Consumer rights

In my last post I talked about the rights of publishers. In this post I want to talk about the rights consumers have.

There have been many cases of harassment, bullying and stalking done through websites. The consumers being stalked and harassed flagged content, sent e-mails to the publishers, reset their own privacy accounts, basically they did everything they could to stop what was going on.

This is called Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment. To get definitions and state law information about it go to http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/telecom/cyberstalking-and-cyberharassment-laws.aspx.

In the case of Cyberbulling the website http://cyberbullying.us/Bullying_and_Cyberbullying_Laws.pdf will give you state laws on it.

Sadly it is now common place in our technology ridden world to be bullied, stalked and harassed through the Internet and social media tools.

It is a victim's right to have the publishers help in any way possible when these situations occur.

Publishers need to decide where to draw the line when it comes to comments or other means of communicating on sites.

Consumers have the right to feel safe while they are on websites and social media sites. They have the right to ask publishers to help them if they are being attacked online. They have the right for the publishers to actually listen to their complaints.

They also have the right to drop their accounts and tell the publishers why they did it.

In the end when it comes to the Internet the rights of consumers and publishers can sometimes clash. It is up to both to decide what they want to do.

I would like to note that if you are being Cyberbullied, Harassed, or Stalked you can always file a police report with your local police. You can file as many as you want.