the law will change. eventually.

Fascinating post by BB today about Helen Coonan's Andrew Olle lecture and then seguing into a discussion of the legal, technical and practical implications of blogs etc for major media ...

My [edited] comment on his post:

the law of defamation (and a number of other areas of law such as copyright) are very poorly adapted to the electronic world, particularly with the explosive growth of 'citizen-originated' communications published by major media. The law always develops to meet reality - it just takes a while. For the moment, there are real issues for major media playing in the new world. But IMHO the risks to them of not participating are far greater than the risks of participating.

Where I was going at the end of my comment was that to a company like News Corp which has a lot to lose (eg. reputation, money) if it 'publishes' defamatory / criminal / etc material - one option which they must have considered is just to 'opt out' - to not allow unverified / unedited / unread material to be put up on sites they own / endorse. But News Corp, to stick with the example, took an opposite tack by buying MySpace (which has massive quantities of material which would not make it past the corporate censors if they had to approve it before it went up) - and on a local level, News Limited newspapers have been linking to outside blogs on current stories (via gnoos) and are currently trialling new-gen local portals (one in Q'land, the name of which escapes me, and one in Victoria with my friends at Feedcorp - the people behind gnoos). On a cost-benefit analysis... who knows! The business model is unproven, the legal risk is high.

But the risk of not doing anything is higher. The law will catch up. eventually. In the meantime, publishers have to bite the bullet, take the bull by the horns, do lots of other cliched things and wear the risk that they will cop some flak for publishing something inappropriate. The other option leads towards the mid-term graveyard. A newspaper or broadcaster without a viable online strategy is doomed (and yes Fairfax I'm talking to you).