Social Media in Law: A 2011 Report
Messages we write down have been an integral part of the law since the beginning. The value of our digital trail is increasing daily. How we manage our online communications is key to steering clear of the newly formed legal pitfalls of the web.
This series of posts will focus on North America and will draw mostly on existing case law, some anecdotes and a few cases that cannot be discussed in detail due to existing NDAs. For the most part I will reference cases I have been following and how they are slowly drawing the lines in the sand around labour law, privacy and rights.
As the year progresses I will continue to keep you updated on the effects of social media on litigation both civil and criminal. I am currently working with some people who are experiencing the heavy cost of divorce in the age of digital connections by ghost writing their story. I will also explore existing intellectual property cases, discuss defamation and cover labour law in detail. I'll root out where the lines are and where they are moving by drawing on cases that are happening now.
Today I'll be giving an overview of Defamation, Uttering Threats, Insurance, Divorce and Labour.
Defamation: Anonymity Unveiled
In Vancouver in late 2010 a case regarding a beauty salon where they had to file court orders with both Craigslist and Shaw, an ISP, to find out who their anonymous online defamers were. Both Craigslist (handed over the IP addresses) and Shaw (handed over the customers names associated with those IP addresses) have complied with those court orders. -Anecdotal at this time.
Whether it's magicians in Vancouver, Courtney Love or two organizations trying to help dogs the age of internet defamation and the resulting lawsuits is upon us. Here's a great overview from a lawyer about how defamation works in the law. Remember legal claims of online defamation are on the rise.
Uttering Threats, Digitally
In January of 2010 Paul Chambers, 26, was supposed to fly out of Robin Hood Airport in the UK when his flight was canceled. He went to Twitter to vent his frustration about the closure of the local airport. He was headed to see his internet girlfriend in a tropical location when ash from a volcano in Iceland postponed his trip.
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| The tweet that cost $6000 |
Uttering threats on Facebook is dangerous business as one Montreal man found out in the Fall of 2010. He also showed that when uttering threats online it's best not to be doing other illegal things. In 2008 a Canadian student was charged with uttering threats for posts he made on an internet forum threatening violence against his school.
The lesson? Threats on social networks must be treated as legitimate by authorities. Hide your tweets by making them private or don't tweet threats. Most of the answers to how to avoid the pitfalls above is 'common sense'. The challenge is that many people aren't aware of those things. Worth studying.
Insurance Fraud?
Insurance lawyers are accessing Facebook photos more tenaciously than is imaginable and have been since before 2008. One of the most famous cases in Canada started in November 2009 and involves Nathalie Blanchard who had been out for a year-and-a-half on paid long-term sick leave (disability) following a diagnosis of severe depression. Then her insurance company, Manulife, got their hands on some photos she had posted to Facebook. The photos show her smiling while at a birthday party in a strip club and on a vacation on the beach.
Manulife took these photos to mean that she was no longer depressed and able to work. Blanchard responded by saying that she was 'happy in the moment, but before and after I have the same problems'. The video below runs through the whole story if you'd like more details and some honest opinion.
How did they see those photos when her profile settings were totally private? She had made them her profile pictures something that Facebook lets anyone on the internet see. More information: Depressed woman loses benefits -November 2009. Depressed woman fails first try to recoup benefits -December 2009. Related: Manulife posted $1.8 billion in profits for 2010.
According to the Telegraph using social networks could eventually raise your home insurance premiums in the UK by as much as 10%. This is because people who use these networks are seen as 'more at risk' to be broken into due to their posts. For example, if you checkin to FourSquare you most likely aren't at home.
I have searched for more stories about insurance, law and social media but haven't found much more. Although there is even more cases like this out there. Where are they? Please Tweet @KempEdmonds or leave the links in the comments, thanks!
Divorce in the Social AgeI have searched for more stories about insurance, law and social media but haven't found much more. Although there is even more cases like this out there. Where are they? Please Tweet @KempEdmonds or leave the links in the comments, thanks!
Facebook is a divorce lawyer's new best friend
Facebook doesn't cause divorce- spouses do
Divorce attorneys catching cheaters
Wife betrayed on Facebook: "Terrible beyond belief."
Facebook and divorce airing the dirty laundry
Most of the existing stories about the use of Facebook in divorce is around catching cheaters. This is a strong investigative use for lawyers in a bitter divorce battle. Divorce and separation online is a touchy and challenging new dynamic in our social structure. I can't begin to imagine factoring in children. When I dig more into divorce I am going to try and talk about it from a few different angles.
While I am covering divorce later on in this series it will be about the human story of creating intertwined lives and social networks and then going through a divorce. What do you do? Unfriend everyone? Don't post anything about your feelings during the divorce? There are no easy answers to this new challenge that faces those who are divorced in the age of Facebook.
Part two will be coming soon!
Meme of the Year Part II: What's in a Meme?
If you haven't read "Meme of the Year Part I: What's a Meme?" reading it first will help in understanding the origins of memes and what they mean to human communication. This year has been all about video memes. Video memes have aided in bringing memes to the mainstream, although the word isn't in common usage... yet. Internet memes are viral, but viral videos aren't necessarily memes.
