Building a Public Policy Community of “Citizen Experts” Might Require Translation (Tech President)
Discusses a project that the Obama administration is now engaged in to launch an “ExpertNet.”

Dealing with the Disaster of Online Critique
(Tech President)
Learn pointers from the Air Force’s “Blog Assessment Strategy” for dealing with criticism online.

Twitter’s Too Much for the Senate (Tech President)
Is the modern media environment contributing to the radicalizing of government?

N.A.A.C.P. Backtracks on Official Accused of Bias
(The New York Times)
Controversy over truncated video posting raises issues of transparency when blogging.

This is my first post here, so I’m still getting the lay of the land as to what kinds of topics will interest K Street readers. I am an avid blog reader and definitely consider myself a “content curator”; Here’s the kind of stuff I read and write about on my blog.

So I thought I’d do two things. First, I want point you to a few PR/Public Affairs/Advocacy related blog posts I’ve found very interesting recently – and ask you to tell me if these float your boat or not. Check ‘em out.

1. HARO Gets Serious About Crowd Sourced Journalism (Convince and Convert)

I assume you know about HARO (Help a Reporter out), the email service started by Peter Shankman that matches reporters to sources. I used it for a while until I found the overload of irrelevant emails to be too much to handle – but they have finally got their act together and put together a nice looking site where it looks like you will be able to self-select what inquiries you get (as a source, obviously). Is this kind of sort-of tech news of interest?

2. Integrating Communication: PR-Driven Social Media (CopyWrite, Ink.)

The author proposes a model for marrying traditional PR duties and social media tasks. Check out the nice debate in the comments to the post. I have plenty of ideas about this (and the changing role of PR in general) – but I won’t say what side I fall on unless you tell me you want to talk about it!

3. 2010 Public Relations: Looking at the Past to Succeed in the Future (Conversation Agent)

Along the same lines, this is a fantastic guest post by Beth Harte on how to create “truly social public relations”. This is obviously a very hot topic (the Is PR Dead? debate)- let me know if you’re thinking about these kind of issues.

4. Matrix: Breakdown of Advocacy Marketing (Jeremiah Owyang)

Here’s a chart by Jeremiah Owyang where he dissects the layers involved in advocacy marketing – meaning, to him, activities “focused on the goal of spreading, and word of mouth, and viral”. What do you think?

5. Getting Started: Brands and Cause Marketing (Lauren Fernandez)

I’m putting this one in really to highlight a really great blog by a rising star in the PR world. Lauren is also heavily involved in the #u30pro (PR professionals under 30) community on Twitter and I think her crew has a lot of interesting stuff to say about PR and social media.

So please do tell me if these are the kinds of topics/analysis you’d want to read about from me!

The second thing I’d like to do is ask you to introduce yourselves in the comments. I’m new here, I’ve just walked into the cocktail party, heading to the bar first for a Makers and Coke (no lime), maybe a little nervous… someone please say hi and tell me what you’re all about! Then we’ll see if we can’t find some great connections to be made and conversations to be had…

Question: Can a 501c3 private foundation or public charity put its tax-exempt status at risk by hosting a social media platform?  Specifically, could the advocacy and electioneering activities of individuals and groups using that social media platform be treated as the direct action – or facilitation of direct action – by that foundation of activities inconsistent with its tax exempt 501(c)(3) status?

Tax exempt organizations under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code are expressly prohibited in engaging in any of these activities (as described by the IRS in its “Exemption Requirements”): “it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.”

Would the electioneering or advocacy conduct of third party users of an exempt organization’s social media platform be deemed the conduct of that exempt organization?

As of this date, there is no specific IRS guidance on the question, nor directly applicable tax court or other caselaw of which I am aware.  In 2000, the IRS announced an intention to explore the implications for nonprofits of new media activities, and issued a formal Request for Comments.  The IRS posed a series of questions for public comment, including this one:

“To what extent are statements made by subscribers to a forum, such as a listserv or newsgroup, attributable to an exempt organization that maintains the forum?  Does attribution vary depending on the level of participation of the exempt organization in maintaining the forum (e.g., if the organization moderates discussion, acts as editor, etc.)?”

The Request for Comments did not, however, result in new rules or guidance at that time or in the ensuing years.  The IRS has issued guidelines relevant to online political activities of exempt organizations, including rules issued last summer addressing the practice of directing users to and linking to political action sites, see this site.  These Rules govern direct activities of nonprofit organizations, however, and do not obviously address the open questions of what activities will be “attributed” to an organization, as raised in the 2000 Request for Comments.

An analogous situation governs copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and defamation, obscenity and other activities under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) Section 230.

Section 512 of the DMCA provides a safe harbor from copyright infringement for “Internet Service Providers” (ISPs), and Section 230 of the CDA provides a broad immunity from liability for a “provider or user of interactive computer service” (ICS).  In both cases, a host of a website is protected from liability for the actions of third party users.  The host cannot knowingly or willfully facilitate the unlawful conduct of the third party user, but the cases where a host’s immunity has been pierced consistently involved aggressively proactive interactivity with users, and even moderate editorial and supervisory oversight has been permitted.

Since the IRS issued its Request for Comment there has been little commentary on the subject, although in 2001 the Alliance for Justice argued for extending the DMCA copyright analogy to nonprofits social media activities.

Without further guidance from the IRS or applicable caselaw or even helpful commentary, the Alliance for Justice “best practices” still make a good deal of sense.  In particular, the site’s Terms of Use are important for establishing the ground rules for use of social media, including prohibitions on activities that would not be permitted by the hosting organization if performed directly, as well as the rights (but not necessarily the obligations) of the host to monitor and remove content.

In other words:

(1) Generally, hosting – in and of itself – should not be deemed equivalent to direct action by the hosting website.

(2) Terms of Use should clearly state limitations and restrictions on activities in using the site that would not be permitted by the hosting organization if performed directly, such as electioneering and advocacy.

(3) A hosting organization’s role should be limited only to periodic monitoring and not active editing, auditing or supervision, and definitely not screening submissions – unless intending to directly edit submissions prior to posting, which for various reasons may not desirable or practical.

(4) A hosting organization need be responsive to alerting to complaints about violations of Terms of Use and enforcement of policies, including enforcing “take down” policies similar to the same kinds of rules under the Digital Millennial Copyright Act.

Cross-posted at Mirsky & Kong PLLC.