Content removal by social media companies. Is content removal influenced...

Content removal by social media companies

Solicitor Yair Cohen explains how content removal discrimination impacts valuable internet users

Russian data protection watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has claimed that despite repeated requests to delete harmful content, social media platforms, and particularly Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google are repeatedly refusing to comply. 

In the case of Twitter, for example, since 2015, more than 6,000 prohibited materials have not been removed by the site. 

After the implementation of measures to slow down the traffic of the social network, 490 materials remain unsalted. The average time to comply with the requirements for the removal of prohibited materials has been reduced from 129 to 8 days. 

 Eleven cases of censorship of Russian media and information resources have been identified, including Russia Today, Sputnik, RIA Novosti, as well as a number of accounts of Russian users and projects ("Leaders of Russia," Sputnik V vaccine account). Personal data processing (DD) is not localized. Ten protocols on administrative offences have been drawn up. To date, the courts have considered all protocols, the total amount of fines for not removing prohibited information is 27.9 million rubles. For non-compliance with the requirements of Russian data localization legislation - 4 million rubles.

Can social media companies cancel history?

Yair Cohen, social media lawyer, in an interview with RT News, explains how social media censorship works and why it is so dangerous to allow social media companies to continue regulate free speech.

What is the future of social media

 

Control over the most important communication tools for #startups is now at the hands of 5 internet giants. 

Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter may try to kick any serious competition out of business by collusion. Apple and Google may block access to their App Stores and Amazon may remove you from their servers. 

They would then send out clear signals to anyone who still does business with you that if they try to help your suffocating start-up survive, they would face a similar faith. There is no need for anyone to book a holiday this year to Italy. 

Sicily is here. Online, on your mobile phone, on you tablet. 5 internet giants acting like the gangsters where the only politics that matters is the politics of the mafia. Everything else is nothing but a heavy smoke screen. 

I remember the idealism of the early users of the internet. I remember Twitter mission statement which was or might still is “to give EVERYONE the power to create and share ideas and information instantly WITHOUT BARRIERS”. Forget nostalgia though. This is LinkedIn here. The social media platform for the forward thinkers. We need now to reflect on recent events and begin planning ahead. Everyone must do this. This exceptionally powerful and funny TV panel yesterday was looking at what is coming. Watch it!

 

Why women are more likely to be victims of tech abuse

Tech abuse of women in the UK  

Lawyers regularly have to deal with cases where the harassed victim can evident that mobile telephones and tracking apps had been used to follow them, identify their safe location and use this information to intimidate them. The Refuse report had also found evidence of similar cases. It also found evidence of spouse’s calendars being unlawfully accessed and of victims being followed to appointments and meetings with solicitors and with other professional people. Read more Tech Abuse

Fine for Facebook for sharing friends info by South Korea data protection regulator

Facebook fined in South Korea for sharing user data without consent after it also turned in false or incomplete documents during the investigation. 

Yair Cohen, social media solicitor explains that when Facebook users logged into other third-party apps using their Facebook accounts, Facebook shared not only their information with the third-party apps but also information of their Facebook friends, who of course, had no idea that their information was shared, let alone were in a position to consent to the practice. 

The information was then used to tailor content and advertising to the unsuspected friends.

Remove search results from Google worldwide

So where do Europeans stand in relation to the removal of Google search results worldwide? July 2017 update.

When you make a right to be forgotten submission, you would expect that Google will de-list the offending links from all its search engines worldwide. This however not always the case.

From the day Google was told to remove search results worldwide, Europeans residents are eagerly awaiting the French High Court’s decision on an appeal by Google.

 

remove search results from Google worldwide.

Google’s position is that it will not delist search results from all its search engine extensions. You can read here Google’s reasons for refusing to remove search results from Google worldwide.
The French data regulator’s position is that Google has come a long way in complying with European data requirements but only a measure that applies to all processing by the search engine, with no distinction between the extensions used and the geographical location of the internet user making a search, is legally adequate to meet the requirement under the Right to be Forgotten.

You can read the full article here
Removing search results from Google worldwide

 

Yair Cohen radio interview on Nick Ferrari show. New laws againt inter...

