As much as I’ve tweaked the issue of Creative Commons and weblogging accountability, I would be remiss if I didn’t provide a link to EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers.
The guide provides some good overview of issues such as legal liability, copyright, and defamation. It isn’t detailed, but chances are if you need detail, you probably need a lawyer.
The guide does reference Creative Commons, but a very neutral overview of it, primarily pointing us to the CC site. If I think one section is weak, it is the section devoted to copyright, Creative Commons, and people making comments:
When a person enters comments on a blog for the purpose of public display, he is probably giving an implied license at least for that display and the incidental copying that goes along with it. If you want to make things clearer, you can add a Creative Commons license to your blog’s comment post page and a statement that by posting comments, writers agree to license them under it.
Just to clarify this: if you comment here, it’s going to display here. If you don’t want it to display here, don’t comment here. If after you comment, you regret the fact — delete the comment. If you can’t manage your own destiny with all this, and you sue me, I’ll send Microsoft after you. After all–I’m the only blogger that hasn’t condemned MSN Spaces and blamed the company for the upcoming fall of the internet. The company owes me.
