The Daily Eastern News online edition has been getting some pretty nasty comments lately about a pair of stories with some controversy surrounding the topic matter. As a result, the editor, online editor, and a host of us advisers have been knocking around a new comment policy to attach to the comments on dennews.com (scroll down to the bottom of this story to see the policy, right above the comments).

Even though there are a few comments that seem to draw fire, the existence of so many people wanting to comment on the stories suggests that people like to talk about the news. This will come as no surprise to readers of this blog.

But there are always legal worries, especially for newspapers that publish online editions. Today, a reminder has come in that the CDA Section 230 immunity for internet service providers still applies to comments. A Vermont judge dismissed a libel lawsuit against iBrattleboro for a comment left on the site.

This is a significant victory for community journalism sites, which often rely heavily on user-submitted content. Like many such sites, iBrattleboro edits and removes user comments in order to create “a forum for information-sharing, discussion and debate in a respectful and friendly atmosphere.” This is the quintessential activity that CDA 230 was meant to immunize, and courts have consistently held that these activities do not make an interactive computer service liable for defamatory material submitted by others that it does publish on its site.

The DEN takes down comments that are deemed offensive. Our students don’t pre-approve comments. For now, that seems the best approach.

As an update to the previous post, below is the online archives policy of the GWHatchet. Thanks to Howard Marshall for the info, which is in their policy manual, but also not online yet.

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The College Media Advisers members-only listserv has been buzzing lately about online archives policies. Apparently, everyone is discovering that their names show up in online searches, so every split infinitive and muddle-headed article they wrote for the college paper (not to mention “youthful indiscretions”) is coming back on them like heartburn after 8 pieces of pizza.

This is nothing new. I wrote about it for Keeping Free Presses Free for the last two years (here’s an online version of the article).

Gerry Hamilton at the Penn State Daily Collegian posted their online archives policy to the listserv. The policy is not online yet, so I got his permission to repost it here for people who may not have access to the listserv, and also so it’ll show up in search results. I’ll add more examples as I come across them.

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Along with March Madness, it’s a useful exercise to revisit the idiocy (yes, I don’t think that’s too strong a word) of the NCAA’s “blogging policy.”

Yes, for those of you who will be traveling to various sites to witness your men’s and women’s basketball teams compete for the championships - BEWARE! If you want to liveblog from the sidelines (as Kentnewsnet.com did over the weekend), you could run afoul of the NCAA’s credentials nazis (No Blog for You!).

You can blog, but within stupid, irrational, idiotic limits. Don’t believe me? Check out these “blogging guidelines”

To quote from the stupidity:

Each Credential Holder (including television, Internet, new media, and print publications) has the privilege to blog (e.g., real-time or time delayed journal entries) during competition through the Credential Entity. Any blog representing an NCAA championship must submit the appropriate link to ncaasports.com Blog Central. In return, all media entities entering a blog must post the ncaasports.com logo/link on their site. All blogs must be free of charge to readers. All must adhere to the conditions and limitations of this NCAA Blogging Policy. A blog description includes in-Competition updates on score and time remaining in competition as well as description of the championship and competition taken place during the given time. The NCAA and its designated championship personnel shall be the final authority about whether a Credential Holder or Credential entity is following the NCAA Blogging Policy.

And what qualifies as following the NCAA’s IDIOTIC Blogging Policy? For basketball: Five times per half; one at halftime; two times per overtime period.

Yes, that’s right - You can write one (1) blog post at halftime.

Interestingly, the guidelines provide no outline of an acceptable length for any blog post. So it’s conceivable that a journalist could write a 1,000-word post at halftime that would meet the limits but still provide information. And it should be noted that the NCAA’s blogging policy seems to focus solely on the “competition” taking place. So I suppose you could write as many blog posts as you want about all the fans with their chests and faces painted school colors, or the mascot fight at center court.

All of which just highlights how silly such a policy is to begin with. It serves no purpose but to highlight inane bureaucracy and heavy-handed greed (because at heart, the NCAA blogging policy is all about $$$$). Of course, I would change my mind if the NCAA could show me one credible scintilla of evidence that liveblogging somehow decreases viewership of their championship events. Or that they actually have something other than $$$$ in mind in crafting this stupid policy. As the NCAA’s own blog noted when this issue first cropped up in June of last year, ESPN apparently considers liveblogging to be the equivalent of “rebroadcast,” so apparently they don’t want journalists liveblogging from the games. That makes ESPN - which has a thriving new media operation - just as pinheaded as the NCAA is for agreeing to such insipid rules.

