12 Important US Laws That Every Blogger Needs To Know

Over at Scots Forum yesterday, Jeber posted a link to a site that covers 12 important US laws that every blogger needs to know. I read through the list and found it interesting and informative so I thought I would share my thoughts as well as the link itself.

Over all I found the article very informative, though I did have a few thoughts in reading some of the points made in the article. For example:

The biggest issues in linking right now revolve around copyright law and deep linking. Deep linking involves a blogger who places a link on his site that leads not to the front door of a site (e.g. AvivaDirectory.com), but instead to a particular page within that site (e.g. www.AvivaDirectory.com/successful-blog-launch).

I found this semi-confusing. Though the article states further on that there is no law that specifically bans what is referred to as ‘deep linking’, I don’t think I fully i understood what is intended. If an article is cited via a link, it would seem to me that you would link to the article and not to the entire web site. My thinking is this, just as an example: PC World has an article whatever, do you just link to PC World or to the page that has the whatever article on it?

Everything else on the web site appeared to be self explanatory and didn’t pose any questions in my mind. I did have a thought about how digg and other sites like it, who allow postings of content from all over the Internet, deal with any of these concerns. Though from reading the article further that comments seem to belong to the writer and if something is misquoted or copyrighted would seem to fall back on the writer of the comments.

What is your opinion? Should bloggers be held to the same accountability as professional writers or should they be granted more freedom of expression with less accountability?

Comments welcome.

Link to the entire article is found here.

[tags]blogger, laws. important, writers, [/tags]