Are You A Blogger? Here is How To Avoid Criminal Liability When Posting or Reposting on Your Blog.

A number of bloggers ask us this question: do we need to register a business name or incorporate a company in order to blog? The answer is no. In fact, we would actively encourage new bloggers NOT to register a business name or incorporate a company when they are just starting off. This is because blogging is not an easy profession, there are millions of bloggers out there, all fighting to grab readers to their blogs, and to succeed at it, you need to post blogs consistently, and write engaging articles that people want to read consistently.

If you can’t do those 2 things then your blog will die…quickly.

You should only register a business name or incorporate a company when you are ready to treat blogging as a serious business and not a hobby, and you can only answer that question when you have done it consistently for a period of time. Once you decide to register a business name or incorporate a company, there are certain statutory things you need to begin doing in order not to break the law for example charging and collecting VAT on behalf of the Government, filing annual returns etc.

So in essence what we are saying is this – treat is as a hobby until you are sure you can make the commitment to make a great business out of it. Once you reach that point, then registering a business or incorporating a company is very much advisable. If you have already been blogging consistently for a while now, then you should seriously consider setting up an appropriate business structure.

AVOIDING CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LIABILITY

Now whether you are a hobby blogger or business blogger, this section is very important for you. As the saying goes- ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. This is very much so in blogging.

As a blogger, when you put up a post on your blog, you can potentially have some liability for what is posted, and so you need to be aware of your responsibilities in this regard.

The main area of liability in blogging is from defamation and copyright infringment. Generally, defamation is a false statement of fact that is harmful to someone’s reputation, and published as a result of negligence or malice. Defamation is made up of libel and slander, however, since we are speaking about blogging, then the relevant type of defamation is libel.

Libel in the context of blogging is when you publish something false about someone on your blog and this damages the person’s reputation. Once you publish something incorrect on your blog, whether or not you are the one who made the statement, you are potentially liable for defamation.

If your blog is one that allows comments, you should know that you could still be held liable for defamation even if the false statement wasn’t in your blog post, but only in the comments section and not even written by you! The law doesn’t care about who said it unfortunately, the law is generally only concerned with three things:

• Is it false?
• Has the person’s reputation been damaged?
• Who published it? (Since it is your blog, you are the publisher.)

Now we are not saying this to alarm any bloggers, but the reality is, that is the law.

All Nigerian bloggers should be aware of the Cybercrime Act 2015, which amongst other things creates offences like knowingly sending a message (which in our context can be a blog) which is ‘…false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another…is liable on conviction to a fine of not more than N7m or imprisonment for a term of not more than 3 years or to both such fine and imprisonment..’ (Section 24)

Recently, a number of Nigerian bloggers have been arrested for criminal defamation including Ojo Emmanuel for allegedly defaming the wife of the Ogun State Governor; Seun Olokuteyi for allegedly defaming the Fidelity Bank CEO; Chris Uwandu for reposting on Facebook the alleged defamation by Seun Olokuteyi; and Desmond Chima for allegedly defaming the UBA MD and Genevive Nnaji.

Yup…that’s a lot of arrests! So, how can you protect yourself? Well, you can protect yourself in these ways:

• Always fact check and reference. If you are blogging about people and institutions, and you suspect that what you are saying would be unfavourable, then you should make doubly sure that the facts are correct, and reference how you received the information.

• Be careful about what you re-blog. If you are reposting an original post which appeared on another blog, you can’t really absolve yourself from liability by saying you weren’t the one who wrote the original blog post. As we’ve discussed above, the issue is publishing. If you repost it, then you have published it on your blog as well.

• Have a Terms & Conditions page, which specifically has disclaimers, which protects you from some (not all) liability, for example that ‘users are liable for any comments they post on a blog, and your blog will not be held liable’ (or something to that effect). At LawPàdí we have a free template that bloggers can use for their Terms and Conditions page, you can access it for free here.

• Moderate your comments to ensure that no false, offensive or threatening comment slips through on to your blog. Also, do not allow anonymous comments. By doing this and by moderating comments it would help in creating a potential defence, should you face any legal action. Also, you should consider implementing a comment system that uses social media login; to try to make sure people are using their real identities to post comments.