting an idea. In those terms are language that states you give all rights to the idea to Dell. Here's a snippet:
You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. The license shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known.
However they do offer $1000 to purchase some ideas or concepts:
Dell shall have the exclusive option to purchase from you and acquire all right, title and interest, including, without limitation, any copyrights and other intellectual property law in and to the Materials you submit, which rights shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license and apply for copyright registration for any or all of the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The option shall be exercisable by us from the date you submit the Materials until 1 year from that date. If we exercise the option, you agree to accept payment in the amount of $1000 USD or value in kind at Dell’s discretion, and you agree to execute, acknowledge and deliver such other instruments consistent with an assignment of the intellectual property as may be reasonably necessary to carry out or effectuate the purposes or intent of the assignment of the Materials.
Starbucks has a similar model. You need to create an account and agree to terms before submitting an idea.
A general counsel at one firm we met with recently said those terms would never hold up in court. Of course I will insert the standard IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) statement, but it did give me pause.
Ok, back to Oracle. With their implementation you can submit an idea, receive confirmation it's been received without agreeing to any terms. Entering something on the homepage and clicking submit you receive this screenshot which says, "Thank you! We received your feedback." At that point you can create an account and continue on, or just leave. If the legal counsel we talked to didn't like the terms of Dell or Starbuck's concepts, I wonder how they'd feel about Oracle's lack of terms (sorry that's a rhetorical question).
Ok, I do think that it's a bit of overacting. Yes, many of the people submitting ideas are genuinely interested in seeing the companies they support succeed. But what happens if that simple idea you submit does turn into let's say a 1% profit growth for Dell, Starbucks or Oracle. Mention that to any attorney and I think they might be willing to challenge those terms.
Over at the Big in Japan blog Jake posts about a recent legal issue surrounding comments in an old blog post. You can read the post, but the gist is a firm didn't like the fact that there were negative comments about them on a blog post. They requested that Alex (one of the guys behind Big in Japan) remove the post and reveal the identities of the people that left the comments.
Alex contacted the company and their lawyers and suggested that he was willing to remove the post and the comments, but he wasn’t willing to provide the identities unless ordered to by a court. The company demanded that he backup the database and retain it in the event that the company can secure a court order for the release of the identities.
Do you think Alex is doing the right thing? Should he remove the post? What obligation does he have to stand up to companies who receive a few negative comments?
What do I think? Each case is a unique thing, but I'll just share a similar experience I had.
Back in 2005 I got involved in a situation where a person that commented somewhat anonymously (i.e. they left a handle and fake e-mail address) posted some possibly libelous statements on a blog I contribute to. Obviously the firm in question was interested in knowing who this employee was.
At first I wasn't planning on revealing anything. However, when we removed one of the potentially libelous comments from this person they began to lash out at Robert French and myself. The individual claimed that he intended to remain anonymous and challenged us to figure out who he was. This was conveyed via some interesting e-mail conversations (the person was always using a generic e-mail accounts, i.e. Hotmail, etc.).
Robert and I pointed out that we had his IP address and it was the same for each comment. The response? It would take court order for the ISP to reveal the identity, and a few other choice words.
The big problem for our anonymous tormentor was that we didn't need a court order. The company in question ran Exchange server and allowed staff to check e-mail via the web. All that we needed to do was cross reference the IP address of our 'friend' with the server logs of the mail server. Want to guess what happened?
The lesson to be learned is if you're trying to remain anonymous with your comments, don't piss off the owner of the blog since they hold some key information that can sniff you out.
During my Hyku College Tour I had breakfast with Dan Rua in Gainesville, FL. For those of you that do not know, Dan is one of the VC's behind PayPerPost. I've been critical of PPP, so I wasn't sure what direction our talk was going to take. As always it's good to be able to meet with people in person, it adds a different level to the conversation.
Dan and I talked about a number of issues, but one topic that interested me was DisclosurePolicy.org. The site was created in response to the complaints that PPP was not forcing users to disclose any payments from advertisers for blog posts written. DisclosurePolicyl.org allows a user to create a policy based upon a few variables. The system is similar to Creative Commons in this way. Like PPP, there was quite a bit of discussion about the validity of DisclosurePolicy.org and perhaps a hidden agenda when it was launched.
