It was inevitable. As blogs gain increasing readership and influence, they're also likely to gain increasing scrutiny from legislators. The European Parliament's Culture and Education Committee recently adopted a report which examines a number of issues affecting blogs and user-generated content sites. (Source) In addition to intellectual property issues relating to images and video streamed from the web, the European Parliament is concerned with issues of privacy, defamation and the right of response in libel cases. Also of concern are issues of spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace all of which tend to be heightened in the blogosphere because of the lack of regulation and the near impossibility to tell who is actually behind a blog. The main concern however seems to be the use of blogs for veiled lobbying activities hence the report's reference to "any blogger representing or expressing more than their personal view". While an earlier version of the report suggested the adoption of an eventual registry and disclosure requirements for anyone writing a blog, this suggestion does not appear in the final report. (Source) The European Parliament will continue to press however for a clarification of the legal status of blogs and other user-generated content sites such as Flickr and the like. Can legislation be far behind?
Comments