Defamation liability issues on student blogs (I)

Reported today in the papers as well as Reuters (linked here) that schools are coming down on students for posting defamatory remarks about their teachers, coaches and principals. It is reported as well that the age range of these offenders span from secondary school to junior college (13-18 year olds). Most of the offending remarks were found not at forums but in blogs and surprisingly, not a one off occurrence.

I have two issues to comment on this series of news reports about such a growing problem with student blogs.

First - are these student venting evidence of a bigger issue about general student angst regarding their schooling environment? Here are some questions I feel needs to be asked.

Are these cases the proverbial tip of the iceberg and those caught are merely those who have been not eloquent enough to post their thoughts in a more cohesive and considered manner?

Are those who had made careful and balanced record on their blogs of what has been happening in school have been overlooked by the news media and authorities?

OR are these cases evidence of how the youth of today taken their online freedom by the throat to a level where they feel that as students, they immune to being prosecuted for their misdemeanours online? Have their education failed them in some way to allow them to believe that they have a right to do or say what ever comes to mind regardless of what or whose rights they breach?

I have no answers to these questions - to which I must openly admit that I am no expert on nor have any empirical evidence to give any answer. However, I certainly hope that these questions will be raised before the authorities before the growing school violence amongst young children, the hate speech against teachers and schools and racist hate speech becomes more than mere online behavioural research topics.

The second issue I would like to raise is legal in implication. Should schools merely punish the students by demanding the removal of the offending posts or should schools and teachers take legal action by taking the children to court for having published seriously defamatory remarks affecting the good name and reputation of school staff? More on this on my next post.

Yahoo- Singapore schools punish cheeky student bloggers

Is Google Print the beginning of the Copyright Revolution?

About a year ago, I had shared my thoughts with a group of diverse professionals at the poolside of the conference hotel, my wild crystal ball predictions I had about the future of copyright.

Ever since I begun my research of tech law, copyright has been challenged from all angles. It’s obvious even to a layman that of all the laws dealing with property, the one that has the most difficulty being kept as protectable property is Copyright.

I used a dramatic description - the French Revolution - for what I see may happen to copyright. As in the French Revolution where the common people rose up against the rich and royalty - the content poor of today could rise up against the content rich. Not just because they are content rich but because they had exploited the content poor for too long.

Content owners will continue to push the boundaries of their claimed rights and Prof Lawrence Lessig has an anecdote to illustrate (taken from his blog):

"Property law since time immemorial had held that your land reached from the ground to the heavens. Then airplanes were invented — a technology oblivious to this ancient law. A couple of farmers sued to enforce their ancient rights — insisting airplanes can’t fly over land without their permission. And thus the Supreme Court had to decide whether this ancient law — much older than the law of copyright — should prevail over this new technology. The Supreme Court’s answer was perfectly clear: Absolutely not. “Common sense revolts at the idea,” Justice Douglas wrote. And with that sentence, hundreds of years of property law was gone, and the world was a much wealthier place."

So, it would appear that Copyright needs to be adapted to the challenges of modern technology or face being made irrelevant or worse, a revolution from the content poor.

Has the content poor of the world today reached that point for a cyber revolution of the law of copyright? Well, some of today's events seem to point that way. For example, the growing number of users downloading MP3 music despite the retaliation by content owners in the US prosecuting hundreds from a cross section of society. This is being replicated all over the world. Oddly enough, despite the widespread knowledge that downloading copyrighted music, millions continue to do it regardless.

Now with the giant Google is challenging book authors and publishers’ rights of copyright by digitising books found in several university libraries (see previous post here), is this the beginning of the cyber copyright revolution or the adaptation of it to new technology?

Watch this space for updates on the Google Print suit.

Googled Books II - Writers Guild to Sue Google

Techweb reports that several writers have commenced a class action suit against Google for Copyright breach of their works. Their main complaint is that Google has failed to obtain their permission for the the digitising of their books. The basis of the action is that Google is intending to digitally copy copyrighted works for commercial purposes without permission or license from the legal owners of the works.

Apparently the Google project is to digitise books from the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford and the New York Public Library. According to Google the project will ultimately provide a searchable catalog of all books in all languages. In its own defence, Google is making the argument that their project is for the greater good. Also, they claim that any copyright owner can request to have their books excluded from the digitising project. The law however enshrine the rule that copyright owners have he right to make copies and anyone making copies must acquire permission from the owners first.

According to Techweb, Google however is not without a defence. In the US, there was a case in 2003 - Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp., where it was held that displaying thumbnail images of a protected is not a breach but fair use. Similarly that case can substantiate Google's claim that only selective pages of digitised books will be made available online for users to view and read.

In my view, Kelly v Arriba does not provide Google with a rock solid defence. In that case, the defendant created thumbnails and retained only thumbnails - a minature of the originals and they do not have the full detail of the original. As long as they do not retain nor use the full version of the images, they did not commit any breach. Google however, intends to digitise complete books and retain copies of these books in its database. It is inconsequential that only a few pages is made available online to the public. The fact that they physically copy whole books and digitise them is a clear breach of the rights accorded to copyright owners.