Having talked in person with Dan I think I can say there is no hidden agenda, he just wanted to put a tool/service out there for people to use. Yes, the launch was somewhat of a band-aid for PPP's transparency issues, but the basics of the service should be evaluated independent of that. Dan's big question was, "If anybody but PayPerPost had released it, do you think it would have been accepted differently?"
I think there would not have as much skepticism surrounding DisclosurePolicy.org if PPP were not involved. That's for sure. Dan said he attempted to reach out to WOMMA, but WOMMA wasn't reaching back. This was most likely because of two things:
1. Obviously PayPerPost's involvement with the project caused WOMMA to back away. The last thing an organization like WOMMA wants to do is associate themselves with an organization that has become a big target for disclosure.
2. WOMMA was just about to launch their blogger relations initiative and follow that up with the Dell announcement so they probably weren't interested in diluting their efforts.
All this leads back to Dan's question. What if somebody else led the charge?
Of course we might end up with a number of solutions. Today blogs have numerous chicklets on their sidebar's promoting a variety of RSS feed options, i.e. Add to Blogline, Add to NewsGator, Add to MyYahoo!, etc.... Will we soon see blogs with buttons listing all their disclosure policies and ethical guidelines? How about a disclosure policy MicroFormat?
What are your thoughts on DisclosurePolicy.org and along the same lines the new WOMMA guidelines?
This morning Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog and I were talking about legal blogs and the blog development world. (LexBlog is one of the leaders in legal blog development) During our conversation Kevin said something worth repeating:
In the past it used to be the large law firms with the biggest PR budgets that would get the work. Now with blogs, it's the smart folks who really know their stuff getting all the attention.
One case in point is
Dan Harris and his China Law Blog (Dan's a client). Dan doesn't spend much (if anything) on traditional PR or marketing, yet he is now known as one of the leading experts on China and is quoted frequently by the mainstream media.
Of course this doesn't just apply to legal blogs. Just about any knowledge-based industry is seeing the same power shifts. If you're an expert, where is your blog?
Back in July of this year I relayed my story of attempting to be removed from Cypress Garden's e-mail list. Repeated e-mails and even a phone call to the park spokesperson Lynn Wright never solved the problem.
What's the lastest? I'm still getting the e-mails. The most recent one arrived yesterday.
Back in May, on another blog I lamented that Cypress Gardens Adventure Park continued sending me e-mails even though I requested to be removed. To recap the story:
As a previous annual pass holder at Cypress Gardens I receive the standard e-mail 'updates' from Adventure Parks (the parent company). I don't hold a pass anymore but the rest of my family does, so my wife also receives the same updates. On January 12, 2006 I received a bulk e-mail message from Cypress Gardens. I followed the instructions at the bottom of the message and asked to be removed by e-mailing mailer@adventureparksgroup.com.
Since the passage of the CAN-SPAM act all commercial bulk-email must offer the ability to opt-out as well as some other provisions. According to just one portion of the CAN-SPAM Act:
It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.
Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.
Violating this will bring:
Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.
On March 24, 2006 I received another bulk e-mail message. I once again asked to be removed and also e-mailed pr@cypressgardens.com to let them know that they had not honored my previous (Jan 12, 2006) request.
You know where this is going right? Well yesterday, May 4, 2006 I received yet another bulk e-mail from Adventure Parks. On the surface it's a violation of the CAN-SPAM act. So what should I do?
In early July I still continued to get the e-mails. I attempted to contact Lynn Wright, the new PR person and had to follow-up with her to finally get a callback. She assured me that I would be removed at once.
Guess what? Since the phone call I have received two more updates. The most recent arrived today.
Is this petty? Perhaps, but what do I have to do to get off this list? I've asked 6 times via their 'opt-out system' and then finally had to call their PR person, but nothing has worked.
Update: Roger has posted a new item....the two profiles in question now list their real ages.
Roger Simmons from Orlando wonders if one of the local TV stations is attempting to run a sting operation via MySpace.com:
I received an e-mail late last week saying to check out two postings on the popular site MySpace.com.
The first link was to a 15-year-old girl named Jessica who lives in Orlando. The second link was to another girl named "Lady J," this one saying she is 15, lives in Orlando and "If it weren't for Myspace I'd have no friends."
What's interesting is the "girls" in the photos look very, very similar to WKMG reporters Jessica D'Onofrio and Jessica Sanchez.