Solicitor and author of the book The Net Is Closing; Birth Of The E-Police Yair Cohen radio interview with Nick Ferrari. How practical is the idea of interview police?



Contact Yair Cohen

Legal action against facebook by 14 year old girl over publication of naked images.

Yair Cohen, social medial lawyer  speaks to LBC Nick Ferarri about the recent case where Facebook has been accused of 'child abuse' by lawyer for a 14-year-old girl at a court hearing in Belfast. A high court judge refused Facebook’s application to have the claim by the girl struck out. Is Facebook liable for images posted on its social media site?

Legal advice Facebook

Facebook legal advice - London social media lawyers

Why is it that only lawyers can get in touch with Facbeook?

Have you recently tried to engage with Facebook, ask a question, speak to anyone in the company, leave a message or communicate in any way? If you have, then I share your pain. Facebook is faceless and this is now official. The company that says it champions personal interaction has given each of its users a unique personal identification number. Facebook has also removed telephone and email contact information for its team from the internet so that you don't bother its employees with all sorts of nonsense, including complaints about your personal safety, breach of your privacy or defamation of your character.
Don't worry though. If they need to get in touch with you because you have allegedly breached Facebook's advertising rules, they will do so. After all Facebook has got your email address and mobile telephone number handy.



As we we all post millions of  images, videos and other personal data onto Facebook each day, most of us give  little thought to what would happen if one day we, our children, family or friends will want to have all or some of this data permanently removed from the internet. Who would they contact? Who will they be able to speak to? Would they ever be able to grab the attention of Facebook's employees? And what if Facebook do nothing about their request, would they be able to complain to anyone?
For now at least, it seems the only way you can get noticed by Facebook is through internet and social media lawyers, who happened to have good contact details for the organisation. And we are here to help. I much rather though Facebook had given out an email address or had provided a live chat facility so that the poor and vulnerable in our society are able to communicate with the company too....

Bulk Personal Datasets collected by UK government includes solicitor client privileged information

Bulk Personal Datasets collected by UK government includes solicitor client privileged information

A human rights watchdog - Privacy International - has obtained a cache of documents which shed light on UK’s controversial bulk personal datasets or BPDs. The BPDs are collections of personal data of people, most of whom do not present any particular interest for intelligence services. Their existence has been kept in secret for years, and little was known about the way the intelligence obtains and handles such information. But the newly released documents of the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters include a vast range of details on internal policies and procedures regarding BDPs. They cover a ten-year-long period from June 2005 to May 2015, and were released in response to a legal challenge filed by Privacy International last year. In particular, they provide information about what sort of personal information is included in BDPs, how it is categorized and acquired. According to the documents, the data is obtained through third-party voluntary suppliers. The key categories include info on one's biography, travels, finances and communications. Radio Sputnik linked up with Yair Cohen, London-based lawyer, an internet law specialist with the law firm Cohen Davis Solicitors, who explained to us how this information is supplied.

Net neutrality vote in the European Parliament. What does it really mean?

Net neutrality abolished. Fast lane or slow lane and what the fuss is all about

The news about the abolition of net neutrality by the European Parliament earlier this week has gone almost unnoticed and has hardly been reported in the British media. Since the inception of the internet the concept of net neutrality meant that all data is equal in the eyes of the internet service providers (ISPs), which means that all content has to be streamed to our computers and mobile devices in equal speed and quality. It seems however from now own some data will be more equal than other, with priory of delivery given to the highest bidders. This could means that for the first time, ISPs will be able to decide what Apps or content will be made easily accessible to us,at the expense of other data.

So what exactly net neutrality is?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites. Currently, in most EU countries, mobile telephone and website operators can prioritise the delivery of certain data to their customers. The recent vote in the European Parliament is likely to make this practice more widespread, effectively creating so called Internet “fast lanes” and “slow lanes".

Fast lane slow lane

For example, Twitter might reach an agreement with O2 to allow mobile telephone users free access to Twitter, outside of their data allowance, in return for payment or more likely a share of the advertising revenue. This could prejudice, for example, Facebook or smaller social media providers, as their users’ access to their content will cost them money or not form part of their data allowance.  Another pertinent example may be telecommunication companies who might prioritise delivery of Netflix content, whilst at the same time slowing down delivery of content from its biggest rival, Amazon Prime. Users of Amazon Prime will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage which will be seen in the form of slower streaming of videos.

