Insider's Insurance

Blogging is a wonderful way to share your ideas and thoughts with other people. The medium has taken off like wild fire with millions of enthusiastic people writing to their heart’s content on the internet. Despite such enormous energy being expended on this activity, very little thought or concern has been given to the potential harm one could bring upon themselves with their written words. The exposure people may be opening themselves up to, unknowingly, is called, “libel.” Libel is defined as a false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person’s (or entity’s) reputation.

With respect to your insurance coverage, you may have coverage for the damages you cause through your writing if you have what is called, a personal injury endorsement on your Homeowners policy. This endorsement provides coverage for a lawsuit brought on by unintentional libel, defamation of character, or slander. Other exposures that could present a danger to well meaning bloggers include copyright infringement or plagiarism. In order to cover these exposures, coverage would have to be obtained through a commercial insurance policy or a specialized policy such as those sold by The Media Bloggers Association. If you would like to learn more about this important topic please contact me at Ericson Insurance Advisors.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.