News: Brands Falling Foul of OnLine Laws

RESEARCH SHOWS BRANDS MAY BE FALLING FOUL OF LAWS ONLINE

• 81% rate their knowledge of social media marketing law as limited or non-existent
• BBC, NHS Choices, Gumtree and FutureGov unite to share best practice

London, February 25^th 2010:

Dominic Sparkes, MD, Tempero

Research from moderation company Tempero, shows 81% of brands rate knowledge of laws regulating their social media marketing as limited to non-existent. The number one reason cited for low knowledge was that company activity was limited to external platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but a UK solicitor cautioned against this misconception.

Danvers Baillieu, solicitor at Winston & Strawn, who specialises in representing web based companies such as Huddle and Zoombu , and runs Bootlaw, clarified:

“If you edit or run a group or community, even if you’re not responsible for the hosting of content (such as a Flickr group), then choosing not to exercise control and ignoring requests to remove defamatory or illegal content would not be a defence to any claims brought against you.”

10 year UGC veterans Tempero, which says it  protects more blue chip brands online than any other moderation company, is pro-actively tackling brand confusion on legitimate social marketing with the launch of a free eBook called ‘UGC and the law’.

Link to e-book: Law: user generated content

Read more »

Tempero: response to Google court case, Italy

Reference – Google directors given jail sentences for breaching Italian privacy laws (for content posted to YouTube byt third parties): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/serious-threat-to-web-in-italy.html

Dominic Sparkes, MD, Tempero:

“Many publishers feel the risk of not moderating and relying on alerts from users is worth taking with ‘safe harbour’ providing a cushion against prosecution.  This case has potentially created a landmark ruling for those reactively moderating content on their sites and will send a warning shot across the bows of those operating within Social Media.”

“For sites such as YouTube, moderating every single video is near impossible but such large scale sites are going to have to implement additional protection measures to avoid similar cases.  Law lords are going to have to think carefully about how such a ruling is implemented in the future to avoid an onslaught of appeals and lobbying from many corporations.”

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Note: link to Tempero online media resources: http://www.wavespr.com/client-tempero-the-online-moderation-people/