Telecommunication companies will often argue that specialised services running over fast lanes are needed in order to encourage innovation in the EU. However, freedom of speech campaigners will assert that telecommunication companies should not be able to decide what content internet users can see, or be able to reduce the viewing quality of certain content. One of their principal concerns is that telecommunication companies will be able to sensor information by slowing down access to it, or even by making it completely undeliverable.

Net neutrality fast lane and slow lane

Net Neutrality has always been a fallacy 

Prioritising fast delivery of online content in favour of the higher bidder is a business model already used by companies such as Google. An example of this is via its “pay per click” programme, where companies pay Google “rent” for the privilege of having links to their website appearing on the first page of the search results. This seems to be the way the delivery of internet content has and continues to evolve. One can argue that what freedom of speech campaigners tried and failed to do in last week’s vote, is to return the internet back to its early “hippy” days where all content was free and randomly delivered to users. Therefore, with their vote against the amendments to net neutrality, MEPs have made it clear that things have now moved on.
Listened to the full interview on Net neutrality fast lane and slow lane

Who owns my image? Internet law legal advice

Who owns my image? Internet law legal advice

who owns my image? How to remove images from the internet

Generally speaking, English law is founded on the principle that everything which is not forbidden is allowed. For this reason, as there is no specific law that prohibits the taking of photographs of individuals in public places, anyone can take pictures of whatever and whoever they want without breaking any law provided the pictures are not taken on private land.

"Taking photographs and publishing them are two different things. Just because one has a right to take a photograph in a public place, does not mean that they own the pictured individual’s unique characteristics and distinguished features, the image of their body or face. "

However, taking pictures and publishing them is not the same thing. In many instances it might be lawful to take someone’s picture without their consent but yet it will be unlawful to place the same picture in the public domain.

So if you find your image published on an internet site without your consent, you will often have a right to request the publisher of the website to remove the image from their site and if they refuse or if it is not practical to ask them to do so, you can request Google and other internet search engine operators to de-index the page that contains your image from their search results altogether.

Your right to request the removal of your image from the public domain is derived from “a right to the protection of one’s image” which is enjoyed by all European citizens under European Human Rights law.

Under European Human Rights laws, a person’s image constitutes one of the chief attributes of his or her personality. Under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, there is a presumption that an individual has a right to control the use of his or her image, including the right to refuse publication. The right to protection of one's images is part of one’s right to respect for private life.
Unfortunately, internet service providers such as Google and Facebook tend to argue that they have a right to publish images as part of a universal right of freedom of expression and/or because certain images might have artistic value.

Although there is some force in their argument, whenever a conflict exists between two or more human rights, one right has to give way. So when a right to private life is balanced against a right to freedom of expression, under European law the right to private life often takes precedent. In fact, on many occasions, the European court has said that there has to be significant public interest for this not to be the case.

Taking photographs and publishing them are two different things. Just because one has a right to take a photograph in a public place, does not mean that they own the pictured individual’s unique characteristics and distinguished features, the image of their body or face. These are still owned by the pictured individual who has a right not to have them published under their right to private life.
Saying this, individuals have a right to private life even in public places. This is particularly the case when an image of an individual is taken covertly, without their knowledge or consent.
In some cases people I advise complain that their images of an intrusive nature are published online. These might be CCTV stills, or embarrassing images taken of them eating, drinking or doing other activities which might portray them in bad light or which might infringe their privacy.

If you wish to have images removed from Google Images or from any website that appears on Google, Bing or Yahoo searches, you should report the images to the website operators or to the search engine provider and they should take action to remove the images from public view. Often however, you will need a persuasive solicitor’s letter to follow before they actually remove your image from their website or from their index.

By: Yair Cohen
Cohen Davis Internet Lawyers

How to Delete Celebrity Images and Videos From the Internet

Online reputation crisis

Dealing with online reputation crisis

Online defamation or unflattering information on the internet can be the most threatening public relations issue for your organisation's goodwill.