Having said that, it would be wonderful to see very rare works made available for the world to see, read and enjoy. This is yet another case of how new technologies challenges the rights accorded by old laws that needs structural change to balance the needs of authors and creators and public interest.

TechWeb News Writers Guild Confident In Suing Google

Is technology making us smarter or dumber?

In a series of very interesting articles, CNET reports on how technology has affected the human brain and its development in comparison to our ancestors. The age old question answered by scientists and experts conclude that the brain today is highly adaptive and is measurably able to do higher level cognitive processes than those just a generation ago – apparently just because of the internet.

Also, the use of calculators and the internet has radically changed our notion of what is intelligence to function in the world we live in despite a concern that these technologies itself do make us wonder if we have grown less capable to calculate and remember facts.

I am not so sure whether I agree with the experts. For instance, just ponder for a little the implications of this bizarre and telling quote from CNET:

"It's true we don't remember anything anymore, but we don't need to."

This is according to Hawkins, the co-founder of Palm Computing and author of a book called "On Intelligence."

Intelligence in the Internet age CNET News.com
From ape to 'Homo digitas'? CNET News.com
Are we getting smarter or dumber? CNET News.com

Googled Books I: Will Google be to books as Napster was to music?

Google is currently developing an ambitious new service to provide users access to its growing digital library of books. See Google's Books in Print Search

Google is also reportedly going to scan all kinds of books to make both copyrighted as well as public domain books available online. For many supporters of the project, Google's new Digital Books Library will be a boon for out of print and rare books.

However, many authors and publishers are very concerned that the new service will mean the loss of revenue as well the beginning of the end of printed books. See IT AsiaOne - Google to Put Copyright Laws to the Test

Will this development become a new Copyright threat to books as Napster was to music? Unlikely. Napster was a peer to peer solution that allowed uncontrolled copying and distribution of copyrighted music. Google Print is a search engine that will help users locate books, quotations and reference material to information inside books and much of the material though digitised will not be readily available for the public to download.

So, fortunately for the publishing industry Google is planning to only make selective pages downloadable and freely available for books that are protected by Copyright. This would as they hope - be in compliance with the Fair Use provisions of the US Copyright Law. The problem is, new technology threats to old ways of creating revenue - no matter how small or unlikely - is invariably seen by content owners and developers as serious threat until proven otherwise.

For those books where protection has since lapsed, whole books will be made both searchable and downloadable. For these books even publishers now will be hard put to squeeze a margin of profit by reprints.

Why Singaporean Youths Are Not Afraid of Anti-Piracy Laws

Last month there was an arrest of three men in Singapore for illegally downloading copyrighted music. A recent survey taken in Singapore along the busy Orchard Road reflected the youth's belief that they will not be caught because of their naive belief that the probability of being caught is too small to be concern about it - and because 'everybody is doing it'. This is despite the many prosecutions all over the world including Singapore. Youths use Kazaa, BitTorrent and Baidu to get their pirated music. Surprisingly, some believe these technologies allow them to remain anonymous and free from prosecution.

So is their lack of concern for the Anti Piracy law grounded in reality? While it is true that the copyrighted owners will not be likely to prosecute all the offenders of MP3 downloads, betting on the belief that they will not be caught is too much a gamble to expect that someone else instead will be caught.

I personally think that it is of a grave concern - that for some reason, the youth in Singapore appears that they believe that can do whatever they wish online regardless of the law. Just consider the general response to the survey reported here and the growing problem of open racism online.

Somehow, for a reputedly highly IT skilled community and society, its quite hard to fathom how many actually believe that somehow - they can never be caught. Go figure.

IT AsiaOne - News - Who's afraid of anti-piracy laws?

NEWS - Microsoft Word Hidden Data Security Flaw Uncovered

CNET reports that a software builder reported the danger of hidden data lurking in word documents that can cause embarrassment or loss. See the report here: Software maker exposes hidden data | CNET News.com

The problem is the hidden metadata in documents. Apparently there are 25 types of hidden metadata that can found in Microsoft documents. The risk escalates when the documents get passed around, the bigger the risk becomes."

A very public case was when British Prime Minister Tony Blair was embarrassed last year, when documents meant to bolster his cause for intervention in Iraq contained metadata with information that contradicted the official position. This year is there was yet another case where the British government was again embarassed by a letter from Home Secretary Charles Clarke. see Word blunder exposes U.K. split on terrorism | CNET News.com

Unfortunately, the solution appears to establish proper document management policies with the knowledge of these software flaws and the need to employ third party solutions - until Microsoft resolves the flaw.

NEWS - What? Yet another IE flaw?

Windows XP Service Pack 2 was meant to reduce user's security risk. It did address many of the immediate threats of that day but not much longer. CNET yesterday reported that a newly discovered flaw in IE could enable a remote attack on systems running Windows XP with Service Pack 2. I would advise all readers to vigilantly keep checking their Windows Update as well as updating antivirus and antispyware. Lets all hope that MS will spare no effort in resolving security issues for WinXP users while they are working on the release of their new Windows Vista.