So, is this a hoax, a prank ... or possibly part of a Local 6 sweeps story trying to find out if anyone will attempt to pick up these "underage" girls? You decide.
When you compare the pictures there is quite a resemblance. The
MySpace Jessica on the left claims to be only 15 years old. The one on the right is Local 6 reporter
Jessica D'Onofrio.
Of course there are two other options: 1. It's a bunch of 15 year-old kids that have created the pages 2. The reporters are actually 15, in that case Local 6 is probably violating some child labor laws.
Greg Hoffman is learning all about spam blogs to protect his company from them.
The $300 software looks for datafeeds and automatically publishes the digests to a blog with related content so the owner can sell Google Adwords based on that content. You see, we lose money when people go to search for our company name and they are redirected to other sites with similar products. This does not make me happy. That's why I'm on this crusade.
You learn by doing.
The anonymous Publix I/S blogger is gone (or has moved to a new URL). The blog was claimed to be written by a Publix worker upset with the trend towards offshoring information systems jobs.
Things got interesting over at Marcom Blog when the author posted a series of comments. The critical blog was even mentioned in two episodes of the For Immediate Release Podcast.
Of course there is always the Google cache.
The defendant in our case failed to appear this morning so we were dismissed for good. Was the defendant guilty/not-guilty? We'll never know, but not showing up for your trial is usually not a good thing.
I recorded some thoughts about the jury selection process and other related items. You can listen to the nine-minute commentary by clicking the link below.
JuryDutyO2.mp3 (8.7MB)
My official jury duty is tomorrow. The trial is scheduled to start at 8:30am. I can't blog during the trial but I'll post an update after the trial is over.
Just got called. Heading upstairs to courtroom 9B. Be back later.
Self-serving and self-interested? Perhaps, but I'll post the few short audio bits I was able to record this morning. We'll see what else I can 'legally' record. Warning, it's nothing exciting :-)
JuryDuty-01.mp3
Finally selected for a panel, but the judge can't see us till after 1:00 pm. Our group is free to go, but must be back by 1:00 pm. I am going to see if I can get some wifi around here somewhere.
It's now 9:38 and I've been sitting since 8:50 without any communication from the staff. You would think they would come be every so often and say, "we'll be starting at X"
Quick demographic poll. Looking at the last ten rows of the room there are 70 people, 3 of them I would classify as minorities. Not a very diverse sampling. First pool selected at 8:45, 11 white and 1 black. Third panel selected, all white. Next panel, two minorities.
I'll be posting from my Blackberry so please excuse any typo's.
Check-in went smoothly. Waiting at the entrance of the jury room was Clerk of the Courts, Richard Weiss. Richard was in the same place last time. It's a nice touch. After check-in you wait in a large and long room with movie-theater style sheets.
There are no laptops allowed in jury duty. Even though there is no mention of laptops being prohibited anywhere on the documentation I received or on the clerk's web site. I was planning on doing a small amount of work during any downtime and watching a DVD if I could.
The security 'official' told me that I was not allowed to have any laptops or cameras for jury duty. I had to head back to the car and drop off all me gear. All I have is my iPod and my Blackberry.
In the most recent edition of the For Immediate Release podcast, Neville Hobson discusses the Publix I/S blogger. Neville's point of reference was the Marcom Blog entry I posted earlier this week.
The topic is covered at 1:11:25 into the podcast.
There is quite a discussion going on over at Marcom Blog. One of the students, Erin, says:
This is the best post ever!
Very rarely are we allowed a chance to see a debate over course content in action, much less have the ability to comment on it.
What is it all about? Go read
Over at Arbitrary and Capricious, Skelly Wright says I am a self-satisfied superficial twit
Seems he took issue with my comment about a PD in a previous post.
To set the record straight. How did I arrive at my theory that the PD was inept? Let me see:
- Mismatched tie
- Wrinkled Suit
- General look of being dazed and confused
- Constantly returning to his desk to review his notes since he couldn't keep his train of thought (why not just bring your notes to the lectern?)
- Not being able to connect the dots logically
Some laywers have commented that certain questions cannot be asked because of procedural issues. Understood, but there has got to be a way to conduct yourself in court that doesn't make you look like you're in way over your head. It wasn't just me either. Many of the folks I talked to perceived the same thing and I think ultimately it hurt his client.
