Tag: internet

Combating Cyberbullying – updated

| 1 Comment
| Cyberlaw, Irish Society

Spunout.ie logo, via their siteFurther to my post on fighting anonymity with anonymity: open justice and cyberbullying and the tragedies of Amanda Todd, Ciara Pugsley, and Erin Gallagher, RTÉ news reports that a national youth organisation, SpunOut.ie, has issued guidelines on how to combat cyber and text-bullying:

If you are experiencing this form of bullying, it’s vital you don’t suffer in silence. Also, if you have witnessed cyberbullying, it’s important that you take action and address the problem.

Read the Office for Internet Safety’s Guide to cyberbullying, which includes information on when and how to contact service providers if you are being cyberbullied.

Two key pieces of advice from the SpunOut.ie page:

  • Don’t reply to the messages, but don’t delete them either: save them as proof.
  • Don’t stay quiet about the bullying: tell someone you can trust and who can help you and give you support.
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YouTube, Facebook, and the responsibilities of intermediary gatekeepers

| 4 Comments
| Censorship, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, judges, law school

YouTube logo, via YouTubeIn my previous post, I argued that, as a matter of principle, the controversial American anti-Islamic video should not be censored. The most obvious form of censorship comes from government action, such as legislation banning speech, but that does not arise in this case. Less obvious, but no less insidious, was the White House request to Google to re-consider whether the video breached YouTube rules. This was not a formal ban, and Google declined to take the video down in the US, but it did block access to it in in Egypt and Libya. This raises two important questions about the structure of free speech. First, in the online world, where most of us access the internet through a range of intermediaries, government censorship does not necessarily need to target the disfavoured speech; it need only target the intermediaries. Very few US companies would feel able to decline a request like that from the White House, and Google are to be commended for standing firm in those circumstances. Second, these intermediaries now have a great deal of practical power over online expression – not only can they be co-opted by government as agents of state censorship, but they also have the capacity to act as censors in their own rights, as Google did in their unilateral action to block access in the Middle East.…

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Another Top 10 Online Free Speech Resources

| 1 Comment
| Freedom of Expression, law school

Censorship jpg via ReadWriteWebAs regular readers of this blog will know, the right to freedom of expression – broadly interpreted – is one of my main areas of research and teaching. Many of my favourite internet resources relating to free speech can be seen in my blogroll and the list of badges in the sidebars on the right. Via Kate Sutherland on Twitter, I see that Kurt Hopkins has a great post on ReadWriteWeb about his Top 10 Online Free Speech Resources. In particular, he listed institutional resources which are accessible to anyone, provide original news or analysis, and are frequently updated. It’s a great idea; indeed, it’s such a good idea,

I’m going to copy it, and – without overlapping Kurt’s choices – list another top 10 online free speech resources below the jump (in broadly alphabetical order): …

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Technology, students and universities

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| Digital Rights, Irish Society, Phones in class, Universities

Cover of 'The Tyrrany of Email' via AmazonThere are some – related – articles in today’s Irish Independent on themes which have featured on this blog. A report published yesterday by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) shows that the number of students going to college has hit a record high (the Irish Times ran the same story under the headline that there are more students than farmers in Ireland) and that courses in science and computing are now back in favour.

However, technology is not necessarily an uncritically good thing, as is shown by the headline to another story: I’m so addicted to email, Facebook and Twitter, I have to hide it from my wife …. In that piece, reviewing The tyranny of email by John Freeman, James Delingpole owns up to his own addiction to communications technology. Of course, he is not the only person whose life is being ruined by email. Moreover, a similar addiction drives the use of mobile phones and laptops in class as increasingly popular displacement activities.

Finally, and a little more seriously, the print edition – but not, so far as I can see, the online edition (though it may in time be published in the archives of the Education section or, perhaps, of the Technology sections) – has a really interesting piece on distance learning at third level, discussing the Open University and Hibernia College.…

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Libel tourism, online defamation and multiple publication

| 3 Comments
| Defamation, Libel tourism, libel tourism, Multiple publication

In the UK, the Ministry for Justice has just begun a consultation process seeking views on the “multiple publication rule” at common law under which each publication of defamatory material can form the basis of a new defamation claim, and in particular on the effects of this rule in relation to online archives. If this rule is reformed, then a major plank of the libel tourism phenomenon, by which London has become the libel capital of the Western world and home to libel actions that have little to do with its jurisdiction, will quite properly have been removed (see BBC | ComputerWorld | Greenslade | Guardian | Index on Censorship Free Speech blog | Information Overlord | OUT.law | Slaw | TechWatch | Times Online).

The multiple publication rule was established in Duke of Brunswick v Harmer (1849) 14 QB 185 (already discussed on this blog), reaffirmed in Loutchansky v Times Newspapers [2002] QB 783, [2001] EWCA Civ 1805 (05 December 2001), and upheld by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Times Newspapers Ltd (Nos 1 and 2) v the United Kingdom Applications 3002/03 and 23676/03, [2009] ECHR 451 (10 March 2009).…

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Who will keep the keepers? II

| 5 Comments
| Cyberlaw, Digital Rights

It never rains but it pours. Having recently blogged about about Emily Laidlaw’s article on search engine accountability, I’ve just come across the similarly important article by Oren Bracha and Frank Pasquale on Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness, and Accountability in the Law of Search 93 Cornell Law Review 1149 (2008) (pdf). They robustly argue that general-purpose search engines are better characterized not as media outlets (contrast Finklestein) but as common carriers (quite a common argument in the online context), that they should therefore come under common law duties that govern public utilities (appropriately adapted), and that – by analogy with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – a new regulatory framework (the Federal Search Commission (FSC) of the title) should be established. They conclude:

Search engines, in whatever form they might assume, will continue to be a major part of our informational environment in the foreseeable future. The normative concerns associated with their unique position of power are here to stay. A properly designed regulatory approach may do much to ameliorate these concerns. Courts should not end the debate over the contours of such an approach before it begins.

Hear, hear! However, if online search requires an FSC in the US, then it will require equivalents in other jurisdictions as well.…

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Who will keep the keepers?

| 5 Comments
| Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Juvenal

Cover of the IJLITomment on this blog that the Roman poet Juvenal asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who will watch the watchers?). Emily B Laidlaw, in her fascinating article, Private Power, Public Interest: An Examination of Search Engine Accountability, raises the parallel question of who will keep the keepers? In the vast new information age bequeathed to us by the internet and the world wide web, gatekeepers are those who enable – and control – our access to that information. At present, they are all private entities, and even if they wish to do no evil, there is no reason why they should actually do some good, let alone act in the public interest. Laidlaw’s analysis therefore focuses on the important issue, who will keep the (gate)keepers; here’s the abstract:

As information becomes a critical commodity in modern society, the issue is raised whether the entities that manage access to information, that are tools for public discourse and democracy, should be accountable to the public. The Internet has transformed how we communicate, and search engines have emerged as managers of information, organizing and categorizing content in a coherent, accessible manner thereby shaping the Internet user’s experience.

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