Insurance company widens liability cover to e-content

Insurance company Stuckey & Co unveiled a new liability package for electronic media, which Stuckey & Co identified as blogs, email & RSS Feeds. It had to come sooner or later. I guess given the amount of electronic information sent, posted and syndicated each day it was inevitable. And this was what exactly said in the press release:

Nearly every company distributes electronic content over the Internet. There are over 100 million daily video streams from YouTube.com alone, more than 60 million blogs being disseminated, more than 60 billion emails per day, and RSS feeds have reached nearly 275 million (so many that servers are experiencing denial of service attacks). Many of the companies who use these mechanisms to promote their products and services are unaware of the potential risks. In fact, they can be held liable for unwittingly publishing defamatory comments or content that infringes on copyrights or trademarks — even though they did not create the offending content. Technology companies like media companies, Internet service providers, technology companies, and even some general business companies are all at risk.[Source]

The five areas covered by the liability package are:

1. Defamation: Any form of defamation or other tort related to the
disparagement or harm to the reputation or character of any person or
organization, including: libel, slander, product disparagement, trade
libel, infliction of emotional distress, mental anguish, outrage,
outrageous conduct.

2. Right to privacy: Invasion, infringement or interference with the
right to privacy or publicity, including: false light, public
disclosure of private facts, intrusion and commercial appropriation of
a name, persona or likeness.

3. Plagiarism/Piracy: Plagiarism, piracy or the misappropriation or
unauthorized use of advertising ideas, advertising material, titles,
literary or artistic formats, styles or performances.

4. Copyright Infringement: infringement of copyright, domain name,
trademark, trade dress, title, slogan, service mark, service name.

5. Negligence: negligence with respect to the insured’s creation or
dissemination of electronic content.

[SOURCE]

According, to the press release the policy can be expanded to include first-party network operations security coverage.

This coverage gives an insured protection against unauthorized access, unauthorized use or a denial of service attack to the insured’s computer system.[Source]

Interesting bit of news. You could be facing a lawsuit through your RSS.