I have jury duty the week of October 17. The question is can I blog it? I did a quick search for "jury duty" and found a some people that blogged about it. Most of them appear to be after-the-fact though.
I asked a friend and his reponse was, The biggest benefit of blogging the jury process is that telling the lawyers what you're doing is likely to get you excused!
The last time I was selected it was amazing to witness the ineptness of the public defender. Sitting in the jury box I was saying to myself, "Why doesn't he ask...." Later during a recess some of the other jurors talked about how watching all the legal shows on TV made them think they were smarter than the PD. (Note to self, don't let a PD handle your case)
I know I can't talk about a case during the trial (if I am selected), but what about the rest of the process? Any lawyers out there want to answer this one?
Update: Law.com's blog has picked up this meme.
Update 2: A summary of answers from the Law.com blog
Last Friday, Duncan Riley from The Blog Herald posted a short item about another blog stealing his content. Today, Duncan follows-up with his case against WebProNews and writer, Jason Lee Miller. In a lengthy post, Duncan provides a number of examples of how he feels Jason has stolen his content without proper attribution.
Mr Miller is creative, I’ll give him this, because when he writes he usually tries to put his own spin on things, or as the case may be, re-writes others ideas and presents them as his own, but it really, really pisses me off when time and time again I see anyone presenting idea’s, qoutes or otherwise as their own, and don’t give attribution. Sure, a lot of bloggers are ametuers and don’t know any better, or if you dug through the archives of the Blog Herald I’ve probably done it by accident once or twice as well, but when your a paid writer for a leading internet portal you shouldn’t just know better, you do know better, and when you don’t play by the rules its not an accident, its a concious decision.
Duncan also provides examples of quotes taken from other publications without credit being given to the original source.
Continue reading "WebProNews Stealing from The Blog Herald?" »
Jeremy Pepper has re-posted his blogs & libel article from earlier this year. It's a good refresher.
Continuing from the previous post on employee blog issues...
2. If You Didn't Own Your Posts Would You Blog?
This does not apply everywhere but imagine you were a brilliant mind in a knowledge industry such as programming, law, medicine, etc. You also have a definite career path in mind, i.e two more years at Firm A, three years at Firm B then off to your own start-up. Spending the rest of your life with a company is not for you. A blog is a great way to build your own brand. If you start a personal blog then you will always own your posts. If your initial blog is within your employer's blog framework then you don't own your posts. What do you do?
What happens when your employer says, "Hey Steve, you're really knowledgeable in the intellectual property law field why don't you blog about that on our corporate blog?" You can't really say no to your boss. If you start blogging do you hold back the really good stuff for your personal blog? Then what happens when you leave? (See previous)
Last week when I had the opportunity to meet with Constantin Basturea in Ft. Lauderdale, one of our conversation topics was about who owns the posts in a corporate blog? The obvious answer is the company since they are providing the blog platform and allowing an individual to blog on company time. Anybody have a different view on this?
This quick answer brought up some interesting points:
1. What Happens When an Employee Leaves the Company?
Does the company delete the blog and forfeit any links and commentary that may have been built up? In some cases, "there may be gold in them thar hills!" Is the employee allowed to post a 'goodbye' message with a link to their personal blog? Once an employee blog becomes fallow the traffic would slowly die off with the only future traffic the result of inbound searches or old links.
This example really only applies to individual blogs within a corporation rather then a collaborative blog written by a group of employees. Clif Bar recently faced this issue and said 'adios amigo' to an employee on their blog.
Another alternative? In the spirit of corporate indifference the person who replaces the original employee takes over the blog. Just imagine a telecom rep blog, there would be a new blogger every three months.
Many of the corporate blog policies address what an employee should and shouldn't blog about, but do not address what happens when an employee leaves.
While browsing the NewPR/Wiki I discovered that Constantin Basturea has also put together a list of corporate blogging policies that are available online; he started to collect them almost a year ago !
Fredrik Wacka has put together a list of corporate blogging policies that are available online. Looking to develop your own? You'll want to start by reviewing what some of these firms have already done.
Hat tip: Drew B
Jeremy Zawodny points to the official Yahoo! Employee Blog Guide (PDF Version).
Yahoo! believes in fostering a thriving online community and supports blogging as a valuable component of shared media. The Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines have been developed for Yahoos who maintain personal blogs that contain postings about Yahoo!’s business, products, or fellow Yahoos and the work they do. They are also applicable to Yahoos who post about the company on the blogs of others. The guidelines outline the legal implications of blogging about the company and also include recommended best practices to consider when posting about Yahoo!.
