The legal responsibility of a community manager

04 June 2022 | Communication

Proper management of social networks could be the road to success for any company, but irresponsibility in this management can trigger a definitive closure.

Therefore, a person who serves as a community manager must be observant, forward-thinking, and very responsible about every aspect of the management of networks, from language to audiovisual resources for content creation. And above all, it is their responsibility to learn about copyright.

Knowing about this legal branch will avoid serious problems for both the professionals and the company they represent.

What are copyrights and what is their relationship with a community manager’s work?

Copyright recognizes the creator of an artistic work and protects it morally and patrimonially. That is, everyone who has created something has intellectual property over his work.

The familiarity with which we relate to the Internet, as well as its vast information and resources, may appear that everything that circulates on the Internet can be used freely, but this is not the case. All works are copyrighted. So, to make responsible use of the resources for the creation of content on social networks or website, it is necessary to know the legal conditions of the works to be used, that is, the legal license under which they are governed.

License types that every community manager should know about

Public domain: The work is free of copyright because it has already expired. For a work to pass into the public domain it is necessary that a certain time passes from the death of the creator. This varies according to each country but ranges from 70 to 100 years.
Copyright: The work may not be used freely, and the author must give authorization for its use. Usually, the right of use must be paid.
Copyleft: The Creative Commons organization is a great ally of the community managers because it created a license that protects both the creator and those who use other people’s works. It aims to set a balance that benefits both parties and offers six types of licences that creators can acquire according to their interests.

Tips for managing social networks in a responsible and legal way

Ask your company for resources to buy photographs and images, or to produce them. It is the responsibility of companies to provide the people responsible for managing their social networks with the necessary resources to carry out their work.
Use secure banks that offer graphical resources under Creative Commons licenses or in the public domain, such as Flickr Commons.
If photographs where people’s faces appear (as clients or staff) are used, the correct thing to do is to ask permission to use their image –even if the photographs belong to the company¬–. The law on the right to one’s own image requires this.

Managing the social networks of a company in a responsible way guarantees a professional and reliable image of whoever works as a community manager and the company itself.