27-09-2012 05:36 British Prime Minister David Cameron's appearance on Late Show with David Letterman is making waves back at home, after Cameron struggled in Letterman's surprise British history quiz. (Sept. 27)
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2012) Federal law ought to play a stronger role in regulating social networking sites by allowing users to determine what happens to their "digital afterlives," says a recently published paper by a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law.
Allowing social networking sites to set their own policies regarding the content associated with the accounts of deceased users does not adequately protect individual and collective interests, especially with people spending an increasing part of their lives online using social networking sites, says Jason Mazzone, a professor of law.
"Virtually no law regulates what happens to a person's online existence after his or her death," he said. "This is true even though individuals have privacy and copyright interests in materials they post to social networking sites."
Mazzone says in the absence of legal regulation, social networking sites are unlikely to adopt user-friendly policies for the disposition of copyright materials from the accounts of the deceased.
"The current situation is that there's very little law involved," said Mazzone, the Lynn H. Murray Faculty Scholar at Illinois. "Social networking sites determine on their own what, if anything, to do with a deceased user's account and the materials the user posted to the site. And their policies are not likely to reflect the collective interests that exist with respect to copyright law. It's a little bit like letting the bank decide what to do with your money after you die."
According to the paper, a federal statute could impose some requirements upon social networking sites to give users a degree of control over what happens to their accounts.
"You only want the federal government involved if there's some failure on the part of the states," Mazzone said. "But it would be very difficult for any particular state to set up a legal regime that would adequately regulate Facebook, which not only operates all across the U.S. but also all over the world. Some states have enacted legislation in an effort to protect their own citizens, but it's not at all clear how it would affect Facebook as a whole.
"In order for this type of law to be effective, we have to turn to the federal government."
There are also broader societal interests for preserving content for historical purposes, said Mazzone, the author of "Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law," published by Stanford University Press in 2011.
"It's becoming increasingly common for people to have digital assets, and some of them do actually have value," he said. "Not only are such sites repositories of intellectual property, they also are important to family members and friends. Historians of the future will likely depend upon digital archives to reconstruct the past, which creates a real problem, particularly in an age when we don't leave diaries, and, increasingly, people don't write books."
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Federal law needed to safeguard 'digital afterlives', expert argues
26-09-2012 11:52 Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he has a vision of a new world order that would be absent of the "hegemony of arrogance." (Sept. 26)
Published: Sept. 26, 2012 at 4:19 PM
CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Federal laws are needed to regulate social networking sites to give users the right to determine what happens to their "digital afterlives," a U.S. expert says.
Jason Mazzone, a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law, says allowing social networking sites to set policy regarding the content of accounts of deceased users does not adequately protect individual and collective interests, especially with people spending an increasing part of their lives online using social networking sites.
"Virtually no law regulates what happens to a person's online existence after his or her death," he said in a university release Wednesday. "This is true even though individuals have privacy and copyright interests in materials they post to social networking sites.
"Social networking sites determine on their own what, if anything, to do with a deceased user's account and the materials the user posted to the site.
"It's a little bit like letting the bank decide what to do with your money after you die."
A federal statute could impose some requirements on social networking sites to give users a degree of control over what happens to their accounts, he said.
"It's really pretty astonishing that there is no way for individual users to say, 'When I die, this is what happens to my account,'" he said. "Instead, it comes under the control of Facebook."
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Protection of 'digital afterlives' needed?
By Ryan Holmes, contributor
FORTUNE -- "Overall, the higher education system is failing to prepare students with the needed digital and social skill set in any meaningful way," says Dr. William Ward of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. "Higher education, like business, needs a culture shift."
Ward teaches COM 400, Social Media U Need 2 Know, and COM 600, Social Media Theory and Practice at Syracuse. His offerings are among only a handful of credit-bearing social media courses offered at leading universities today. For Ward, who goes by the handle @DR4WARD on Twitter and has nearly 10,000 followers, the imperative for more courses is clear. "Students with social media certification are getting better jobs and internships," he says. "Those who harness social communications are in high demand and have an advantage."
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The numbers back him up. While U.S. unemployment hovers around 8%, job postings requiring social media skills rose 87% from 2011 to 2012, topping 13,000 in one month alone earlier this year. Among Fortune 500 companies, 73% now have company Twitter accounts and 66% have Facebook Pages (FB). Corporate America is racing to apply social tools to everything from building customer relationships to connecting teams of employees around the world. Analysts estimate that $1.3 trillion in value stands to be unlocked by new social technologies.
But while businesses are hungry to tap social media, they lack the expertise to do so. Among 2,100 companies surveyed by Harvard Business Review, a meagre 12% of those using social media feel they use it effectively. The result is an exceptional demand for social media professionals who can boost the bottom line. "Social communication done well increases productivity, saves money and time, and improves engagement and satisfaction," Ward says. "[It's] a part of a larger culture shift changing how work gets done."
Higher ed, however, has been painfully slow to step up and fill the knowledge gap. While many universities use social media to recruit students -- Harvard alone has 1.6 million fans on Facebook-- few have brought it into the classroom itself. When courses on social media are offered, they tend to be stand-alones or electives rather than integrated into a larger curriculum. "Digital and social skills can be applied across majors and discipline, not just in a social media class," Ward says. "Faculty must change how they research, learn, communicate, and collaborate and model this behavior in all their classes and for their students."
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At Syracuse, Ward's students are already "social natives," having grown up with Twitter and Facebook. But his courses like COM 400, Social Media U Need 2 Know, elevate social networking to cold, hard science, with an emphasis on practical business applications and measuring return on investment. Assignments include 20 weekly tweets and posts, tracked with a dedicated class hashtag. Influence meters like Klout measure reach and effectiveness of messages. Meanwhile, class lectures and online seminars and videos dissect how to cultivate a following on Twitter, LinkedIn (LNKD) and Google+ (GOOG).
Other elite universities have started to follow this lead. NYU, Columbia and the University of Washington, among others, have introduced extensive undergraduate coursework on social networking, marketing and learning. Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School offer social media marketing courses. New England College even offers a comprehensive social media MBA. "I think because it's such a specialized field, you couldn't just give two courses and say, 'Here you go,'" explains New England College dean of admissions Diane Raymond, defending social media education in a recent U.S. News report. "There [are] just too many trends, too many elements."
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Universities are failing at teaching social media