Check back every Friday for my favourite links from the world of Public Relations.

This week has been a busy one for me. I’m in the full swing of the busy season at work, which means working to 9 pm until the end of June, and I’ve just started PR 201 and 202 at Ryerson. The courses and instructors are great, I’m really looking forward to next week’s classes. As a side effect, I’ve been reading textbooks instead of digging deep on PR blogs, so this week’s Link Love Friday is going to be brief.

There’s an excellent post from Todd Defren over on PR Squared, entitled “What I Wish My New Employee Knew.” It’s a good read for anyone, like myself, that is looking to get into PR or is just starting out.

It gets better! At the bottom of the post there are a handful of links that are all helpful pointers for the PR proselyte, all the way up to the PR pros. I particularly recommend 5 ways not to get an entry-level job in PR and Reasons a Student Should Get Involved in Social Media from Chris Clarke and Joe Thornley. I may be a little bit bias towards the content on those posts, but it’s still good advice.

These posts all connect to the Teaching PR blog, which I’ve only just discovered, and is an excellent resource.

Feel free to post your own favourite links from the week in the comments below. Enjoy the links, and have a great weekend!

An interesting tidbit about social media from a legal perspective has emerged from the tragic death of a young woman early in 2008. She was considered a minor, as are the suspects, so a publication ban on specific names and details was ordered by the court. However, friends of hers were posting on Facebook sharing their grief, honouring her memory, and naming the alleged offenders as well as the victim. In doing so, had they unwittingly breached the gag order, a criminal offence?

The Star article about the Facebook posting can be found here.

Is posting or publishing on Facebook (or other social media) a violation of the court ordered publication ban? Can we define Facebook, or a blog, as a publication?

So when thinking about social media and gag orders, what it really comes down to is the definition. How does one define “publication?” I think it is certainly possible to make a case for Facebook being a publication, and I can see a judge agreeing. I’m no lawyer though, so let’s stick to the facts.

The law in question in the recent case (mentioned in the Star article above) is the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Here are the relevant citations:

Identity of offender not to be published

110. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a young person, or any other information related to a young person, if it would identify the young person as a young person dealt with under this Act.

Identity of victim or witness not to be published

111. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a child or young person, or any other information related to a child or a young person, if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.

Right off the bat, you can see how the individual that posts on Facebook can be held liable, if you consider posting to Facebook as publishing. But can Facebook itself be held liable?

I checked out the Facebook Terms of Service to see if they could be on the hook if someone were to break a gag order. I will confess, I signed up to Facebook with little more than a casual glance at its extensive TOS. Once reviewing it, the most applicable passage that I found is its User Content section. Here’s an excerpt:

You are solely responsible for the photos, profiles (including your name, image, and likeness), messages, notes, text, information, music, video, advertisements, listings, and other content that you upload, publish or display (hereinafter, “post”) on or through the Service or the Site, or transmit to or share with other users (collectively the “User Content”).

On the legal side, here is their Indemnity section, in its entirety:

You agree to indemnify and hold the Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and each of their directors, officers, agents, contractors, partners and employees, harmless from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney’s fees, arising out of or in connection with any User Content, any Third Party Applications, Software or Content you post or share on or through the Site (including through the Share Service), your use of the Service or the Site, your conduct in connection with the Service or the Site or with other users of the Service or the Site, or any violation of this Agreement or of any law or the rights of any third party.

The wording from Facebook is, naturally, concrete evidence against their involvement with what you may post. I had initially believed that Facebook claimed all ownership to everything posted on their site, but upon further TOS review I have found that to be incorrect. Here’s the blurb, also contained in the User Content section:

Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

Facebook does claim essentially unlimited use of what you post as their right, as part of the conditions of using their service, but they maintain that it is your property.

So those are the black and white facts, but where it always gets interesting is in the grey area. Does Facebook constitute a “publication?” Is it considered private or public? Are the users “publishing” details of a case, or just discussing it amongst their friends? Can it, or should it, be held liable for what is said, written or posted through it? Is it liable through its complicit distribution of what is said? If such questions were brought to the court, it would certainly be a landmark case not only for Facebook, but for internet publications as a whole.

