eBay Libel Threat After Negative Feedback – When Online Libel Gets Personal
Chris Read, a 42-year-old from Kent, is facing legal action for libel after leaving negative feedback for an item he bought on auction site eBay. On October 3, Read used the feedback facility on eBay and wrote: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones's eBay account." Mr Read subsequently received an e-mail from Mr Jones, a 26-year-old businessman from Suffolk who deals in second-hand electrical goods, saying that his comments were damaging his business, and threatening him with legal action unless he deleted them from the site (Source: Times online).
This case is interesting because it demonstrates how personal libel can get when it takes place on the Internet. If the seller wanted to get rid of the comment posted by Mr Read on eBay, the quickest way to achieve this would have been through a legal threat to eBay, not the buyer.
Companies like eBay would most commonly be advised by their lawyers to remove comments that bear a legal threat, to avoid becoming responsible for the content themselves.
As soon as a libel is reported to eBay, all the legal protections that it might have had by claiming it was only a third party to the dispute are no longer certain. Once it is notified, it is most likely responsible. This principle is often referred to by moderation professionals as "notice and takedown".
But when individuals, not companies, are involved, insult is personal, and they often don't have the benefit of a legal team and a cool assessment of the best way to achieve their objective (in this case the removal of a comment).
Lawyers are trained to separate emotion from fact and process. Private citizens aren't. This case is no doubt one of many to come. It would be interesting to see how the legal system adapts.
UPDATE:
As this blog is of a UK slant, it is always interesting to hear how things are across the pond, where libel laws are less onerous, and freedom of expression has more of a legal stance. I got the following comment from Michael Roberts, a reputation analyst at Rexxfield:
"I liked your article. The poster of the information is certainly liable for damages. However, I think you will find that eBay as a third party republisher of the libel enjoys federal immunity (at least in the USA) from civil litigation; furthermore they do not need to remove the offensive material, even if served with positive proof. (section 230(C) of the information communications decency act). (Although I am sure eBay would, they just don't have to)
Frankly I think it is an absurd loophole allowing web services to turn a blind eye to the plight of innocent victims of malicious speech. I recently published a few essays on this issue:
http://www.rexxfield.com/freedom_speech.html
Be sure to follow the links to the "google" blind eye responses to "take down" notices."
ThatDanny comment: As Michael rightly points out, the treatment of libel is different under US law to English (and Scottish) law. The protections that stringent libel laws provide are a double-edged sword, but in this case they make it simpler for individuals to achieve content removal in the UK than in the US.
Xiahe closed – an update on access for foreigners to Tibetan areas in Gansu Province, China
Xiahe - an update on access for foreigners.
Following my article about the Tibetan towns of Xiahe and Tongren being closed to the outside world, I got the following update from Oswald, a Dutch traveller who managed to get through:
I read on your website you wanted to know if people were in the region and whether it was possible to enter Xiahe. I just ended my holidays in China with my friend Arne and we have been so lucky to visit Xiahe (we arrived on Sunday the 12th of October).
Instead of taking the more often used route through Lanzhou, we travelled from Beijing to Xining. When we arrived there we heard that we couldn't get bus-tickets because foreigners were not allowed to travel to Xiahe.
When we insisted we wanted to go to Xiahe, this guy we met in Xining, a translator called ****** *** (name removed - ThatDanny), said he'd try to call some guys with a van and 5 minutes later two guys in a minivan showed up to bring us to Xiahe (6,5 hour drive) for 700 Yuan. It was such an amazingly beautiful road trip! We were not certain if this was a clever idea because we did not know whether we could trust these guys or if we would be stopped at the Gansu border. Everything worked out and we arrived after a breathtaking trip.
When we arrived in the village there was not a foreign soul there! People stared at us as if they hadn't seen any foreigners for some time....which appeared to be true...
Apparently some German tourists were removed from the village about a week before and the army had been in the village since then.
We spoke to a Dutch woman in a shop who had been living there for 8 years with a Tibetan guy and she told us no foreigners were around for days and that we had been lucky to get through. At the Tibetan overseas hotel there were almost no rooms filled because of a lack of tourists.
The Dutch woman told us that the guy who was concerned with foreign affairs in Xiahe was usually not around on Sundays so we could be lucky and not be kicked out. "Keep a low profile "she suggested...that was a bit impossible both of us being Caucasian and 1,90 and 2,05 m tall!
