Blogher 2010: Mastering Intellectual Propery Law on the Internet Session Recap

Hello Everyone:

As some of you know, I co-presented a presentation at Blogher 2010 entitled Mastering Intellectual Property Law on the Internet and other legal issues in cyberspace. My co-presenter was Wendy Seltzer of the blog ChillingEffects.org. She is a Berkman fellow and law school professor. She specializes in copyright, fair use, and other legal issues in cyberspace such as first amendment and privacy issues.

We covered four main topic areas. They were: Protecting your own Intellectual Property, Respecting others Intellectual Property, Privacy, and Defamation on the Internet. We tag teamed all topics and had so many detailed questions we actually ran over our allotted time. Apparently this is a much needed topic for social media enthusiasts.

When discussing protecting intellectual property, we specifically covered how to protect copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. We also discussed why owners of these types of intellectual property should protect them. One reason is because owners of intellectual property can lose out on valuable royalty or licensing income if not protected. No one wants to lose money!

Next we discussed how to respect others intellectual property and not infringe their works. We explained when it is permissible to copy without permission in certain Fair Use circumstances. Wendy explained in detail proper linking, the DMCA take down procedure, and creative common licenses.

I then gave a general overview of Privacy issues. I explained the need for every website or blog to have a basic privacy policy which is a disclosure document. A privacy policy protects the owner of the site and the user. Read my article on Privacy policies here.

Lastly, we both touch on Defamation and how to avoid defamation on the Internet. We also discussed the Communications Decency Act which states website owners or internet service providers are not liable for defamatory statements left by visitors.

If you are interested in seeing the notes or hearing the audio from this presentation, please click here.