Category: Blogging

No such thing as a free lunch, even at BarCamp

| 12 Comments
| Blogging, Irish Law, Irish Society, Media and Communications

antoin-at-barcamp.jpgOver coffee at BarCamp last Saturday with Marie Boran (of Silicon Republic) and Antoin Ó Lachtnáin, conversation turned to last week’s news reports (BBC | OUT-LAW.com | The Register) that two people (let’s call them the leeches) were arrested in the UK and cautioned for using other people’s (let’s call them the routers’) wifi without permission. There are interesting questions of legal liability here, both for the leech and for the router, and they came up again in the context of Antoin’s presentation later that day about fon. That’s Antoin preaching the fon gospel in the photo on the left. Here, I want to discuss some of the legal issues, before turning to Antoin’s presentation.

Let’s look first at the liability of the leech. …

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I remember this one time, at BarCamp

| 14 Comments
| Blogging

I’m not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to wax enthusiastic and lyrical on the triumph that was last Saturday’s BarCamp Dublin (where I spotted the iso-phone, left). Thanks a million to Joe, Elly, Paul and Eoghan; links seem an inadequate way to express my gratitude, but flowers might be inappropriate, so the adulation of the masses will have to do guys. By way of roundup, EuropeanIrish has a good collection of surveys and reviews (and I hope that as traffic grows over the next while, he’ll update the message as a good resource about the day).

After my own presentation, I could relax and enjoy the day: coffee, sandwiches, chat, and high quality content. …

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And so, to BarCamp Dublin

| 9 Comments
| Blogging, Media and Communications

picture-4.pngFulfilling a promise rashly made ages ago, I spoke at BarCamp Dublin (blog | wiki) in the Digital Exchange on Crane Street in the Digital Hub (maps here and here) yesterday morning.

Once I had surmounted the usual technological glitches, this is me (click on the image for a bigger version, if you dare!) in full flow trying to cover the following issues:


Eoin at BarCamp Defamation, Privacy,
Obscenity, Hate Speech, Contempt,
Copyright, Threatening Speech,
Workplace speech issues,
Bloggers as Journalists,
and Soft Controls

For what they’re worth, my powerpoint slides are here, but were no more than a starting point for discussion (and anyway, TJ’s already done it much better here; see Sarah’s reaction here).

Update (26 April 2007): EFF have recently updated their legal guide for bloggers; whilst in Monday’s Media Guardian (hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog), Alice Gould writes about The blogosphere, the law and the printed word:

Anyone wanting to publish material posted on social networking sites, or other sites, needs to check the site’s terms and conditions to see who owns the material and whether it can legally be reproduced.

Update (4 May 2007): 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know (hat tip: Freedom to Differ)

Update (17 May 2007): I’ve just found this podcast of the event in which TJ delivered the presentation mentioned above.…

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Blogging on the Radio, closer to home

| 2 Comments
| Blogging, Media and Communications

Orla Barry, via NewstalkA phenomenon goes mainstream when it starts popping up on the radio. I discussed the “serious” BBC treatment here. But now, Dublin-based quasi-national radio station Newstalk 106, seems to be making a habit of it. There’s Karlin Lillington‘s residency (Chips with That!) on Geroge Hook. A few weeks ago, Orla Barry (pictured left) interviewed Kate Silver about her 31 days to find a valentines day date blog-project; Kate blogged about it here; and then even came to Dublin in search of her elusive valentine.

Today, Orla was at it again, with a guest (whose name I didn’t catch at the time; sorry, guest) Cauvery Madhavan (blog | bio) in studio who; Cauvery had spent a week on the blogosphere; and they discussed some of the more interesting blogs the guest she had found. The interview discussed three four in particular: that of a US stormchaser; that of a young gay man in India resisting family pressure to get married; and that of a student in Virginia Tech who blogged live about this week’s terrible events there; and on the radio, she mentioned her favourite Irish blog: Donncha O Caoimh’s Holy Schmoly, but it doesn’t seem to have made it onto her list on the Newstalk website.…

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Happy birthday, Samuel

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| Blogging

… and belated happy birthday, lex. Today is Samuel Pepys‘ birthday, the diarist (pictured below) hailed by Daithí on lex ferenda a few weeks as an A-list blogger, not long before that blog celebrated its first birthday. Now that Pepys’ diary is being made available as a blog by Phil Gyford, we have no excuse not to revel in the uber-diary of the great(to the n)-grandfather of all bloggers.

Samuel Pepys…

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Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law

| 14 Comments
| Blogging, Digital Rights

I’ve offered to speak at BarCamp Dublin. I’ve even got so far as a proposed title. It’s the one I’ve used as the title to this post. “Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law”. But I’ve not really got any further. So, if you have an inspiration or suggestions, I’d be grateful to have them.

Yes, yes; I do know that the suggested title is self-referentially post-modern. I just liked it. But I’ll change it if you come up with a better one.

Update (14 Feb 2007): Thanks to those who have made comments (below), or sent emails off-blog. I think that bloggers face many potential legal problems, from the obvious defamation and copyright issues to perhaps-not-so-obvious privacy and data protection matters. But there will be lots of other legal questions which other, more experienced, bloggers have already encountered that have not come my way yet. And I’d like more about those. Bernard’s query below – whether it will be “Tort 101: Law of tort for blogging?” – may not be too wide of the mark. I suspect that my ‘talk’ will be more in the nature of a freewheeling discussion arising organically from the concerns of bloggers present than a pre-structured presentation dreamed up by me in the quiet moments in my office (in part becuase there are none!);…

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