Slashdot Mirror
Who Owns Weblog Content?
dirvish writes "Information Week has a story discussing copyright issues and legal rights associated with employee blogs and RSS readers. Recently, some companies have come out with formal weblog policies and others have fired employees for inappropriate blogging. With an increase in official company blogs, and some large companies like Microsoft and Google offering popular blogging services, the issues become even more clouded. Some bloggers are beginning to speak out about corporate and government control, others would probably prefer to not risk their jobs."
In the time-tested tradition of writers who tackle risky topics - use a pseudonym. By the way, what are some of the ways to set up a reasonably anonymous blog?
We've been on a fairly steady decline since they found out they can make employees go through demeaning tests for insurance purposes and are currently at the point where companies are trying to kick smokers out. Meanwhile there are people arguing free speech rights only apply when the government is attempting to restrict them, conveniently ignoring the fact that if there were any multinational corporations around when the founders set this place up maybe the Bill of Rights would have been a little tighter.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I guess taht's what happens when you make the 1st Amendment only opposable to the Governments and not private individuals / corporations...
Anyone read C. Edwin Baker's Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech ? Pretty interesting on the topic of free speech regulation to protect the speech from this type of pressures...
I know it doesn't serve to fluff the author's ego or provide as much legitimacy, but if you MUST say something controversial then BLOG it anonymously.
My primary BLOG has no personally identifiable information in it. I can say what I want as long as it's not slanderous or libelous. Of course, I do it as an outlet for personal expression and not to gain or keep readership. I mostly write reviews of restaurants I eat at...
The Master (Angelo Rossitto) in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, "Not shit, energy!"
Here's been my observation:
1. Companies always have NDA's (non-disclosure agreements) when they have info they don't want others to have... if you sign it, respect it. It's that simple. We have all signed them before.
2. I never mention people/places unless I *know* it's safe. I never mention identifyable people, only the info they publically reveal (and a link to their blog). It's just common respect.
3. Never mention who I am working for, or what I'm doing, unless I am positive it doesn't violate the rules of #1, and #2. Ever, no exceptions.
Perhaps I'm paranoid, but that's been my policy for ages.
IMHO it's just common sense. Just because you don't sign your real name to your blog doesn't mean you don't need to abide by your NDA.
I especially like this entry.
Then doesn't it belong to the employer?
Seriously, why do we need something like a blogger's "bill of rights?" If you do something on your employer's time that isn't related to your job, then you should consider yourself lucky that either your employer doesn't know or care. You could lose your job for blogging at work, unless maybe your blog is promoting the company's products and services and some manager thinks that is just good free advertisement.
The woman who proposed that blogger's bill of rights got fired because she posted on her blog pictures that could be offensive to some of her employer's customers and let people know where she worked. That's just about one of the things that you DONT DO online. You just don't post comments that can be connected with your employer unless your employer has given you the green light to do so.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I suspect that if you have to ask "Who owns my weblog content?", then the answer probably won't be what you want to hear.
[o]_O
I own my content, which is not a problem since I'm self-employed, and I copyright my content, which turned out to be incredibly important.
I learned a tough lesson in my early blogging days. I used a hosted blog, and I got into a business dispute with the asshole owner, resulting in him terminating my services but leaving my dead blog active. My old blog was highly rated, so they were deliberately leaving my old blog up to divert Google searches away from my new self-hosted blog. So I filed a DMCA complaint to force him to remove my old website, and I won. This was only possible because I had put a copyright notice on my old website.
Now I know better than to to let anyone else have control over my content.
Yeah, I heard about that. I'd be shocked if the workers don't win that lawsuit, but we'll see. I know the parallel isn't perfect, but replace "smoker" with "pregnant woman" and see how far, legally, that goes.
As far as blogs go, it's not as clear cut because there is no direct cost associated to a company if the blog is not divulging secrets, served off company hardware, or written on "company time". The blog may result indirectly in lost sales or something like that, but I don't know if that would fall under most employee contracts which say something about "not harming the company business."
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
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make install -not war
Or one of those people who leaves the job at the office and whose personal life has nothing to do with his or her current employment.
You know, THOSE crazy people.
In the U.S., most private employees can be terminated just because the emploer wants to. Absent a union or individual contract that specifieds otherwise, employees work at the pleasure of the employer.
So, use your head. If you use any property that belongs to your employer to do anything your employer isn't paying you to do, you are putting your job at risk.
If you post to your blog only at home, tell the world who you work for, and then post opinion about your employer, you are putting your job at risk.
Is this a free speech issue? No, because your employer is not thwarting your right to post to your blog, even if you are fired.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Mark Pilgrim once blogged about him being a recovering alcoholic. He never blogged about work or the people he worked with. However, the people he worked for at the time found out about the blog, as he was not anonymous and did not take great pains to hide it. Well the company did a really sleazy (and in hindsight stupid) action of asking him to take this information down. They thought customer's knowing this would make the company look bad. Mark refused and was eventually fired. I was definitely on his side for this one. Something's wrong with society if you are embarrassed about alcoholism and this is not the way to handle it, IMHO. It's stupid because Mark is now working for IBM in their corporate blogging division. That former company gave up a prime employee and Mark's making far more money now.