You will notice that the language covers comments on other blogs as well. The guidelines are broken down into two major areas: Legal Parameters and Best Practice Guidelines.
Jeremy says that he did not write the specific guidelines, but that Yahoo asked him and a few other existing Yahoo bloggers to provide some input.
According to Personal Democarcy Forum, San Francisco will vote on a city ordinance to regulate blogging.
(the ordinance) would require local bloggers to register with the city Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.
Blogs that mention candidates for local office that receive more than 500 hits will be forced to pay a registration fee and will be subject to website traffic audits, according to Chad Jacobs, a San Francisco City Attorney.
Slashdot has posted the story as well so the comments should be good.
Does this ordinance apply to local blogs only? What if a blogger based in another city or state blogs about the local San Fran elections?
Trevor Cook wonders about the 'ethics' of sponsored blogs and how as a reader we can detemine if the bloggers has any conflict of interest issues. From his post:
How do you really know if some blogger who is happily slamming microsoft or google or anything else really doesn't have some commercial conflict? Sure we can say people should declare these interests, but it could be as Hamlet said a principle "more honoured in the breach than the observance".
Sometimes doing a little bit of background reading may provide you the answers. Many times blog posts are spur of the moment thoughts or issues, and a blogger might not include all the relevant background information in a post. Go back to some previous posts, perhaps a few days, weeks or months ago and see if you can gain any clues.
This issue recently came up when I was showing a friend how to perform searches with Technorati. We searched for her husband who is a political candidate and some results came up from a local political blog. She clicked on the headline and read the post. It was nothing bad, but she wondered who this person was and perhaps was there any bias? The blogger profile only listed a first name and last initial and a place of residence, and nothing else major.
Other recent posts at the blog did not provide any clues. Looking back at posts from 2004 we learned that the individual was on the local Democratic Party executive committee (my friend's husband is a Republican). She was then able to put 2 and 2 together and determine who was writing this blog.
By doing a bit of research we were able to find out the 'origin' in a sense of the blog.
I have done this a number of times with other blogs. Usually just a few moments of investigation can turn up some important information.
In a recent article Sharon Housley talks about the benefits of using RSS to display content on your web site. From the article:
RSS offers webmasters a unique opportunity to display fresh content on websites. While publishing an RSS feed is a great way to generate site interest and increase communication, syndicating and displaying feeds from related relevant sources can also generate interest, increase traffic and improve search engine ranking.
Be careful to first read the terms of use for the feeds you might want to display. If you are planning on displaying RSS content on a business site it might not be allowed.
An old client recently contacted me becuase their web developer had add some 'news headlines' to their web site. The web developer was pulling in CNN's RSS feed to display the headlines. According to the CNN Terms of Use:
RSS is a free service offered by CNN to individuals for private, non-commercial use. Any other uses, including without limitation the incorporation of advertising into or the placement of advertising associated with or targeted towards the RSS Content, are strictly prohibited.
Utilizing the CNN RSS feed on a business web site is not an acceptable use. To be safe check to see if the RSS feed you are going to syndicate on your web site has a terms of use, and it it does, make sure it allows for commercial use.
For a bit of fun and what I loosely call research, I hit Technorati every few weeks and search for "I hate my job". Some very interesting results show up. Personal blogs from Blogger, Journalspace and AOL Journals make up the majority of the results.
Many of the posts are from younger individuals who blog about their disdain for their hourly wage jobs, others are from people that seem sincerely depressed with their lot in life.
This week's pick: Heather who hates working in the 'dreaded' gift shop at the Historical Society
These personal blogs by young employees probably represent the biggest PR issue for large corporations. Most 16 or 17 year olds don't realize that what they write in their 'personal journal' is being indexed by sites such as Technorati and can be found easily by their employers and journalists.
I have a friend that works at a large retail chain in the PR department. For the most part their company is very low on the radar in blogs. Recently though when I did a search in Technorati for the company name I came across a blog post from a teenager who had just started working their. In his post he detailed the training program and videos they watched as part of orientation. His comments were not very flattering. He doesn't work there anymore.
Earlier this week I pointed to the Mac Genius blog. The blog appeared to be written by a staff member of an Apple retail store.