It is essential that you prepare and enact an integrated, timely response to every situation that could give rise to reputational damage of your organisation.

Every organisation ought to have in place a bespoke methodology that will most effectively deal with its specific requirements.

Unexpected dissemination of information, true or false, often finds a company unprepared. The lack of a proper, coordinated response often results in rapid aggravation of the crisis. Speed is essential when responding to false allegations on the internet or to unwanted disclosures on the web. But even more important is the nature of the response, in both tone and substance.

Integrated response to online reputation crisis 

During normal times, the sales department will be handling sales, the support department will be handling customers’ technical issues, and the information technology or marketing department will be handling the company’s blogs, social networking sites, and so on.

But a crisis involving online defamation or the publishing of undesirable information over the internet requires a highly co-ordinated approach by all of these people.

Timely response not driven by panic

Your organisation needs to establish a time frame to deal with the internet reputation crisis. You cannot afford to let a bad story run for days, weeks, months, or years.

A story that does not go away within days or weeks is likely to stay on and increase in traffic over time. All the departments and all the individuals in your organisation need to make a concerted effort to resolve the crisis within a short time frame.

At the same time you must not react under panic. Your immediate response to the crisis will shape the discussion which will follow and perhaps will also determine the outcome of the crisis.

Some companies never recover from online reputation crisis, others move on swiftly - in most cases what makes the difference is the nature and speed of the initial response.

Tactical response enhances trust

Trust being the commodity of the day during internet reputation crisis is all too important to maintain, enhance and recreate. Avoid taking the view that internet reputation crisis management is all about saving the face of your company. Instead, focus on communicating your position in a way that builds trust in your organisation. Remember, people understand that we all sometimes make mistakes. What your customers will not forgive is a perception that you dodge the real issues or do not fully acknowledge their concerns.

For more information on dealing with online reputation crisis including case studies visit our website Online reputation crisis management.

Author: Yair Cohen

Internet Law Experts Solicitors!!!

Internet Law Experts Solicitors Ltd, is fully regulated by the Solicitor Regulation Authority to provide dedicated advice  to help you successfully deal with your online reputation management. Matters such as internet defamation, domain name disputes, internet positioning and PR, social networking strategies and internet reputation crisis management.

http://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk

What Should I Do If I Find My Business Listed On A Complaints Site?

What should you do if you find your business listed on a complaints site?

It’s what you should have already done that counts! Legal recourse is painstaking and expensive. Many of the sites are located in Eastern Europe.

Even if you succeed in shutting one site down, there’s no guarantee another won’t pop up in its place. It’s faster and more effective to be proactive.

So how do I do that? Here are the top 8 suggestions:

• Buy five to 10 domain names that are similar to the one your company owns. If you’re a dot-com, get the dot-net and dot-org if you can.
• Then get a few.... Read More

Using your own company's domain name to defame you...

Internet Defamation Tools

We all know that effective use of the internet brings success to many business owners.

But we sometimes forget that failure to use the internet for reputation management can lead to business failure and financial disasters.

Using your own company's domain name to defame you
It’s true. An individual’s and a company’s name are both easily targeted for the purpose of internet defamation if the victims of the defamation have not paid as much attention as they perhaps should have to the management of their reputation on the internet. The result of this is that the defamers then purchase domain names (or URLs) which carry the name of their victims.

That is just the beginning. They may also open social networking accounts in the victim’s name and create blogs and blog posts supposedly written by the victim. They go on to populate the internet search results with defamatory and sometimes offensive material about their victim. Only at this stage does the victim of the defamation on the internet realise that they could have been one step ahead of their defamer.

Even when bad pages have been appearing undisturbed at the top of the search results for seven or eight years, you can still do something, and the sooner, the better. Again, each day that goes by without action helps to cement the high position of the defamatory or unpleasant search results. You need to start making time work for you rather than against you.

Fortunately, there are very few three-to-five-year-old web pages that still occupy the top results of the search engines. But when bad web pages exist, no matter how old they are, something needs to happen before they can be buried far down enough in the search results that no one will ever see them again.

