I’ve deliberately tried to avoid using certain words in this post about the rejection of a Privacy complaint by the Press Complaints Commission. (This is not link bait and I don’t want to attract unwelcome traffic alongside often more sobering content.)

Suffice to say, a young lady posted some perhaps misguided pics on her Bebo page in 2006 which had since become widely circulated online.  Earlier this year Loaded magazine offered a £500 reward in a stunt to find the girl in the photo, causing her to complain the article had intruded on her privacy. The Guardian says:

The commission did sympathise with the woman, and accepted that the tastefulness of the article was questionable… but didn’t think it possible to censure the magazine for commenting on material that had already had such wide circulation, and which had already been contextualised in the same way.

Ouch. As we covered in our free eBook UGC and the Law there are no Privacy laws in the UK but how does a situation like this look under the European Convention on Human Rights? Any ideas?

It’s easy to say that the girl was foolish in the first place and Loaded shouldn’t be penalised over all the other sites which have used the pictures for years. But, I’d argue that it’s not unreasonable to want to complain about an “official” media outlet reviving this in the UK vs. the [un]reality of chasing down 100s of smaller sites and ISPs all over the world.

By trying to publicly identify the girl nearly four years on were Loaded encouraging readers to breach her privacy as it stands today?

I’m also intrigued, as the pictures were posted in 2006 and on youth network Bebo, what was the complainants age at the time of posting the pictures? Does accountability change based on age and experience? Should it?

Image: hyku

Last night we launched our new eBook ‘”UGC and the law”.

Research we conducted with over 200 senior level executives found that brands may be falling foul of laws online with 81% rating their knowledge as only limited to non-existence when it comes to the laws regulating their social media activity.

So we decided  that for the first time someone could pull together all the disparate information and guidance out there and put it into one handy reference eBook.

The eBook is available free to download from

The book was launched at a glittering event with a few beers at our Central London office. We had a fantastic range of speakers come along:

• Danvers Baillieu (Winston & Strawn and Bootlaw.com)
• John Robinson (NHS Choices)
• Jon Bishop (Gumtree)
• Molly Flatt (WOM UK)
• Debbie Towersey (HR2HR Solutions)

All of the above contributed to the guide in addition to Dominic Campbell (FutureGov) and Agnes Nairn – a huge thank you to all who helped over the past few weeks.

User-generated content and the law

I attempted to use Cover It Live to capture some of the chat, which you can see displayed below.

Is your social media activity breaking the law?

They make some interesting points about:

• Reading site T&Cs: Facebook’s broad licence terms are still ambiguous
• Use of trademarks
• Monitoring sites where your brand may be used and checking for appropriate usage

We would also advise caution when reacting to any type of copyright, trademark or intellectual property infringement. Sometimes a heavy-handed legal approach in the first instance can escalate the issue into a PR disaster when a polite conversation could’ve resolved the issue with a, sometimes unknowing, siteowner or brand fan.

You need to choose your battles – your online reputation in how you react to these sorts of issues is just as important as the original brand infringement you might be trying to resolve.

Not sure how to proceed? You’re welcome to give us a call for some informal advice.

Image: SOCIALisBETTER

Ron Livingston, who is married to Rosemarie DeWitt, has cited libel, invasion of privacy, and using his name without permission. The lawsuit states that each time the information is amended, the ‘hacker’ almost immediately changes the information again. According to TMZ, Ron Livingston also believes the defendant created fake Facebook profile pages for both himself and Lee Dennison, linking the pages as ‘in a relationship’.

However Livingston’s claims may be affected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As Mashable points out ‘given that the online detractor is anonymous, the case would likely require Wikipedia to reveal the poster’s identity to move forward.’

There was an interesting precedent set in August of this year when Google was forced, by the Manhattan Supreme Court, to reveal the identity of an offensive blogger as part of a defamation suit.

[Image: xkcd]