However, a few weeks later a fellow blogger of Mark's was then fired for making comments about a coworker in her blog. Mark took up her side, but as I talked to Mark, and reviewed the comments, it was little more than bitching about someone who was simply a pain in the ass. Okay fine, you work with someone who's a pain in the ass, but would you tell that to that person's face? This is what you are doing. She refused her companies demands to remove the information and she was sacked. Frankly this was just stupid. If you have a problem with someone, you take up with your boss. If you can't fix it, bitching about it in your blog is not going to help. Might make you feel better, but it will make you feel worse when the company has to discipline you.
And I myself was subject to some policy, but this was a common sense situation early in the days of blogging. I blogged at lunch occasionally and I was proud of my site. My boss found out as I had emailed them from home once. So she checked it out and she saw one or two time stamps in the middle of the day. She asked me and I told her this was because I did it at lunch. She asked me if I could minimize the appearance of this (she didn't even ask me to stop!) I simply changed the timestamp on my posts to later in the day after work.
It's ironic, because, some of my topics deal with very confrontational stances on American society and politics. Hell let me be blunt, I flame 90% of americans in most posts. But she never once mentioned anything about content, because I never talk about the company or our customers in any way.
Sometimes, your principles are more important than your job, sometimes your principles are way skewed, and sometimes you just get lucky and work for understanding people. You have to understand what can get you in trouble and what can't, and balance that with what you absolutely have to speak out about.
If you must insult everyone, make sure you have a steady source of income from a private business that doesn't care what you say.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Well, IAAL, and the fact is, unless you are a member of a protected class, have exercised some protected right, or have an employement contract, you can fired for any reason at all, or even no reason whatsoever.
What encompasses "membership in a protected class" or "exercised a protected right" may be different from state-to-state -- for example, in California, "sexual preference" is a state protected class, but is not a protected class at the federal level, and not in most states.
Now, if an employer fires you for any reason other than what is considered a "good cause" under your state's unemployement laws, then you can collect unemployement, so a company may try and hold off firing you until they can meet the "good cause" requirements under their particular state's unemployment laws, in order to deny you unemployment -- but they can still fire you for any reason, good or bad, or no reason at all, expect for the certain protected classes listed above.
And company policies really have nothing to do with this. They can sometimes be used to show "implied contracts" of one sort of another, usually with respect to vacation pay and the like, but they are generally not legal documents in the sense that firing someone without taking all of the necessary steps written in the employment manual changes a lawful firing into an unlawful firing.
I think your professor was probably right -- change "bad reasons" to the list I gave above, and then you are right on.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
No, in the U.S., they can fire you immediately. The laws vary from state to state, but in California, for example, if you are fired, you have to be given your final paycheck within a certain period of time (3 days, I think), along with payment for accrued but unused vacation time. This type of stuff varies depending on what state you are in, but the "at-will" nature of employment means you can be fired at any time -- even right now!
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
There's already rules about what you can and can't say about your employer, why should the web be any different?
My contract with the Navy was not renewed because I made a blog entry on a website that was in no way attached to the military or government (attached below in case you actually care about it). The Navy's point is that if I had said this in a public place, it is OK. However, terrorists can read web pages, so any dissent falls under the Patriot Act.
The blog entry:
I am a bit worried about the project I'm now working on. The project head is supposed to be a Software Engineer. In the few weeks that I've worked with him, I have found that he is completely unable to program in any of the required languages, he knows very little about installing software on a computer, and his knowledge of database administration is limited to what the paperclip guy in MS Access can tell him to do. Further investigation has dug up that he was a telephone support person for a software company, but I don't know how he lost his job. After that, he worked in retail sales at a national men's clothing store. Then, he woke up one day and decided he was a Senior Software Engineer. He flubbed an application to a government contractor, got hired, and is now in charge of this project. Now, if I could just place my finger on what is worrying me about this project...
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Very, very few jobs in the U.S. outside of union jobs and certain skilled professional services (like actors,musicians and professional athletes) have real, enforceable employment contract -- it's just the way things are in the U.S. The down side is that the employer can fire you pretty much whenever (see other posts in this thread) -- the plus side is that you can freely move whenever you want.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
An acquaintance of mine recently became unemployed for this very issue. She routinely griped about her employer in her LiveJournal.
She was already in trouble for sending personal emails from the work computer. They ended up watching her LiveJournal for months (either because they were searching for the company name and her blog came up, or because they knew she had a LJ b/c of the earlier trouble). Eventually she complained about some particular incident which included identifying information and reflected badly on their company name, and they fired her.
I think she's happier now--has a new job that she doesn't hate.
But very, very stupid way to go. Guarantees you a hole in your work history where you won't have a good reference.
I think the question is whether Freedom of Speach or Slander is the more important thing to think about. According to how the country grew up we were allowed to speak freely even about our employ when off hours. In the last century businesses have been trying to erode that by trying to reclassify it as slander or other category.
To me our country should protect our Freedom of Speach first and foremost.
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