If you are an intellectual property lawyer and the phrase “social network” does not send chills up your spine, you aren’t paying attention. The fundamental currency among users of social networking services is shared information; the greater the perceived value of the information, the higher the status of the user. (Notably, the fundamental currency among service providers and their actual clients—largely advertisers or advertising vehicles—is still plain old dollars; users of social networking services are the product, not the customer.) Thus, social networks are an intellectual property minefield.
The content that a user posts to a social networking site may or may not belong to that user; it may contain elements that belong to others; it may contain confidential, defamatory or otherwise actionable material; it may generate a thread of comments (all of which may belong to their respective authors); it may reference or link to material that belongs to others; and the expectation—indeed the hope—is that all of this content, with its attendant complex web of rights, will be widely shared and republished to as many other users as possible.
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