PRESENT POINT POWER

Blogs and weblogs are created out of joy, playfulness and creativity to share your thoughts and observations. You are using your natural abilities freely and spontaneously.

Now as life is spontaneous so blogs should be as free as air and spontaneous comments and interactions can then flow through them indiscriminately.

Interactions with others do occur, yet none occur what you do not attract or draw to you by your THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, ATTITUDES or EMOTIONS expressed in your blogs. Miraculously, you are given the GIFT of creating your own experiences.

Are we learning to handle the inexhaustible mental energy; and see, through physical materialization, the concrete result of thought and emotion? Therefore, the lessons must be taught and learned well. The responsibility for creation must be clearly understood.

It is important that we pay attention to what we do and pay attention to our emotional communications and to our translations of thoughts in the writings and blogging so as not to cause libel.

We must initiate a shift in consciousness now and move our attention to how we project energy outwardly in interaction with other individuals and how that offers a contribution within our world in what manner you choose to be generating that energy and how it is affecting of other individuals. This will not cause conflict

You share an existence with others who are experiencing their own journeys in their own ways, and you have journeying in common, then.

So be kind to yourself and to your companions.

http://news.yahoo.com/

The following is also available from Yahoo News
The SUN also carried this article on Mon, 21st Aug 06

Mon Aug 14, 6:16 PM ET

NEW YORK The race into the blogosphere has reached a feverish pace. Statistics house Technorati estimates that some 75,000 blogs are created every day, nearly one per second, joining the more than 40 million blogs already populating cyberspace. That's twice as many blogs as there were just six months ago. And newspapers of all sizes clearly have no intention of being left behind, as E&P has documented over the past two

years. At McClatchy Co.'s News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., for example, Public Editor Ted Vaden says his newspaper has expanded its stake from a half-dozen blogs a year ago to 18 today.

But with all the excitement and potential for new readers and financial invigoration, something else is rippling: growing unease about the dangers of blogs -- especially legal liabilities in the land of the free and perhaps overly brave.

"There is a lag between newspaper publishers' rush to monetize blogs and at the same time making sure their ethics policies and internal editorial controls keep up with the rollout of new forms of technology and content," warns Seattle-based attorney Robert A. Blackstone, partner at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

At www.washingtonpost.com, which sometimes posts blog entries without editing them, blog humor columnist Joel Achenbach said, "I keep thinking today is the day I will write something that destroys The Washington Post as a newspaper." But he quickly adds that he sees no clear and present danger, neither from his own writing nor from the voluminous number of comments his blog generates: "I think the vast majority of people who want to participate in our blogs are intelligent and civil."

But Achenbach's faith is not so readily shared in some quarters, especially among experts often hired by newspapers to protect their legal interests.

Chad Milton, one of the top media-liability authorities in the country, says, "I don't want to tell editors how to do their job, but I think there's a balance between editing for liability and preserving the spontaneity of a blog. I think publishers are having a little bit of a hard time figuring out what is different about a blog, and do you treat it differently."

Milton, senior vice president and national practice leader for media liability at Marsh Inc., the world's largest risk and insurance services firm, adds, "My advice to publishers and editors is that knowing there's liability for a blog on their Web site, they probably should edit them."

Adds Blackstone, whose law firm counts the Los Angeles Times, New York's Daily News, The Seattle Times, The New York Times, and The Associated Press as clients, "Part of the nature of a blog is the sense of immediacy, that you've got to get it out on the Web first. But the question is, have you done the kind of reviews and other cross-checking that you normally do on the print side? I think you'll be just as liable for what's on your newspaper's blogs as you would be if the material appeared in the morning's newspaper."

That's advice the Houston Chronicle, one of the nation's most ambitious and savviest newspaper blogging publishers, takes to heart, says Scott Clark, vice president of www.houstonchronicle.com: "All of the blogs we publish that are written by full-time or part-time employees, or freelancers, are edited as the paper is edited."