The blog is no more. A quick check provides this:
Error: Journal has been deleted. If you are themacgenius, you have a period of 30 days to decide to undelete your journal.
Jack Cheng provides a link to the Bloglines cache in case you missed seeing the site.
Wired has an article by Media Hack - Adam Penenberg titled No Protection for Bloggers. The piece discusses if bloggers enjoy the same legal protection that journalists do.
But should bloggers receive protection under the law as regular reporters? Should they be able to maintain the confidentiality of their sources and not be forced to testify before grand juries or at trial?
Sadly, no, because contrary to conventional wisdom, journalists don't have these protections.
The gist of his article is that many states have laws the define what a journalist/reporter is, and bloggers don't fit the definition. Adam provides details on various state's definitions of a journalist, for example:
Arizona says a reporter is someone "engaged in newspaper, radio, television or reportorial work, or connected with or employed by a newspaper or radio or television station."
Many of the other state laws all contain some provision that you must be employed by a newspaper, radio or television station. Getting the laws re-written to include bloggers is next-to-impossible.
Tom Murphy has some more tips for employees and employers about blogging.
You can check out the other posts I have written employee blogs.
Robert Scoble had dinner with Mark Jen, the Google employee fired for the content of his blog, and posts some thoughts . Robert lets us get to know the Mark a bit better and offers some tips he picked up about employee blogs:
1) Know about strategic dates that are coming up that might make managers or employees more skitish or uptight than usual (Google's pre-IPO employees will be able to sell another round of stock this month).
2) Make sure you really understand the culture of the company you are joining before writing openly about that company. An Apple employee was also at the table at dinner tonight and agreed that the expectations around blogs were quite different at Apple than at Microsoft. If you don't understand that difference you can really get into trouble.
There are four more tips, so go read the whole post.
Steve Rubel has a post titled Wikis Pose a Threat to Costly Media Directories.
Media directories must evolve into wikis or they risk becoming extinct. They are spending a lot of money paying researchers. Why not also bring customers (e.g. PR people) into the fold and enable us to edit listings, share insights and knowledge via a wiki? In the future, PR professionals - and even consumers - will create their own media directories.
One possible legal issue with the 'open source' PR directory is making sure the data is not copied directly from the existing sources such as Bacons.
Continue reading "Wiki Media Directories: Possible Legal Issues" »
NPR had a story today about bloggers who have been fired by their employers.
Can blogging about your work get you canned? NPR's Eric Weiner reports on people who have been fired from their jobs because they maintain Web logs about their work. The firings raise questions about the rights of bloggers.
You can listen to the full story online. Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky is one of the interviews.
Journalspace has a post with a list of companies that have fired individuals for blogging.
1.) Delta Air Lines
2.) Wells Fargo
3.) Ragen MacKenzie
4.) Starbucks
5.) Microsoft (some say yay, some say nay)
6.) Friendster
7.) the Houston Chronicle
8.) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
9.) Nunavut Tourism (Canada)
10.) the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University
11.) Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona Self Help Center and Library
12.) Mike DeWine, US Senator (R-Ohio)
13.) the Durham Herald-Sun
14.) Kerr-McGee
15.) ESPN
16.) Apple (according to this blog entry AND this article)
17.) Statistical Assessment Service (DC nonprofit)
18.) Minnesota Public Radio
19.) The Hartford Courant
20.) the International Olympic Committee (barred athletes from blogging during the Olympics last summer)
21.) Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (?)
22.) the National Basketball Association (NBA)
I would like to see a reference to the blog/blogger that was fired. Some are well known, such as Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky and Delta Airlines.
While remembering the various Mac-related PR gaffes for my previous post, I remembered another Mac related issue. It may have been the first real high-profile story involving an employee being fired for something they posted on their blog. (long before Delta or EA's problems)
In October of 2003, Michael Hanscom was fired from Microsoft for posting photos on his blog. This initial coverage came from the Mac community, since he had posted photos of Apple G5s being delivered to Microsoft. The title of his blog post was Even Microsoft wants G5s. The Slashdot story drew over 1000 comments.
Initial rumors were that he was fired for exposing Microsoft's secret use of Macs. Hanscom later posted that he was told he was fired because the photos posed a security threat. Specifically that they showed the loading dock area of a Microsoft building.
Update: Michael Hanscom posted a comment to let me know the original post is still online.