Simply put, stifling reporting on athletic events does nothing but engender ill-will among people who WANT to help you publicize your tournaments.

Related:

• Ars-Technica
• On Sports
• Sports Marketing 2.0
• DeadSpin
• ReadWriteWeb
• Polevaultpower
• Chronicle’s Wired Campus
• CNET

This year, a slightly revised version of an earlier article I wrote was printed in Keeping Free Presses Free, a publication of the Student Press Law Center and CMA. Even though the printed publication is distributed at conventions, I think the information is worthwhile for a general audience who might not be able to attend, so I’m including what I wrote in this blog post. Look below the fold for information about CDA section 230, blogging policies, comments, and online archives.

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My new boss at Eastern Illinois University, James Tidwell, sent this link to faculty a couple of weeks ago, and it’s something that comes up often on the CMA listserv, so I figured it was worth a few words.

Al Tompkins at Poynter does the heavy lifting and talks to a couple of legal eagles about the wisdom of user comments on news sites. Read here: Assessing Legal Risks and Guidelines for Online Sites. There’s some additional info in a sidebar about some major news org comment policies here: Dealing with comments, a few interesting approaches.

The key takeaway is that newspapers are not shielded from lawsuits through unmoderated comments (Oh, don’t we wish!) - anyone can file a lawsuit. But the law is developing in such a way that news organizations that don’t moderate comments prior to posting are in a better position to defend themselves against such frivilous lawsuits.

This fits with what I’ve always maintained - newspapers online are different than newspapers in print. The Communications Decency Act (at least the part that wasn’t overturned by the Supreme Court) shields online sites from liability for material in ways that are not the same as those afforded traditional publishers. And until Congress revisits that law - or a court significantly disagrees with it - this is a paradox newspaper online sites will have to live with.

And finally, there is this exchange:

If newsrooms do allow public comment, what would you recommend as rules of engagement for the public to follow?

Harvey: Although the following is not provided as legal advice — the reader should consult counsel of his/her choosing in this area — among the considerations to be taken into account [is] the need for the newsroom to impose robust “terms of service” on all posters. Posters should be informed that they are responsible for their own postings. The newsroom should consider advising readers that the newsroom does not control or monitor what third parties post, and that readers occasionally may find comments on the site to be offensive or possibly inaccurate. Readers should be informed that responsibility for the posting lies with the poster himself/herself and not with the newsroom or its affiliated sites.

Korpady: Adopt and include in the access agreement with bloggers a “notice and take down” policy reserving the right to refuse to post or to restrict access to defamatory or infringing speech.

Adopt and include in the access agreement with bloggers an agreement not to post defamatory, infringing or other harmful content.

And be aware that the blogging community is very jealous of its unfettered right to speak and has on a number of recent occasion “mobbed” an Internet service provider that took down clearly infringing content (e.g., Digg.com). You may be caught, without a remedy, between a defamed person and the defaming blogger or between the owner of a copyrighted work and the infringing blogger that posted it.

I’ve long been on record supporting Steve Yelvington’s take: Throw the bums out. Establish some community standards and make them readily apparent on your site. Allow people to report those who break the standards, and then ban those people from participating. I call it “passive moderation” - you allow everyone to play at first, but if someone decides to be an a-hole, then you pull their privileges.

It’s a lot easier than wholesale moderation, where your editors stand between comments and the web site at every turn. If you have a story that gets over 290 comments (look at the comments for this post about Dale Earnhardt Jr. joining Hendrick Motorsports to see an example), what are you going to do? Better to practice passive moderation than full-on moderation.

UPDATE: Joe Gisondi dissects this episode in depth at On Sports.

Here’s a story that crosses all boundaries: sports, blogging, newspapers, and new media. The NCAA kicked a Louisville Courier-Journal sports writer out of a super-regionals baseball game because he was blogging during the game. Here’s the Courier-Journal’s side of the story: Courier-Journal reporter ejected from U of L game.

This is idiotic on so many levels that it’s incredible that the NCAA would stoop to such stupidity. Wait, strike that. But it’s also something that you college media advisers and journalists need to be aware of, at least until some judge somewhere rights this agregious wrong. If your students are live-blogging an NCAA event, keep an eye on the door and your press pass.

