By Melissa Pachikara

It’s a common piece of advice that many Internet journalists have heeded: Don’t edit third-party content on your site because the practice will make you liable for the content.

The problem with that advice is that it is out of date.

Legal experts at the Online News Association Conference in Washington, D.C., told session attendees Friday that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives them immunity from liability in that instance.

Moderator Jonathan D. Hart of Dow Lohnes PLLC said this was one of the main points the panel hoped to get across to the audience.

The original advice had been spread after a 1995 case called Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy. In that case, Prodigy was found liable for libelous content submitted by a third-party user.

But in 1996, the Communications Decency Act was passed, and Section 230 of it protected the blocking or screening of offensive material with the following broad language: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

While Web sites do enjoy this broad immunity, they also have some responsibilities related to third-party content under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

One important responsibility is to designate a specific agent who would receive notices of copyright infringement. Contact information for these agents should be prominently displayed on the Web sites.

Taking these steps limits a site's liability for copyrighted material submitted by a third-party.

When a notice is received, "what you need to do is expeditiously take down copyrighted information," said Barbara Wall, vice president and associate general counsel for Gannett Co.

The notice should then go to the original content provider. That person may then provide a counter-notice to demonstrate that they are authorized to use the copyrighted material.

The panel cautioned that there are specific steps Web sites need to follow after the notice is sent or received and that more information can be found on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site.

This law also protects media organizations’ content from reuse of its copyrighted materials by sites such as YouTube. But panelists said that because of the sheer volume of content on the Web, media companies need to maintain a sense of perspective about whether they give notice to other Web sites that use their copyrighted materials.

Andy Mar, counsel for Microsoft Corporation’s MSN Media Network, said it was important to pick your battles. At the same time, Cliff Sloan, publisher of Slate Magazine and vice president, business affairs and general counsel at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, said that you also need to show reasonable efforts to protect a copyright because a pattern of making no effort could be used against you in later litigation.

The discussion also included comments about personal blogs used by reporters. While having a blog that’s edited as part of your job is not much cause for concern, personal blogs unrelated to work could cause problems. A similar concern was raised about the content on personal pages on sites like MySpace.

Gannett’s Wall had advice for young reporters who contend that they have a constitutional right of free speech that protects their personal use of such sites. “Yes, you do,” Wall said. “But you don’t have a constitutional right to a job.”

The panelists also addressed international law, which still remains unsettled and problematic at times.

“Geography and national borders keep things sane,” said Kenneth Richieri, general counsel of The New York Times Company, but the Internet “obliterates those borders.”

He talked about a situation in which a story published on the Times Web site would violate British law if published in Britain. The New York Times blocked access to the story from viewers whose IP numbers identified them as located in Britain.

While blocking access that way was compared to throwing a rock into the ocean, Richieri said that the Times’ blocking of those addresses left it in as good a legal position as it could possibly be.