SubscribeThe complexities of information law: wasn’t life simpler before the internet?
by Jennifer SmithIt seems one of the things that makes our post-Internet world more complicated is that our laws just weren’t made for the digital world. I guess when life ran at a slower pace, laws could develop at a stately pace. But in the digital world, things happen so fast that you get the impression everyone’s just making it up as they go along.
If you’re involved in IT, or managing information makes up a big part of your job, you’ll know how important it is to keep up to date on information law. It’s not just a case of making sure you’re keeping within the law, but also protecting your reputation as someone who keeps up to date in your area of expertise.
We’re hosting a talk on information law on 11 November 2009 by a top academic in the area, Professor Charles Oppenheim. He’ll explain the current legal status on a whole host of different information law issues. Book before the end of September to benefit from our early bird booking discount.
If you want to find out more about current issues in information law, try the excellent Out-law site maintained by law firm Pinsent Masons, or that great institution, The Register.
Here are some of the recent stories I’ve spotted about information law showing how much these laws affect everything we do in the workplace.
Copyright
Copyright protects your work from being used by others without giving you due credit and financial reward. It’s so easy to access other people’s written work, photos and videos on the internet that you often see other people’s work being copied where it shouldn’t be (including business presentations!) – but the law can catch up with everyone in the end…
Recent stories include:
- Getty Images wins settlement over unauthorised use of photos on website
- Photographer Leibovitz sued for copyright
- Illegal copying of data in databases
- Eleven-word snippets can infringe copyright
- The EU and Google’s book digitisation project
Data protection and security of sensitive information
If you hold information about people you have legal – not to mention moral – responsibilities to safeguard that information. Protecting sensitive information is as much about training staff as it is about IT security, as these recent stories illustrate.
Recent stories include:
- Training staff on how to not leak sensitive information
- The perils of losing laptops holding sensitive information
- Revealing sensitive customer information accidentally by email
Privacy and electronic communications
Some argue that we no longer have any privacy anyway so why bother trying to protect what little remains. I think that’s even more reason to protect it. But that aside, you have legal obligations to respect and protect other people’s privacy from the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, Data Protection Act, Human Rights Act and others.
Recent stories include:
- Facebook’s privacy policy
- Facebook’s publication of user’s photos on ads
- Hiding Director’s addresses
- Google Street View
- UK government plans for accessing communications data
- and contrasting plans from the Scottish Government
Domain names, trade marks and online advertising
They say property is 9/10ths of the law, but does that still apply when the property is digital and not bricks and mortar?
Recent stories include:
- Judge orders cybersquatter to pay Verizon $33m
- Reclaiming expired domain names
- Using your competitor’s names in Google Adwords
- How Lego stopped the use of it’s characters in a Spinal Tap video
Freedom of Information
This is one that most businesses don’t need to worry about. Yet, amazingly a lot of people don’t realise that this only applies to public authorities. You can use FoI to request information from government, but that’s a whole other blog post.
Find out more at our event
If you want to learn more about information law, make sure you come to the OneIS Information Law evening on 11 November 2009. We have a fabulous speaker who’ll clarify all of these issues and more. Information law is a fascinating, complex, ever-changing subject, and it’s important for anyone involved in managing information to keep up to date about it.