Related coverage: TechDirt and Center for Citizen Media, which offers a unique way to circumvent this idiotic rule.

Update: Here is a link to some PDFs of the NCAA’s undoubtedly arcane, overly-bureaucratic press credential rules that doubtless spell out how press can’t “live” report from an event because of “rights” that they’ve sold to some major media corporation. (hat tip to Mike Black for the pointer - I hope this is the page he was talking about).

One such document says:

“Real-time transmission of streaming video, digital images, real-time audio, including play-by-play and statistics, of any game of the championship is exclusive to the NCAA’s web site and/or any other web site designated by the NCAA and its rightsholders. “Real-time” is defined as “live, continuous play-by-play or description of an event.”

But I’m highly suspect of the definition of “real-time” in terms of live-blogging an event.

The Student Press Law Center recently published a story about the Eastern Connecticut State Campus Lantern’s move to an online-only publication. Long-time readers will recall the move created quite a controversy on campus. Here’s the SPLC story by Marnette Federis, a very balanced article, IMHO.

I’m quoted a couple of times discussing the potential for censorship and also the possibilities for community engagement online. And Adam Goldstein’s wrap-up of the “is it censorship?” question is excellent:

A school CANNOT force you to publish in a medium you DO NOT want to use. Under basic First Amendment law, you cannot be compelled to speak against your will. That does not mean the school is obligated to pay for your new medium; it only means you need not provide your words to the old medium.

A school CANNOT prohibit you from publishing in a medium you DO want to use. As editors at a public college, you have the right to determine how to disseminate your work. For example, while a school is not obligated to provide funding for an online publication, it could not deny funding to an existing print publication because the editors wanted to publish the content online as well.

A school CAN allocate funds to a specific type of medium. If a publication submits a budget for the next year that includes printing costs, it cannot take the money allocated for printing and use it for buying a server to host its digital edition. This is not a media issue; if someone is granted funding for a volleyball team, they couldn’t take the money and fund a basketball team.

New Campus Lantern EIC Tori Saulnier spoke during our new media sessions in New York, and I hope to have video of her talk up within the next couple of days.

The Business Beat

The incomplete story from Tallahassee.

An editorial about the strike in the Famuan Online.

* Accessing the Famuan online requires registration. Ugh.

Yesterday, a post to the CMA listserv mentioned students “borrowing” from the Web for material in their student newspaper. Such borrowing is, in many instances, wrong and a violation of copyright. However, there are legitimate means of obtaining material for use in student publications without running afoul of copyright law. Stock Xchange is a stock photography website that offers unrestricted use of most images, and the images are usually high resolution. There is also Creative Commons, a system that allows copyright owners to let others use their original works without having to ask permission. I wrote about CC in May of this year: Creative Commons.

Today, we find out that some of the newspapers in the Gatehouse Media fold have embraced the Creative Commons. Lisa Williams, guesting at Jay Rosen’s PressThink, has details, Newspaper Chain Goes Creative Commons: Gatehouse Media Rolls CC Over 96 Newspaper Sites:

That little badge is news. The TAB is owned by GateHouse Media, a newspaper conglomerate that owns 75 daily and 231 weekly newspapers. And the TAB isn�t the only paper that got a silver CC badge this week. Without fanfare, the company is rolling out Creative Commons licenses covering nearly all of the 121 dailies and weeklies they own in Massachusetts. The CC license now covers 96 of the company�s TownOnline sites, which are grouped within a portal for their many Eastern Massachusetts newspapers.

Howard Owens, whom we frequently cite around here, is the director for digital publishing for Gatehouse. Kudos to Howard and the Gatehouse company for opening up their content.

College publications would be wise to look into using Creative Commons to license their content. You can place limits on how material is used, but the key is to let people spread your material and keep it flowing in conversation. In a world where remixes and mashups are all-too-common, locking down content that has little economic value after its publication is old-school thinking. CC is also a good way to find material that students can use legally in their publications.

UPDATE 11:50 EST 12-15-06: Howard Owens discusses CC on his site today (with no mention of the Gatehouse moves), and provides two points that are worth repeating:

Some publishers may be afraid to take this step because they think they are giving up copyright, but they�re not. CC is a license. You don�t surrender copyright (or even really control) at all.

and

If I had another piece of advice for publishers considering CC: Don�t allow remix. News organizations have ethical obligations to accuracy and fairness not to explicitly allow people to change the news. You need to preserve the right to prohibit people from changing the meaning of the content.