Every second, on average, 6,000 tweets are published on Twitter – that’s 500 million tweets per day. Of these millions of tweeters, how many are considering defamation law when they retweet? Probably not many. And yet, one click of a button could land you into legal trouble. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently had the honour to be invited to give a guest lecture to the Copyright Society of Australia in Sydney. My talk focussed on how the Internet has evolved over the past twenty years, leading to a severe imbalance between Internet platforms and the creative community because of the abuse and misuse of safe harbours, and how recent events have put the big platforms in the spotlight—indeed in the crosshairs of the public and politicians. Read the rest of this entry »
Hardly a week goes by without news of another data breach at a large corporation affecting millions, most recently Facebook. In 2016, the issue became political with evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election and the spectre of foreign control over public opinion. Read the rest of this entry »
When dealing with Google, it is good to bear in mind that their erasure policy is both erratic and random. The Right to be Forgotten seems to depend on the individual who is dealing with a request and whether they have had a good or bad day. There have been a number of odd – indeed, downright inconsistent decisions over the past six months which illustrate the problem. Learning on the job does not quite capture it. Read the rest of this entry »
The LSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission (T3) deals with the crisis in public information – aka “fake news”, Cambridge Analytica, election hacking, the crisis in journalism, filter bubbles, biased algorithms, ill-informed citizens and more. Read the rest of this entry »
A wide consensus has emerged that regulatory framework for platforms like Google and Facebook needs to change. Calls for action are coming from a range of different stakeholders in the UK, with proposed solutions varying in terms of models of regulation, and who should implement them. Read the rest of this entry »
This summer marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Theatres Act 1968, the legislation that freed the theatres from the censorious hand of the Lord Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household. Thereafter theatres needed to concern themselves only with the general laws governing speech. In addition they were granted a public good defence to obscenity and immunity from common law offences against public morality. Read the rest of this entry »
