If you have a Web site, you’re a publisher; if you’re a publisher, you’re vulnerable

Kevin Fogarty
IT World

A senator from Oregon has threatened to block a copyright enforcement bill that would give U.S. law enforcement the right to shut down Web sites without trial or defense if it finds the central reason for the site is to distribute copyrighted information illegally.

Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.) calls the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, or COICA bill the “wrong medicine” for copyright infringement, partially because it includes enforcement measures like a sledge hammer, when ice tongs are more appropriate.

A similar bill would have killed Pandora, YouTube, and Amazon Music and a range of other sites that broke new ground in content distribution when they launched — ground slow-changing copyright laws and the distributors whose financial interest is in existing business models could not or would not respond to quickly enough.

This is another of those issues you might care about (or not) in your personal life, but that has no effect on your job.

Its only potential impact is on content creators, music or movie distributors and publishers.

Guess what? You’re a publisher.

Static or dynamic, brochureware or etailer, your Web site is every bit as much a publishing mechanism as the Web site for the New York Times or PirateBay.

And you already know you don’t always control who puts what up online. Worst case is the guy who was fired and escorted from the building because of images on a hard drive that had to be imaged and sealed as evidence if it ever went to court.

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