Over the past two months, Activ-Media have been in heavy discussions with both corporate and governmental institutions to look offering facilitated blogging services as tools for organisational communications. Two major themes have emerged, namely Change processes and Leadership / Staff communications. All the dialogue to date has been around internal facing blogs. That said, it's become clear that as the social media benefits become clear, our clients will no doubt show interest in looking at externalising their blogging efforts.
This raised an issue in my mind. What are the legal issues involved when organisations look at external facing blogs? In the case of a listed companies, informal comment could negatively affect share price or draw the organisation into legal disputes!
So, I spent a little time in email and/or phone dialogue with Justin Patten of Human Law (UK solicitor and 'Technology Catalyst') and Michael Dillon of Sun Microsystems (General Counsel).
Justin Patten: Where does an organisation stand with regards to its 'commenters'. I.E Were someone not affiliated to the company to post a potentially libellous or difficult comment, who takes responsibility? For example, if a passionate GM car owner posted on the a GM blog that 'X company's cars are prone to blowing up, GM's cars are much safer'. The central legal issue of our times. UKs anti free speech defamation laws against technology explosion of social media. The issue is being played out with baby expert Gina Ford who is threatening to sue a chat forum on the basis of defematory statements by users. Also, The Guardian had a feature last week on libel laws in its technology section. My view is this. The blog may be able to avoid responsibility on the basis that it can show that it is not the author of the statement and that it took reasonable care with respect to publication. It can use a safe harbour defence of unintentional publication from section 1 of Defamation Act 1996. However,if say X company complains to GM and says remove that comment and GM keeps it, then I think GM is vulnerable to a claim. A paradox is with comment moderation. If there is comment moderation and GM approves the comment, then the position of GM may be weaker than if they had no comment moderation and comments just fly in. By the way, I do advocate comment moderation! Michael Dillon: Looking at your own blog, it appears that reader comments are displayed immediately.. That is, without being approved by a moderator beforehand. Could you foresee any circumstances in which you (Sun) could be liable for what users post? For example, a passionate Sun customer posting libellous comments about one of your competitors products / practices? Really it boils down to 'Who must assume responsibility for the content of comments when displayed on a company blog? Sun, or the commenter? You do raise an interesting question. I have been advised by others to disable the comments field. The advice was based not on the possibility of liable, but rather that someone would say something negative about Sun, me or .... lawyers :) My personal view is that part of the reason you blog is to create a wider network - to make connections (witness our email exchange). While it might be safer to disable the comment field, I think it would reduce the value of the blog. While there might be some possibility of a claim arising under the facts you pose, I think it is minimal. If you read the bottom of our web site (http://blogs.sun.com/) you will see a statement that Sun does not necessarily agree with the contents of the blogs. Whether that would be a sufficient disclaimer in litigation will vary depending on the jurisdiction. Thus, we think it is important to educate our bloggers so they draft appropriately. At the bottom of the page, you will see 2 links to our policies that might help you further.