First Amendment expert Bruce E.H. Johnson, also at Davis Wright Tremaine, points out that unless a newspaper's libel insurance specifically protects freelancers of various kinds -- including bloggers who post regularly but are not full-time employees of the newspaper, or syndicated bloggers -- then the person who wrote the blog could be held responsible for any libel.

Then there's the recent case of Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize-winning business writer Michael Hiltzik. His gig at www. latimes.com was canceled because he was caught sending messages to his own "Golden State" blog under an assumed name, but his print column continued to appear twice a week. There was an important subtext: The print column was overseen by an editor, whereas the blog was not.

The perils of personal blogs

Let's assume that for blogs written by full-time staffers or other specifically designated "regular" contributors to a newspaper's Web site, there's little doubt that the legally prudent, and probably most editorially effective, approach is to "pre-edit." But what about blogs that full-time staff members write from home on their own time and that aren't related to their areas of expertise at the newspaper? Those would seem to be OK, wouldn't they?

Not so fast, says Chad Milton, citing the hypothetical case of a star reporter who from home maintains a blog about wines. "People know who he is," observes Milton, "and they pay particular attention to him because he is a star reporter. If he says something defamatory in his wine blog, I would think the plaintiff might well want to sue the publisher of his newspaper, arguing, 'This is your guy, so you're responsible for it.' Whether that would stick, I don't know. But there certainly is the potential for a case there."

Determining the nature of personal blogs written by reporters and editors outside the parameters of their official newspaper duties is a delicate issue indeed.

As both Blackstone, an expert on labor and employment law, and Milton note, a publisher's right to require a "duty of loyalty" from employees is tempered by the National Labor Relations Act and other federal and state laws protecting employee rights. This includes the right to engage in concerted activity regarding the terms and conditions of their employment and the right to engage in political and other off-duty conduct.

"So I think publishers are deciding that they need to think pretty carefully about how they want to handle this," concludes Milton, who advises several major newspaper companies. "It's hard to tell reporters what they can or can't say on their own time in a blog; it's like forbidding them from talking at a neighborhood block party. I expect it will turn on the facts of some case about whether the blogger at home is writing totally outside the scope of his employment so that there can be no imputed liability for the publisher."

Adds Bruce Johnson, one of the nation's foremost First Amendment authorities: "To the extent that the blogger is an agent of the newspaper, there may be liability. And that agency relationship is more than simply being an employee. Clearly if you're an employee, any acts of omission are imputed in law to your employer."

But what about comments posted at blogs by fans or foes? Is "Section 230" an unimpregnable legal wall protecting online publishers from the countless third-party jottings that get posted every day at newspaper blogs and Web sites, as many legal experts claim, or is it a simmering volcano at risk of being set off by a plaintiff's well-grounded libel case?

Right now, the so-called "Section 230 Defense" is the go-to legal play of choice of the Internet publishing world. One of the few surviving stanchions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230 holds that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of Section 230's most ardent proponents, says it "preempts any state laws to the contrary."

Paul Alan Levy, a prominent internet authority and attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., declares: "What Congress said back in 1996 was that to encourage the development of the Internet as a means of communication, people who offer interactive computer services should not bear the liability for nasty comments posted by other people.

"The act states that people who post their own comments at their online site should be responsible for that content, but not what they post from others, and that seems to me the right call to allow the internet to flourish," adds Levy. "My view is that the editorial decisions you make about whether to allow a particular nasty comment to remain on your board is one for you to make, and you're not liable for, according to Section 230."

As the EFF and others note, the courts to date have repeatedly rejected attempts to limit the scope of Section 230 to "traditional" Internet service providers (ISPs). The provision owes its existence to online Internet provider Prodigy, arguing that it could not be a "family-friendly" ISP if it faced legal challenges that arose after it had applied highly touted decency screening processes to content it disseminated.

But Congress moved beyond Prodigy, AOL, and a host of such ISPs and applied Section 230 to all interactive computer services, including the Web sites of newspaper companies.

