Online Social Business Communities & Mitigating Legal Risks They Can Bring Up

A online discussion started by a community manager for his company’s internal social network brought out an issue which is critical to the smooth operation of online communities both internal and external. One of the users on their internal business website network copied and pasted an article off another site possibly without realizing it’s a copyright violation. When you build a community for the business and have a number of different users actively adding to content, linking and posting, there are almost always a risk for copyright infringement in some form or the other. Even if not deliberate, not everyone will be as aware about copyright and licensing issues as the next person and without moderation of every single post and activity before publishing (which is not viable for most) it’s always possible some copyright violation happens on the site which can snowball into messy situation with the owners of the content.

It’s clear that it may not be possible to be 100% sure this doesn’t happen so the objective is always to mitigate the risk and ensure that everyone is aware of it. This is done through educating users and putting in a policy. While most people may not directly be involved with plagiarism, something as simple as adding a picture for a blog post they published and later discovering that picture was copyrighted is enough to start a legal course of action.

It’s important to create a comprehensive policy which explains things like use of images. video, the need to use quotes and references while using extracts of other peoples work and it’s just as important to be able to explain this is simple terms. If every user that signs up is made aware of the policy for using the community or network the risk of them doing any of this (at least knowingly) is reduced. However, it’s good to be able to consider and account for what can be done should this still happen. What do you do if there is still content posted which is a violation of policy or copyrights?

This is where administrative capabilities come in handy. If your community platform has good administrative capabilities it gives you the option to step in and moderate content and user activities where it’s really required. If the software being used doesn’t give you moderation abilities, it can put you in a tough spot knowing something needs to be done but doesn’t let you take any action before someone else does.

A number of platforms put together by assembling various open source software components don’t offer this level of administration which is then really not suitable in a business situation where you, as a business, are held more accountable for everything published online. It’s like having the most comprehensive policy in place and not having the ability to implement it. The ability to moderate the community and content is the last line of defense against issues caused by such copyright violations.

Here are a few things that can be done to reduce the risk of copyright and content duplication:

• Develop a user policy which is easy to understand and ensure all users have read the policy on sign up
• Re-enforce the policy through offline training for internal networks where location is not an issue and by discussing it on the community where it’s not possible to educate users offline
• Have a community manager or moderator who is assigned the responsibility of scanning the activity and content on the site daily and raising a red flag for any violation of the policy
• Contact users who have violated policy through internal messaging or email so they understand what the risks of their actions are.
• Moderate and take down any copyrighted content as soon as possible as a last resort

With a good user policy, constant awareness and the ability to implement the policy and keep the site clean and free from legal issues unwanted trouble can be kept at bay.

Related posts:

1. The Licensing Cost Reduction Angle Of Social Software Communities For Business
2. How An Online Community Can Add Credibility To Your Business Website
3. Online Communities – Migration And Control Over The Community Database

Social Networking Business Portals Are Just As Much About Consolidation As They Are About Collaboration

While business websites and portals created using social networking software platforms are known to have the “community” and “collaboration” as key objectives, there is one other “C” which is just as important and objective to keep in mind. “Consolidation“.  Consolidation of people like customers, prospective customers, and employees towards a single online location rather than have them scattered across different websites. Then you have consolidation of communication channels which again is usually done through several websites and applications. Lastly, consolidation of content which is just as good a reason to consider social networking-like business portals.

The amount of content that we absorb, go through and refer to online is immense as compared what it was even three to four years ago. The social media and social networking revolution has fueled this increase in content by making it easier for users to publish their own content, communicate online, create discussions, develop learning material, and search through previous communications and so on. In a single working day, the need to access content online could drive you through several websites and applications. From having a conversation on Skype with a colleague, logging into your business email account to check mail, then moving over to LinkedIn to check for messages and new group discussions, to posting project updates on an online project management software before checking your favorite blogs for new posts. From there you could login to PollDaddy.com to set up a poll which would help you get some research stats for a an online meeting with your customers on WebEx but you also need to check your local company intranet to confirm if there is any update on the team meeting which may end up clashing with the customer meeting. It’s too much content spread across too many places!  INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

Sure you have RSS readers and single sign on tools, but there is only so much they can do. There are just too many different websites to login to and keep a tab on in our every day working lives. All these websites enable better communication, provide good content or improve collaboration — but the fact that they are at different locations online brings about some level of inefficiency with it. It’s tedious. When a business uses a social networking or social business collaboration software platform to build a more unified portal it can help do away with some of these inefficiencies. Perhaps it’s not possible to avoid visiting multiple sites to get different things done.  A business portal that combines forums, wikis, groups, blogs, instant messaging, polls, membership, and single sign on to “bring them under one roof” helps to consolidate the people we need to interact with, the communication channels we need,  as well as the content we need to access during the working day — and that can make life easier. Believe me, it does.

Social networking for business portals are just as much about consolidating everything into a single location as it is about collaboration and communication.

Related posts:

1. Business Collaboration Application Platforms
2. Social Business Collaboration Software
3. ROI on Social Business Collaboration