IE flaw puts Windows XP SP2 at risk | CNET News.com

Online Sedition III: Singapore's PM Lee emphasises zero tolerance for racism AND Sedition Act to be strengthened

The PM's comments just reported hours ago on Channelnewsasia clarified that the three charged for sedition was intended to reflect the government's position on racist language here in Singapore. I am gratified to read as well that CNA reported that the PM also feels as I do that it is necessary to teach the young here about the importance of multi-racialism.

Further, CNA also reports that the Government intends to review the Sedition Act to determine whether it needs to be strengthened or updated to deal with the modern electronic communication technologies as well as updating the sanctions

PM Lee says racist remarks will not be tolerated in multi-racial SingaporeChannelnewsasia.com

Government reviewing Sedition Act to deter racial, religious hatred incitement Channelnewsasia.com

Online Sedition II: New Accused Charged

When I predicted that the recent arrest and charge of two men in Singapore for sedition would be the start of the regulators expecting for a more balanced and composed speech online I had not expected that the next arrest would only be within days (see "COMMENT: Is Free Speech Online Become Too Costly for Society?").

The latest arrest is of a 17 year old who posted racist remarks on his blog. It is noteworthy that the ages of these three range from 17 to 27. This generation never saw the race riots in the early post war years. Unfortunately for them, they never experience the pain of intolerance. In the past few years the goodwill of tolerance and racial harmony built over the past few decades seemed to have been swept away by a new generation of bigots and chauvinists. Or are they?

I suspect that while some are – most are angst ridden and a frustrated lot. Hopefully the authorities in their sincere efforts to keep racial harmony, they will realise that racism is a symptom of greater problems. They need to deal with the illness and not the symptom of the illness. It is commonly known that racism begins when people are beset with failures and frustrations.

Also, there needs to be an establishment of a strong educational programme of about the benefits and needs of racial tolerance. Most critically, the new generation needs to know that free speech is not the right to say anything one likes without concern or care. It is about the right to speak without fear. However, the right to free speech is tempered by each individual’s legal rights as well.

Third person charged with sedition for racist remarks on blog site :Channelnewsasia.com

NEWS - Spam Control Bill Revisited now includes Mobile Spams

InforComm Development Authority (IDA) and the Attorney General's Chambers just released a white paper seeking public views on inclusion of Mobile Spams under the proposed Spam Control Bill. The Bill was first made public in 2004 May and has until now been in the shadows from the public. With the second round announcement it appears that the authorities have firmed their resolve to somehow regulate the ever growing problem of unwanted electronic spam being received by the public.

The bill also seeks the extension of the right to bring civil action against spammers by network providers to include parties and individuals that had suffered loss as a result of spam. The condition placed for the excercise of such rights is actual proof of loss. There is also the statutory damages provision where the court may award up to S$25 per spam (maximum up to S$1 million in total).

Public responses are being solicited and submission will be closed on 14th October 2005.

IDA & AGC Seek Second Round Views on Proposed Spam Control Bill for Singapore

COMMENT: Is Free Speech Online Become Too Costly for Society?

Contrary to how the rest of the world perceives Singaporeans today - conservative, straight laced, reserved and repressed - one need only to visit the Channelnewsasia forum pages (http://info.channelnewsasia.com/bb/index.php) to see how some Singaporeans exercise their rights of speech online.

So when today's Straits Times and Channelnewsasia.com reported that two men had been charged under the Sedition Act for having posted racist remarks on an online forum as well as a blog. It came as a surprise but not totally unpredicted. Channelnewsasia reported that there are already many racist blogs by Singaporeans. Will the arrest and charge bring about a chilling effect on these blogs and forums? Channelnewsasia.com reported that several prominent bloggers expects that it will.

With this case - and possibly others that follow - Singaporeans will learn that free speech is not a right to racist, sexist or defamatory speech. While being online creates an impression of anonymity, that perception is only an illusion. Unfortunately for these two bloggers, the absence of pervious efforts by the authorities to prosecute may have been mistaken as a hands-off policy for online speech.

Is this a mere one off case or the beginning of a more active and vigilant prosecution of online misdemeanours? What is the public opinion on this? Will bloggers be more circumspect with their postings?

While these questions will ultimately be answered in time, the immediate and positive outcome of these cases is that Singaporean bloggers and forumers will learn to be more circumspect of the rights of others.

Two bloggers charged under Sedition Act over racist remarks-Channelnewsasia.com

COMMENT: Another Outsourcing Risk - Data Theft

Cnet reported a case in India where a call centre worker was caught copying personal information about its customers onto a compact disc. The employer had British and American clients from various industries. The stolen data has been alleged to be made available for a price.

With businesses all around the world looking to reduce their cost of operations, outsourcing has become an effective means to lower cost. India has been an established call centre for all kinds of industries. Unfortunately, with the loss of private data through theft by employees of these outsourcing companies, businesses stand to loose in the long term. How such risk can be avoided or managed is critical for the outsourcing market in India. Until that trust can be restored, businesses must be looking at how such risk can damage its business.
Indian call center worker arrested CNET News.com
Indian call center under suspicion CNET News.com