Thus, argue the EFF and others: "Your [online publisher's] readers' comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by e-mail, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it." The EFF duly notes, however, "If you selected the third-party information yourself, no court has ruled whether this information would be considered 'provided' by you."

And that is a big "however," underscores Chad Milton of Marsh Inc. "I think it's an interesting question -- and an open question -- about how this law applies to third-party content on a publisher-sponsored blog.

"It's a little hard to say that just because something is online the rules are different, but a lot of people say the rules are different because of Section 230," he adds. When Section 230 was enacted, "Nobody thought through whether it made sense to treat Web content differently from published content. But now people are starting to think about that."

Roman Modrowski, who writes a popular sports blog for the Chicago Sun-Times, remains firmly in the "take-no-chances" category. "I edit all of the comments that my blog generates," says Modrowski, adding that he gets plenty of them. "If I deem something to be offensive or profane, I won't allow it to be posted. Sometimes I'll take out any offensive words and leave in the rest."

When editing could be unwise

But here's the really tricky part: What happens when a third-party online comment is edited, even with the best intentions, by the newspaper's online staff either before or after posting? Could a newspaper be on the hook for any libel charges because it became involved in a new, and therefore changed, version of the original content?

Or, if a paper has a policy of deleting obnoxious or libelous posts, does that necessarily mean it stands behind the ones it misses or chooses to let go?

The answer, according to some of the legal experts: Any editing almost certainly cracks open the "Section 230 Defense" door, with everything then depending on how much the original content was changed or altered. Johnson calls this "active editing": Even when you soften the language in a post, sometimes editors don't go far enough, or add wording that actually makes matters worse.

Says Levy at Public Citizen, offering an extreme example: A case where a third-party posting was edited and what was done was that wording was changed from "got money from the bank mysteriously" to "may have embezzled money from the bank." If you add content in such a manner, you may have some difficulty hiding behind the defense of, 'Oh, I was just editing here.'"

Given newspapers' historic role as a powerful, responsible voice in the communities they serve, shouldn't they find ways to edit reader blogs, third-party postings, and forum comments on their online sites? More and more, the word at newspaper online sites is not to "edit" this third-party commentary, but rather "monitor" it. Various means of monitoring are emerging.

They include prominently posting clear but legally non-binding (for the newspaper, that is) "user behavior" statements for third-party comments; mechanisms that allow viewers to notify a newspaper's online site about reputed errors, omissions or potentially libelous third-party postings; and technology-driven "screens" against certain kinds of behavior, such as Washingtonpost.com's screening the use of profane language and extreme personal attacks.

David Potts, a highly regarded international Internet lawyer based in Toronto, stands on the side of caution. He argues that if a third party publishes defamatory material on a network of computers of some kind, and the material is then retransmitted via the network, the owner and/or operator of the network may be liable under several scenarios, if:

They or their agents knew that the material was defamatory, or:

They or their agents had reason to be suspicious that some or all of the material was defamatory. The nature and previous history of the newsgroup or mailing group where the defamatory material was posted, the previous history of the person posting the message, and reading the defamatory material all are factors which might arouse the suspicions of network owners or operators.

With the explosive growth of the Internet, Potts contends, the definitions of libel and defamation are inevitably going to grow in number and variety.

Keeping it clean

David Finger, the Delaware attorney who represented "Doe 1" in the Cahill case, suggests that newspapers, under any circumstances, should take one important proactive step to protect against potential damages from third-party postings.

"I recommend a prominent disclaimer at the top of a newspaper's homepage making clear that the site is an open forum for the expression of public on the issues of the day, and that the newspaper does not engage in oversight, editing or approval of postings," says Finger, "and that the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper or its staff or its advertisers."

