The use of social media websites for advertising is growing quick. However, this is new ground for many marketers and, as it matures, certain legal problems will emerge. In this article, I look at a couple of possible legal pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Due to the fact social network advertising entails the publishing or broadcast of on-line content, numerous existing, conventional media law apply to content on social media sites.
Copyright is the big 1, with “fair use” on the forefront. Copyright law protects any type of content regardless of whether it is text, audio, video — whether or not or not an actual copyright statement exists on the content. To keep yourself safe, often quote sources. Even if you do not use a statement word-for-worth, it’s much better to attribute statements to known sources.
Services such as CopyScape supply website owners and web content providers the ability to check their writing against other content on the web. But, it won’t check older, or archived, content that doesn’t exist on the internet. Just because content has been checked with CopyScape doesn’t mean it wasn’t plagiarized.
These identical standards apply to trademarks, logos, literature and art. Your motto really should be “When in doubt, source it out.” Be aware also of “deep linking” to content, regardless of whether images, logos, or other material.
If you link to content which looks like it may possibly be misconstrued as belonging to you, you could be in violation of copyright laws. Not to mention stealing bandwidth.
Another potentially problematic region is disclosure and confidentiality. You will need to be careful about what you write about your own company and competitors. Revealing information about the company transactions of your clients or competitors could land you in extremely hot water. When you perform a transaction with a client, it’s assumed that you will hold client info confidential. Leaking confidential data can be quite damaging to a client or competitor—not to mention your own reputation.
Any media law expert will tell you that 1 of the greatest dangers when publishing or broadcasting are defamation and libel. If you are writing anything about an individual, particularly if it is controversial, you ought to check that all facts are correct before publication. In reality, even if you are repeating something libelous that you saw written elsewhere you can have legal problems. The finest guidance? Do not do it. Stay away from anything that hints of trouble.
If you use social media internet sites like FaceBook and MySpace, be conscious of privacy problems. Whilst it is perfectly ethical to use social networking websites to spread your message to individuals who are genuinely interested, a lot of people game the system. Like email spam, social networking spam is becoming a large issue. Don’t be surprised about future legislation on this concern.
Social network advertising is still in its infancy so numerous legal problems have yet to be flushed out. The bottom line is that if you’re communicating on social media internet sites, and you’re not attempting to circumvent ideas or privacy, you shouldn’t run into any legal trouble.