How far down in the search results do you need the bad results to go? To the fourth or the fifth page?

That might not be necessary. Statistics show that the third page of search results receives only 2.4% of the clicks, which means not many people even go there. And over time, a third-page result is likely to be pushed down even further, provided you take the necessary steps to replace it with more positive content.

Most online reputation attacks can be defeated—but only over time. The more you do to push bad results down and the faster you take action, the more quickly these career-wrecking web pages will disappear from public view.

Internet Law Experts
Making The Internet Safer For Business

Internet Law Experts Ltd

Author: Yair Cohen

9 Steps To Avoid Internet Defamation By Employees And Former Business Partners

9 Steps To Avoid Defamation By Employees And Former Business Partners




Internet Defamation By Employees

How to describe that first shocking moment when you discover that the reputation of your business is being tarnished all over the internet? There’s really nothing else like it, and it is followed by sleepless nights and constant worry. For some business people whose reputation is attacked online, things will never be the same again.

Just imagine: As you lie awake wishing the problem would go away, instead, it is spreading throughout the internet. Within weeks, sometimes even days, there is more defamatory material every time you look. The complaints are anonymous, and they are in too many places for you to respond to, if the sites even allow for a response at all.

Learn more about defamation of business and the internet at the Internet Law Centre

The lightning speed of information flowing through the internet, the speed that seems so miraculous when you are seeking information, is now working against you. Soon, matters are completely out of your control.

Who creates these treacherous, career-wrecking posts? It turns out that former employees and former business partners are responsible for many of them. Experience tells us that this group of people is often motivated by a strong sense of injustice and powerful emotions of anger, pain, and fear. They are hurt emotionally and financially when they lose their position, without good cause, as they see it. In their view, their treatment by their former employer or business partner constitutes a breach of trust. Now that you’ve breached it, so will they. With a vengeance - literally. And they can do it in a way few others can.

During their employment, former employees and business partners are likely to have access to sensitive information about the company, and in some cases, evidence of minor wrongdoings by their employer or business partner. They might be in possession of vast amounts of information about you, your family, your personal life, your business practices and some of your past mistakes and errors. They may now use this information against you.

Learn more about business defamation and the internet at the Internet Law Centre

9 Steps To Avoid Defamation By Employees And Former Business Partners

While you can’t entirely eliminate the possibility of breach of trust by former employees or business partners, you can reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim to online defamation. Here are some important steps you should take as a precaution:

Step 1:
Always remember that employees and business partners come and go. Someday they will no longer be with your company, but their memories of you will not end with their employment.

Step 2:
Place a high value on personal integrity and trustworthiness when assessing a new business partner or employee. Skills may be acquired, but integrity cannot. It is gold, and value it as such.

Step 3:
Always look for signals of disgruntlement among your employees, listen to their concerns and act to fix matters quickly.

Step 4:
Restrict access to sensitive personal data and private information. Keep your customers’ mailing lists private as well. Maintain them in safe, preferably password-protected databases, and never make these databases freely available to your employees, especially in a downloadable format.

Step 5:
Make sure that your organisation complies with all the requirements of the Data Protection Act of 1998. If you neglect your legal obligations to protect your mailing lists from being stolen, you could find yourself liable for prosecution.

Step 6:
Ensure that your employees are constantly aware of your uncompromising approach towards breach of data protection laws.

Step 7:
Make data protection compliance part of all your employees' employment contracts.

Step 8:
In the event that you discover evidence of an employee misusing or unlawfully downloading your company’s customer database, deal with the issue immediately and without compromise. It is important that a stern approach towards any form of breach of trust is appropriately communicated to your entire workforce.

Step 9:
Always play it straight. Be fair in your dealings with employees and partners and listen to their concerns. It is the right thing to do. And it can also prevent internet-reputation nightmares down the road.
Learn more about business defamation and the internet at the Internet Law Centre

Author: Yair Cohen

About The Work Of Yair Cohen

Five years ago, I decided to put together the first "Internet law” department in the UK in my old law firm, Bains Cohen (now called Pinder Reaux). At the time, other lawyers that I met were struggling to understand what type of work we were actually doing.
This was because there wasn't  an official area of law which was called "Internet law". Today everyone understands what I do. Simply put, I get rid of bad or negative internet webpages.