We bought bus tickets the same day in case we would be stopped so we could tell the police "hey, we already have tickets to leave, so don't bother throwing us out". That did not happen.
It was incredible to visit this place although people were a bit hesitant to discuss what had happened (which is of course completely understandable).
The next day we met this guy from Switzerland who was travelling alone and arrived by bus. He hadn't had to much trouble travelling to Xiahe. Maybe because he spoke Chinese quite well. I think he also got a visa for Tibet so that may have helped, I am not sure.
My impression was that people were not eager to talk (or even be seen) with us but I am not sure if this is true. Everyone we met didn't want us to take their photo which seemed to me to be strange at first. Only a few older monks did not mind about that.
When we arrived later in Guilin and Yangshuo I tried to find on the internet what had happened in Xiahe but all sites on these kinds of subjects (including your site) were blocked so I did not get to read a lot (only the first lines i could read in Google).
I am very happy we went there although somehow it did not feel really safe.
Footnote: I am pleased to report that the Chinese authorities have blocked accessed to my blog. I must be doing something right...
Sharks? Dead in the water? Guys, these are lists of dead people! HELLO!
Is everything in Marketing fair game, Daahr-ling?
Marketing agencies use something called Deceased Suppression Files to save money and embarrassment. They contain the details of people who have recently died, and are used by the agencies to ensure they do not market to these people or contact them with sales calls (e.g. to stop a marketing agency from contacting a deceased about a trip to Disneyland).
One of these products, Mortascreen in the UK, has excelled itself in its marketing campaign. Or rather, it seems to have overegged the death metaphor a little.
Sharks? Dead in the water? Guys, these are lists of dead people! HELLO!
Marketing Week, 16 October 08:
detail:
Doh!
My First UFO Experience – Sao Miguel Island 16 October 2008
UFO? I took the following picture in the mid Atlantic, on Sao Miguel Island - above Sete Cidades Lake (16 Oct 08, 10.41am local time, ISO 100, 12Megapixels) . I didn't actually see the object, and only noticed it when checking the pictures later.
Ever the cynic, I am inclined to think that it was a spec of dust on the lens, or some reflection (of a rain drop, perhaps?) - still, I'd be neglecting my geeky civil duties, to report any unidentified FO or any UF object, so here it is:
This is the UFO picture:
And here is my UFO in close up:
UFO? A trick of the light? You decide...
The Azores Island of Sao Miguel – Tips and Impressions (+ a note on eating dolphin)
My partner, D., likes escaping to islands that I've never heard of, usually in the middle of nowhere. This is sometimes as simple as spinning Google Earth until a candidate presents itself – followed by the planning of a 'random holiday'. Weird as this sounds, I must admit that after my initial doubts subside it usually works. The less popular they are, the better.
This time it was The Azores, a cluster of nine islands, set on the tips of ocean volcanoes in the deep Atlantic, between Portugal and the US. They lay empty of human habitation until the fifteen hundreds, when Portuguese settlers claimed them from nature. Today they are an autonomous region of Portugal (and therefore within the EU).
We stayed for a week on Sao Miguel island, the biggest member of the archipelago and chose its capital Ponta Delgada as our base.
Sao Miguel Island - “ What's it like?
- Sao Miguel is beautiful, lush and green. In places it feels like the backdrop to a Jurassic Park movie, especially where giant fern-like plants surround you amidst the steam from volcanic geothermal boiling water (in Caldeira Velha).
- Despite the wildness and beauty of the lakes and volcanic landscape, Sao Miguel sometimes feels like a huge landscaped botanical garden. The Azorians obviously love their island and invest heavily in taming nature and making it pretty. It is strikingly clean, wonderfully manicured and it is sometimes difficult to tell what is natural and what isn't. The roads are lined with flowers even in remote parts of the island, and everything is, well, just so. If you ever imagined what it would be like to stay at the Eden project for a week, this would be it. The humid air feels like a greenhouse, and the vegetation is spectacular, even if it sometimes feels manufactured.