I encourage you to post your thoughts, legal evidence or precedents, or just general rants in the comments below! Check out this link to Wise Law Blog, with a post on the same topic.

Check back every Friday for my favourite links from the world of Public Relations.

It’s 2008 and we’re back with Link Love Fridays! Spreading the love to my favourite PR posts for the week. If you missed these then I definitely recommend checking them out.

The first link comes to us from Sean Moffitt of Buzz Canuck. He’s just started a series that will list a word-of-mouth blog for every day of the year. On Wednesday he dropped January’s edition, and it is a monster. 31 great blogs, and let’s just say my reader is going to need a new folder. Many of them I already follow (the Canadian blogs especially,) but there are numerous that I’m new to, thanks Sean!

PR measurement is a area that I find very interesting, and I still have a lot learn about the field. If you’re in a similar frame of mind, I recommend this post by Kami Huyse of Communication Overtones. There’s a lot of great info with links to books, articles, PR measurement services, online tools and even an interview with measurement guru Katie Paine. There is a wealth of information here, it’s a post definitely worth bookmarking.

Lastly, the ultimate in desk decorations has arrived. Seth Godin now has an action figure. If only this had come out before Christmas!

That wraps it up for this week, thanks for reading! Have you got a great link you’d like to share? Post it in the comments!

I just learned about a new application that totally blew my mind. It’s called Qik. Through it you can use your mobile phone’s camcorder function to post videos directly to the internet, or stream them on your blog. Apparently you can link it up with your Twitter as well, which opens up a world of possibilities for constant video communication.

Basically, to me, this is the equivalent of having a television broadcasting network in your pocket. At any point you can pull out your celly, film something, and have it broadcast to anyone who cares to view it, live. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, filmed by the Scobleizer.

The potential seems immense.  Not because it couldn’t be done before, but because of the sheer ease and mobility of the idea. Speeches or lectures could be delivered from anywhere, at any time, while maintaining some of their live impact. Amateur news broadcasts can go “live from the scene” with ease. I don’t even need to mention the massive potential for bootleggers of concerts and movies this may have.

My only critique is that it seems to be only one way. You can broadcast straight from your cell phone to the internet, but I don’t know how much you can receive on your cell phone from other users. You can probably watch completed videos, but can you watch a live stream? I can only speculate because my current cell phone isn’t compatible with Qik, and even if it was, I don’t have an unlimited data plan from my provider. Just another reason why Canadian providers need to really step up it with their mobile options, and I’m not alone when thinking so.

At the very least, it’s a great way store videos taken by your phone, effectively eliminating the storage constraints of your standard phone. If you’ve got Qik on your phone, let me know about your experiences with it in the comments section. Hopefully they’ll add some Samsung compatibility soon!

I apologize for the lack of posting in recent weeks, it’s been a very hectic, and very excellent Christmas season. If you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, anything else, or just had a few days off, I hope you had a great time.

So here’s a cheesy topic to blog about: New Year’s Resolutions. I usually don’t make them, if I plan on doing or achieving something I find the best time to start is always right away. But this year I have a blog to take care of! So here are my 2008 blogging resolutions:

1. To blog more frequently, and regularly -  I hope to post a few times a week, and to maintain regular features such as Link Love Fridays, and maybe Top Ten Tuesdays. I just came up with that last one, but it sounds like a good idea.
2. To attend a PR event, and blog about it – I haven’t done this yet, and I always appreciate when others do. It’s a great read for people who couldn’t make the event but wanted to, and for people that attended and would like to discuss it.
3. To upgrade the design and features of PR for the People – Right now this blog is looking pretty much the same as it did when I signed up. I’m trying to find a nice pic to put on the top bar, possibly related to the topic and/or theme of the blog. I would also like to add some fun widgets, but currently this is a free webpage, and java is disabled. I definitely need to upgrade to a pay server, one that I can use the wordpress engine on. If you have any suggestions, or recommendations, please let me know!

So those are my resolutions for 2008 here on PR for the People. They’re published now, so I’ve got to keep them. What are yours? Feel free to post in the comments, or link to your own blog with your ideas. Thanks for reading in 2007, hope to see you again in 2008!