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Social Media in the workplace – wide-ranging overview now available

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In a recent blog post regarding Sam Moore‘s claim for publicity rights in a fictional film, I provided a general update on publicity rights law because such laws are now being used as part of the social media agreement between the public and such companies as Google and Facebook.

The discussion about continuing evolution of publicity rights doctrine is part of a larger review I have written on the role of social media across the spectrum of media law.  That working paper, Social Media in the Workplace – From Constitutional to Intellectual Property Rights is now available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2348779 or for download.

Social media has become a dominant force in the landscape of modern communications. From political uprisings in the Middle East to labor disputes in Washington State, social media has fundamentally disrupted the way in which communications take place. As noted constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky explained, “technology has changed and so has First Amendment doctrine and American culture. It now is much more clearly established that there is a strong presumption against government regulation of speech based on its content.” Just as the government must tolerate more speech, the same thing is true about employers. Chemerinsky further notes that “for better or worse, profanities are more a part of everyday discourse.” Abrasive speech may be coarse from the word choice or may more readily upbraid the objects of the speech. Whether foul or abusive, such speech now pervades commercial and social media.

Social media fundamentally upends the notion of the traditional commercial media environment and with that, it reverses the established legal doctrine from constitutional assumptions to everyday rules involving copyright, defamation, and unfair labor practice. For employers, these rules are particularly important to navigate because they effect the manner in which the companies communicate with the public, how employees communicate with each other, and how laws are restructuring the employee-employer relationship. The transformation is taking place with changing policies affecting trade secrets, confidential information, copyrighted material, aggregated data, trademarks, publicity rights, and endorsements.

This article highlights the nature of the changes as they present the new paradigm shift and provides some guidance on how to prepare policies for the transitional model. The article tracks the rise of the many-to-many model of social media, its effect on commercial speech, intellectual property, and labor law. The article concludes with suggestions on employment policies geared to managing these changes in the modern workplace.

There will be a CLE program sponsored by the Dayton Intellectual Property Law Association on Friday November 8, 2013 featuring these materials.


Filed under: Civil Rights, Copyright, Disruptive Innovation, Entertainment Law, General, Informatics, Privacy, Publicity Rights, Publishing, Social Media, Technology Tagged: business innovation, Copyright, Erwin Chemerinsky, Facebook, Informatics, intellectual property, Middle East, NKU, Personality rights, publicity, Samuel David Moore, Social Media, technology, Twitter

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