As part of my work as an internet lawyer I regularly travel across the globe (virtually of course), from Russia to the United States from Uzbekistan to Mexico from Turkey to Canada and so on, in my quest for solutions to my clients’ reputational issues. There are servers and website hosts located all over the world, so along the way I have developed excellent working relationships with many other internet and defamation lawyers all over the world.

Together we fight the "Complaints Barons’, those who host defamatory complaints review websites, some of whom are so scrupulous that they use outright blackmail against business owners across the globe. The 'Barons' will remove defamatory comments and defamatory reviews about you from their website but only if you pay them to do so, and sometimes they ask for a very large sum of money (depending on how desperate their victim appears to them). They will  give you 'protection' against defamation on their website in return for protection money.

Internet defamation is used by some as a means of extorting money. Money transfers are normally done through PayPal payments, to make it difficult to trace. So occasionally we have to bring PayPal on board to suspend users who abuse their banking services.

Over the years,  internet defamation has become more common and dealing with it getting more urgent all the time, mainly because of the speed by which internet search engines are now delivering search results.

Internet lawyers are now becoming 'troubleshooters' and they carry less and less resemblance to  conventional lawyers.

You see, the law cannot solve all the problems in the world and internet defamation has gone far beyond being a simple legal issue. Defamation on the internet often results in an unexplained decline in business activities and it can ruin fragile companies very rapidly.

Solving internet defamation matters is now a specialist niche within the legal profession requiring lawyers to have sufficient legal, technical and commercial knowledge to enable them to understand some of the very basic issues that concern online defamation and business reputation management.

This is why my law firm, Internet Law Experts Solicitors, has its focus entirely on internet law and on online defamation issues. 

Each week we help dozens of business owners get rid of internet defamation and of the problems that defamation on the internet is causing them.

They can take advantage of same day consultations with a knowledgeable lawyer and of our unique experience in this area of law.

Visit our website for plenty of free information and advice on internet law.

http://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk

Defamatory Online Reviews

Online Reviews And Defamation

Online reviews may be considered defamatory if one or more parts of a review is factually inaccurate or is misleading, provided this makes material difference to the perception which is given to the readers of the review.
By providing the readership with significantly partial information, the author of an online review might end up leaving the readers with the wrong impression of the subject of the review. Some disgruntled customers may only provide the readers with a one sided story about their experience and by doing so they could be committing an act of defamation.

Information that is given in part may be as libellous as outright defamation 

Information that is given in part may be as libellous as outright defamation which means that the organisation which is the subject of the review might have a right to sue for damages as well as request the removal of the review from the internet. Proving defamation in such cases could however be proved challenging.


Before taking legal action to facilitate the removal of an apparent defamatory review from the internet it is always best to try and find ways to approach the author of the review with a view of persuading them to voluntarily remove the review or at least amend it to create a fairer perception. You might want to communicate to the author of the internet review that the review as it appears is libellous and that its continued publication could result in financial losses to your company, which you might be entitled to recover from the author of the review.


Sometimes this option might not be available or might have already been unsuccessfully exhausted. Yet, before taking legal action it is certainly worth having an appropriately written solicitor letter sent to the author.  This letter does not necessarily need to be aggressive or inflammatory. The solicitor letter can often open the door for a much needed reconciliation which is almost always a better way to solve the problem than litigation.


Author: Yair Cohen
Social media lawyer

Google told to disclose personal information of an anonymous blogger ina UK defamation case

Google Inc. is ordered by a UK Judge to disclose personal information of an anonymous blogger.

On Monday 23 January 2012, a High Court Judge in London ordered internet giant Google Inc. to disclose to a UK claimant, data and personal details which it holds in relation to a user who utilised Google’s Blogger to spread defamation against a UK based businessman.

Google was told to have information, which includes the blog owner’s user name, email address and IP address disclosed to Yair Cohen, lawyer acting for the claimant, who is fighting for defamatory content about him to be removed from the American based Blog. Read full article on Internet Law Expert blog.