- One of the best things about this greenhouse was that the utter lack of crowds anywhere. Perhaps it was the timing of our visit (mid October) or that the Azores are such a well kept secret, but being able to sit on the stunning shores of the Lake of Fire (Lagoa do Fogo) uninterrupted by anyone was superb. We also noticed that towns and villages seemed almost deserted. We weren't sure where everyone was, but throughout the week and weekend we drove through quiet settlements that felt almost deserted, no matter what time of day.
- It took us a couple of days to realize that Sao Miguel is eerily quiet, in a way quite different to anywhere else we've been. In most parts of the world whether you realize it or not, there is always a backdrop of aircraft noise above you, for most of the day. Here in the Mid-Atlantic most jets pass over 30,000 feet above you, and so out of sound range. The only planes you hear are those that land in The Azores, and there aren't that many of those either.
- Towns on the island are a strange mixture of old and new. Infrastructure and development are distinctly European, and the Azores' location in the mid-Atlantic hasn't stopped them from hatching American style malls, multiplex cinemas and shopping prices on a par with European capitals. Good hotels are of good quality (we stayed at the Hotel de Colegio which was excellent), and roads are modern and well maintained.
Driving in Sao Miguel
- Driving is on the right and traffic rules are the same as they are in the rest of Western Europe.
- Most towns and villages have very narrow roads, so it is best to hire a car that isn't too wide, and to fold your wing mirror when passing through narrow streets, or when parking. It can get quite tight at times.
- Probably due to lack of hard shoulders on the island, Azorians are in the habit of stopping their cars just about anywhere. You can drive at a 60 KPH on a B-road, and suddenly find that a car is parked in the middle of the road in front of you. Take extra care, expect parked cars on the road, and don't speed.
- Pedestrians in Sao Miguel appear to assume a right of way on the roads, or are simply not fazed in the least by cars. Don't assume that they would move out of the way, give them plenty of space and slow down. It is not uncommon to find a person standing in the middle of the road, expecting a car to overtake them.
- I haven't found any satellite navigation system that covers The Azores. This is not surprising, considering the natives would know all the roads on their islands by heart, and the limited number of visitors has not made the archipelago a priority for digital mapping companies. This should not be a problem in Sao Miguel's simple grid, but here are the two pitfalls to watch out for:
- All villages and towns run a one-way system, which is not always predictable. The capital Ponta Delgada isn't huge, but can get a little confusing, and you may end up going around in circles for a while, at least initially.
- Road signing is usually good and reliable, but in some places, especially a little off the beaten track or where there are diversions, there is an assumption that you know where you're going. The good news is that on an island the size of Sao Miguel it is very hard to get lost for very long.
Eating in Ponta Delgada
- Restaurants in Ponta Delgada aren't as bluntly obvious to the casual observer as in most countries, so you need to look out for them a bit more intently. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps island mentality is that everyone knows where they are anyway.
- Quality varies like anywhere else, but we've had some excellent meals in Ponta Delgada, especially in the Hotel do Colegio restaurant, which is well known for its great food. At the time of writing, an average good restaurant two-course meal for two costs Euro 35-40 (before alcohol).
- As this is an island in the middle of the Atlantic, Seafood is a common staple, but note that if you see “dolphin†on the menu, it is definitely not the cute intelligent mammal, but a fish now rebranded in most of the world as Mahi Mahi. Yes, really. You can get shark though.
Getting there
SATA International operates direct flights from some North American airports and from Paris, London, Manchester, Frankfurt and Lisbon. It also codeshares with TAP, that has a wider network of routes, so you may want to start your search on the TAP site.
And the verdict?: a great destination off the tourist track. Pack your hiking boots and lots of camera memory. We had a great time.
Understanding Website Statistics – Five Pitfalls to Avoid
Website statistics: what's wrong with the following statements?
1. My website gets 20,000 hits a month!
2. My website gets three million unique visitors a year!
3. Our statistics show that users spend an average of 30 minutes per visit to our website!
When you boast to your friends that your blog gets 10,000 hits, or tell your boss that your company's website has one million annual unique users, you may be setting yourself up for a fall.
Like most statistics, website stats can be misleading, and this article shows you some common pitfalls when quoting site numbers.