Among those embracing this hands-off, keep-it-clean approach are washingtonpost.com and www.STLtoday. com, the Web site of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Washingtonpost.com, one of the leaders in newspaper blogging, recently took a bold leap in allowing users to post comments on general articles, not just blogs. In launching this feature, Jim Brady, who runs the site, wrote to readers, "As most of you know, our charge into this interactive world has not been trouble free, and we've had to deal with blog commenters who are more interested in personal attacks and/or taunting than in making persuasive arguments and conducting civil conversations. So, we'd like to ask those of you who also find that level of discourse to be an annoyance for help in moderating the new comment threads. If you find a comment to be out of bounds, please report it by clicking the 'Request Removal' link that will appear next to every comment."

But the site also now features a crystal-clear summary of its policy on third-party postings, with a click-through to a full statement of standards.

The summary reads: "We encourage users to analyze, comment on and even challenge washingtonpost.com's articles, blogs, reviews and multimedia features. User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain 'signatures' by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site."

At STLtoday.com, the disclaimer statement opens with: "The St. Louis Post- Dispatch and STLtoday.com want to foster a spirit of community involvement and conversation. At the same time, we can't have objectionable material on the site. You should also know that we don't edit or review posts before they go live. So we're asking for your help. In the spirit of that free exchange of ideas, keep the conversation clean and respectful."

Then the site, owned and operated by Post-Dispatch parent Lee Enterprises, gets heavy: "We expect that you and others will not use our Web logs to post objectionable posts, obscenity, defamatory remarks, commercial messages or violations of copyright, trademark, or intellectual property."

But if users insist on doing any or all of those things, the Post-Dispatch, like other papers, had better have its legal-defense ducks in a row.

Better safe than sued

First Amendment attorney Johnson and others suggest there are two important ways newspaper publishers can begin to better address blog liability issues,

First, they should review and quite possibly revise traditional ethics policies to cover blogs. They also should examine their insurance protection in the light of blogs and other new technology-driven mediums such as podcasts, RSS feeds, and wireless dispatches to mobile devices.

"A lot of this is still under the radar at most newspaper companies," notes Johnson. But now is the time to take action, he says, "because the law simply hasn't developed in any way to put employers and employees on a collision course when it comes to these issues."

A first step for newspaper publishers is to examine existing ethics policies or guidelines. "To the extent that newspapers have ethics policies, even though these policies were drafted before blogs, they may address some of these issues," Johnson advises.

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, for example, have gone so far as to create separate policies on blogs. Other newspapers have incorporated specific language on blog policies as part of preexisting ethics guidelines.

When it comes to insurance, not much has changed, other than to perhaps consider buying more traditional libel insurance -- now often called "media liability insurance," which usually covers blogging activity, as it covers every other media- liability contingency.

According to Marsh Inc.'s Milton, media liability insurance covers libel in all its various forms, invasion of privacy in all its variations, and copyright/trademark infringements.

But with the dramatic rise of blogs at newspapers, Milton signals an alarm for both publishers and editors, right down to day-to-day line editing (or the lack thereof): "Insurance underwriters are going to start asking questions about the editing process of blogs. In the normal insurance application, you're asked, basically, 'How do you manage content?' and this will begin to apply more and more to blogs."

Overall, legal and insurance experts are doing their best to caution publishers about donning the proper gear before soaring off into the blogosphere. Johnson likes to tell "The Salami Story" in reference to the cutting-edge nature of blogs and potential legal liabilities.

"There was a very interesting copyright case a number of years ago involving fair use, and Judge Pierre Laval, then a district judge in New York, was involved in the case," recalls Johnson. "Judge Laval later wrote about the case, which went up and down the Second Circuit, and, in his comments, he said: 'It has been exhilarating to have been at the cutting edge of the law, even though in the role of the salami.'"

"I would urge publishers today," says Johnson, "to look carefully at the cutting edge of blogs so they can avoid becoming the salami of the future."

--Steve Yahn and Jake Whitney (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is a former executive editor of E&P. He operates a communications consultancy in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Jake Whitney is a freelancer who frequently writes about media and medical topics

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