Everyone should look at this video about a lawsuit. Basically, a blogger who uses this very site defamed a model. The model managed to get a court to order Google to identify the blogger so she could sue. Google complied, and are now being sued by the blogger for failing to preserve her privacy. This is one of those cases which will become more common as the internet is increasingly considered to be a real source of publication, and organisations like Google increasingly hoard peoples' information. I shall now be making it clear that everything I write on here is comment.
I must confess, when I first read this story about a 16-year-old who died after drinking a lethal amount of vodka, my first thoughts revolved around the questioning of whether A* GSCE grades are proof of intelligence.
Perhaps it really is as simple as that; she died because she acted like a fool. But then, taking a step back, I'm really struggling to accept that she was that stupid. People are indeed accountable for their own actions, but what about the actions of any friends who encouraged her? What about the actions of whoever obtained the alcohol or made it available to under 18s in the first place? What about the actions, or inaction, of our Government who continue to fail in their task of controlling binge drinking and underage alcohol consumption? What about our society as a whole, the members of which continue fail to take any responsibility for anything, choosing instead to do what I just did (I am a member of society, after all) and blaming it all on the Government? Let's face it, when you have a nation of drinkers, many of whom take pride in that reputation, blaming everyone but themselves and always relying on other people to carry them away, be it friend or stranger, police car or ambulance, every now and then a glass will be dropped and broken; someone is going to die. If that glass is a glass that is already cracked and dirty, like a tramp or a lonely old addict, people don't get themselves too bothered. But if the glass is a new, sparkly crystal item, such as a promising 16-year-old straight-A student, suddenly we're forced to look for a moment at the society we're a part of. Then we turn to the Government and demand that they govern, insist that they stop this thing we're looking at from being quite so ugly. And so begins another 'responsible drinking' campaign, more education in schools and more promises in the next manifesto, and fresh layers of paint are added to the rotten, decaying wood underneath. Then, we will simply drink until we forget what we saw.
Defamation, Blogging, Privacy and Alcohol.
Posted by Andrew Giddings
in Wednesday 14 October 2009
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About Me
- Andrew Giddings
- I am a twenty-something year-old student studying BA Journalism at the University of Winchester. The idea of this blog is to give readers some insight into the course as well as providing classmates with additional notes and information.
Very poignant at the end there mate. Well done.
Yeah that's a good video - about the 'publication' aspect to the three point thing which is libel. The general point is that you can't hide behind pen names because google knows who you are and will serve you up. You are right to alert all students to the danger of libel on their blogs, because they are the published (not the university). Google would have liability for allowing defamatory material to appear on their Blogger site. They are not neutral, though if you look at the small print on terms and consitiomns you will have probably have indemnified them. The best - as said in lecture - is just to make sure you never write down things that might be untrue, to think constantly of your defensibility - sentence by sentence - and to avoid malice in any form.
Great to see by the way that you are starting to pick up comments from bloggers and readers outside our immediate circle - as you should since this is a very useful blog, full of useful stuff that people will want to read. I will try and get a moment to talk to you all with a few simple things you can do to boost your traffic on your blog, page rank and so on.