Elon Musk’s US lawyers used some interesting arguments to defend their client from the accusation of libel. Musk used the term “pedo guy” in a Tweet after Vernon Unsworth had turned down an offer by Musk to build a submarine to save the trapped Thai football team. Musk did not name Unsworth but Unsworth claimed
Category: Twitter
Threat of libel on social media drops again
Great news for creators of social media: the threat of libel has dropped again. Users of social media “read” its content in a casual way and did not pause to reflect. This new ruling of the Supreme Court says that dictionary definitions of words and elaborate analysis cannot be applied to social media. A new
Win one, lose one in social media libel ruling by the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has made two important rulings covering twitter, Facebook and libel. They affect how large a group of viewers needs to be and what words mean on twitter. One is good for the claimant: the other is good for the defence. A woman published a tweet to her ex-husband’s new partner that he
“Don’t quote me…”
It’s very easy to underestimate the power of a quote. Quite apart from the value of the actual words, the fact that you are referring to a third-party always lends a little extra credibility to your message. It suggests you have researched your subject. That you have found other, respected or at least recognisable, supporters.
Never expect full freedom of speech
Don’t expect that we will ever have total freedom of speech in content. It is an object of libertarians. But unobtainable. On the eve of Leveson’s report next week keep this in mind. He will propose restrictions on the freedom of speech of the press. And many will criticism him for restricting freedom of speech.
Employer owns copyright in tweets, if done for work
Who owns the copyright to your Twitter content, if you are in employment? That’s the question we were asked this week. Employer owns it And the answer is: if you are tweeting for your company then the company owns it. Just as it owns the copyright in other content you generate. If you have a private
First Twitter libel in England
We’ve got the first libel case in England and Wales about Twitter. It involves cricket, allegations of cheating, New Zealand and an Indian cricket authority. So why here? Because the libel laws here are the most strict in any democracy. And the Tweet was read by between 35 to 95 people here. 24 words accuse
US Congress moves against “pirates”: Wikipedia protests
The US Congress is taking ”piracy” of US intellectual property seriously by proposing to attack the financial basis of foreign sites running copyright material without permission. Two acts are in Congress to let media owners force search engines to stop linking to “pirate” sites and stop US advertisers advertising. Wikipedia offline in protest The opposition
Law 1: Social network libertarians 0
The law may be slow because it is deliberate: but it gets there. Twitter may have seemed to be a bastion of private speech but a court order to Twitter from a California Court prompted by a UK case shows that it is not. A UK local council made Twitter reveal the details of a
Watched any good web lately?
More and more websites, blogs and networks are hosting their own video content (as opposed to pasting up YouTube links). You can see the appeal. It looks attractive, it proves that you’re up-to-date and “on-trend”, and is a very useful tool for certain applications. For example, to see a product review or demonstration, or enjoy a virtual