Let's go back... Way back to 2007. Facebook only had 20 million users worldwide Sometimes it's the act of watching the particular video that is the meme. Today Rick Astley is famous because people are tricked into watching this. The action of tricking someone into watching the video was "Rick Rolling". Here is the origins story of this famous meme from 2007:
Have you ever wondered about the origins of FAIL, Owned or All Your Base are Belong to Us? Well wonder no longer. The following video from my favourite series on modern memes "Know Your Meme" will explain it all. Following this video are the two winners of Meme of the Year...
The first internet meme of the year for 2010 was Double Rainbow. Let's call it our first runner up. Now there are two winners: one from the Organic section and one from the Inorganic or manufactured section. Let's take a look at the Organic winner first...
This meme of the year was produced professionally by a news crew, but it was the video's star Antoine Dodson who has shot to stardom. Bed Intruder was introduced to me on the annual fishing trip I take with my brothers and my father to a fishing lodge where there is no cell coverage, television or internet. My younger brother kept telling to "Hide yer kids, hide yer wife, hide your husband they be raping everybody up in here." These is half of the phrase that made Antoine Dodson and international star. Below is the original news clip:
This video has 7.3+ million views while the second video of the meme based on the song created by remixing his statement has 68+ million views. Antoine Dodson went on to team up with two guys simple known as Autotune The News who took his voice and made a short 20 second sample to get his approval and gauge interest. This was quickly followed by a full length song which has gone on to sell 500+ copies. Here is the song:
Let's go back... Way back to 2007. Facebook only had 20 million users worldwide Sometimes it's the act of watching the particular video that is the meme. Today Rick Astley is famous because people are tricked into watching this. The action of tricking someone into watching the video was "Rick Rolling". Here is the origins story of this famous meme from 2007:
Have you ever wondered about the origins of FAIL, Owned or All Your Base are Belong to Us? Well wonder no longer. The following video from my favourite series on modern memes "Know Your Meme" will explain it all. Following this video are the two winners of Meme of the Year...
This meme of the year was produced professionally by a news crew, but it was the video's star Antoine Dodson who has shot to stardom. Bed Intruder was introduced to me on the annual fishing trip I take with my brothers and my father to a fishing lodge where there is no cell coverage, television or internet. My younger brother kept telling to "Hide yer kids, hide yer wife, hide your husband they be raping everybody up in here." These is half of the phrase that made Antoine Dodson and international star. Below is the original news clip:
This video has 7.3+ million views while the second video of the meme based on the song created by remixing his statement has 68+ million views. Antoine Dodson went on to team up with two guys simple known as Autotune The News who took his voice and made a short 20 second sample to get his approval and gauge interest. This was quickly followed by a full length song which has gone on to sell 500+ copies. Here is the song:
Antoine used his cut of the money for the song (50%) to buy his mom a new home among other things. He has been offered a reality TV show, been asked to appear at parties for $20K and appeared on television programs all over the world and the internet. The local news and a guy 'climbing in your window snatching your people up' could lead to such fame. His 15 minutes were topped when he one the first award for Meme of the Year. Here is his acceptance speech.
The third meme is Old Spice guy. Old Spice guy falls into the category of a marketing meme created and then given validation by consumer response, think Super Bowl ads. BUD-WEIS-ER. I will let his video speak for itself and end with an infographic regarding how much of an impact the multi-million dollar social media and television campaign made.
Til next time!
Meme of the Year Part I: What's a Meme?
Memes are something that have been around since the beginnings of communication. Although they were only recently conceived and defined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomenon.
A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. It identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The word is a blend of "gene" and the Greek word mimetismos meaning "something imitated".
The name comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information. Early memes were likely used to communicate the presence of predators or the need for food among early life on Earth. Examples of memes include melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and urban legends.
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| by: Christopher Harrison used under Creative Commons. |
Indeed the two rainbows can be seen to have spread across the sky and represent a rare occurrence. Although not something totally unheard of (as seen by the photo above from a search on Flickr). The video below tells the story of how Jimmy Kimmel's viewing and tweeting of the video helped it go from 800 views having being online for 6 months to a whopping 23 million views in the next 6 months. On January 9th the original video will have been online for one year.
What made this video go viral was a combination of the man's reaction and the discovery of the video by the Jimmy Kimmel Show. What makes this video's rise to fame most interesting is that until it was picked up and tweeted by Jimmy Kimmel it was unheard of. What happened over the next few months few expected and none could have predicted...
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| note the flatline initially |
The Double Rainbow guy (affectionately known as "Bear" or "HungryBear9562" his YouTube channel name) has since appeared on television for interviews and a commercial for one windows product and another. He also has his own iPhone App complete with an ad; a lark which for a dollar will overlay a double rainbow on any photo you take. This meme birthed so many different products, but most of all showed that for a video on the web to truly hit the big time it needs help from the mainstream media.
This is my personal favourite riff on the meme partly because I have a soft spot for 'sandwiches' made entirely from breaded deep fried chicken, bacon and cheese but also because someone replicated the original video in such great juxtaposition to fast food:
See you soon for Part II of Meme of the year.
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