BooksPersonalWork

Books reviews and liability

Over the weekend at BWE10 I was given a couple of books to look at and review. It was nice to be recognized and approached, but I’ve been back a couple of days and you will notice there are no book reviews on the site.

Friday lunchtime I found myself sitting across from a lawyer over lunch, we got onto discussion of libel and how it applies on the web. Actually the entire group got into the discussion, as it’s something that seems rather important to be aware of. Over the last couple of years it’s become one of the hot topics of law and has become rather well defined.

A number of scenarios were talked about and some of the outcomes were actually rather astounding. Lets look at my situation, lets say  I were to write a review that the books sucked and offered nothing new. Do I have any liability?

The answer turns out that I do, quite a lot, and more importantly there is clear precedence. A couple of years ago an American blogger and professor received notice that he was being sued over a negative review he game to an author on his blog. Nothing inflammatory or personally attacking, just a negative review. The case is still going through the courts.

But wait, there is more. A blog owner is responsible for the comments on their site. I don’t allow comments to post untill I approve them and don’t publish many I get. The level of liability is actually rather shocking. In 2008 70,000 (yes thousand) blogs were shut down over content liabilities.

Were these writers doing anything wrong in your opinion? I’m not a professional writer and the definition of libel is rather all encompassing.

In the US there is Federal protection – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”

It was pointed out to me tha there is a big difference between free speech and stupidity. There’s no legal protection against stupidity and there have been plenty of cases where damages have been awarded to someone when a writer said something stupid or made accusations that were anything other than 100% true.

There are cases where former friends ranted about one another on Facebook, the rant cost one of them $16,000 in costs and damages. It’s a scary world and I’m looking at liability insurance of some type.

Anyway, the one of the two books I’ve read so far was good, and I’m not going to say any more than that for now. But if you’ve got any books that you might like me to review, let me know.

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