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Podcasters and Bloggers usually are not professional and corporate content producers with stables of lawyers who can review and render legal coverage for the authors and producers. Instead, bloggers, certainly, and podcasters to a lesser degree are individuals and small enterprises using blogs and podcasts to either pursue a passion, make a point or promote a niche product or service. Whether you podcast as a fan of technology featuring your favorite gadgets or a place to vent your political frustrations then you are potentially at risk where your reflections and opions are at odds with the feelings or official line of the companies and persons featured in your content. If any of those people are sufficiently irked then you could be sued. If it's little ol' you against a multi-billion dollar corporation -- well, you're sunk. Even if you are in the right you will probably loose and even if you don't you will be bankrupt by legal fees. That doesn't mean, though, that all of us need to cower and fear to embrace the otherwise democratic and level playing field of this new technological era, and you don't need to count on the ACLU or EFF to come to the rescue either. You can get liability insurance especially formulated to protect bloggers and podcasters, and for less than you might think. For a couple hundred bucks a year you can protect yourself and should you get sued, depending on the coverage of your policy, you should be able to count on your insurance company to come to your legal rescue.

This week I learned more about this danger and the protection offered with two pieces of online content. The first was a YouTube video from the YouTuber called LiberalViewer, who defended himself against the media giant Viacom, and won.

How the ACLU Got Viacom To Treat My YouTube Videos Fairly #1

How the ACLU Got Viacom To Treat My YouTube Videos Fairly #2

And then I got in my regular TWiL subscription a podcast about this subject, in depth.

TWiL 14: Blogger and Podcaster Liability