Website statistics – common mistakes:
1. Using ‘hits’ as an indicator – ‘hits’ are an old-speak term that expresses, well, absolutely nothing about the popularity of a website. A ‘hit’ refers to any file or part of a webpage that is downloaded by a user. For example, if your web page has seven images on it, then it will be counted as eight hits (the page itself is one hit, and then each image counts as an additional hit). It is no indication of traffic or popularity or anything meaningful about your users. quoting it shows you haven’t got a clue.
2. Annual unique users – website unique users (or ‘uniques’ as old hands like to call them) are a well accepted measure of a website’s popularity, but only when used daily or monthly. Not yearly. It is ignorant to say that your site gets ‘x unique users a year’. Here’s why: your website tracking code can only count ‘uniques’ by leaving a ‘cookie’ on the user’s computer when he or she visits your site. A cookie is a small file that the website checks for whenever the user views the site. The cookies tells the site that it 'knows' the user, and that it should not count him or her again after her first visit. Once you understand this mechanism, some of its flaws become evident: if a user accesses the site through two different browser types (for example Chrome and Internet Explorer), then they are counted as two separate visits. Visits from two different computers (e.g. at home and at work) are counted separately too. Overall, the industry has come to accept these compromises, and treats ‘uniques’ as a good indicator, for lack of a better statistic. However, this works well for a period of up to a month. Longer than that, and your statistics become too distorted. For example, over the course of a year a single user is likely to get rid of the cookies on their computer at least a couple of times, or even replace their computer entirely. If each one of your unique annual users looses the cookie that counts them as unique twice or more over a year, then your annual count of unique visitors could be half, a third, a quarter or even less than what your stats package is showing you. There’s no way around it: annual uniques are a fallacy.
3. Average minutes per visit – I often hear statements like ‘my users are spending 45 minutes on average on my site'. No they’re not. Your workmate Kirsty looked at your site just before she went home last night and forgot to close her browser, so it remained trained on your website all night. In the morning, she came back, browsed it for a couple of minutes and then closed her browser. By doing this, she has skewed your stats big time – and the fewer users you have ,the more distorting the ‘Kirsty effect’ is. Some web statistics packages now use more sophisticated methods to track viewing time, for example by showing you the median time spent on your site, but if that’s not available, don’t quote this number. It’s not really that helpful.
4. Page impressions – a trusty statistic, page impressions (PIs) or page views (PVs) are still an old favourite, but they too are not without their problems, and it all depends on how your tracking code is set up, so be well informed about your settings before you start brandishing PIs. Here’s why:
-
a. There are a lot of files that aren’t actually viewed and are sometimes counted as PIs, for example stylesheets (ending with .css) are also counted, and many sites have more than one, which are loaded every time someone visits your site, thus inflating your PI count. You have to check what's counted and what isn't before you use PIs.
- b. Every time a search engine indexes your site, it imitates a user, often by loading all your site's pages which may well be counted as page impressions. If you have many pages and your site is indexed regularly (for example by Google), you’ll get lots of irrelevant PI counts. Some stats packages exclude them and some don’t – you need to know which is yours.
5. Content groups and folder structures – and finally, you may want to beware how you present popularity of areas on your site. Most commercial website statistics packages allow you to define categories for different areas of the site, and then report on the popularity of those areas. The problem is that the categories in the tracking code often become obsolete in the time between when they were initially put in place and the many site changes and iterations since. You have to ask yourself how different areas are defined: is it by site taxonomy and structure, or simply by a category given to the page by the tracking code. Site taxonomies in themselves aren't a guarantee of accuracy either, because over time they erode, and an urgent patch here, a temporary page there - make them less reliable as an indicator of structure. I'm not saying that either of these can't be powerful analysis tools - they most certainly can be. It's just that you need to make sure you know what you're counting.
And that's really the endgame here –you need to make sure you know what you're counting. If you do, you can make more informed statements about your site's visitors. If not, well... Do not pass GO, do not collect 200 page impressions.
Rising food prices – How Do They Affect the World? – “Thoughts for Food”
How do the credit crunch and rising food prices affect the world and especially poorer nations and developing countries?
Leading experts have come together to share their views at the headquarters of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
This is my live reporting from the event, which was organised by the EBRD and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. As this is a live summary it captures points that I found interesting, and does not aim to summarise the entire event. Clever points belong to the speakers, errors of fact or reporting would be all down to me.
SPEAKERS (biographies)
Chair: Erik Berglöf - EBRD chief economist (chair)
Michael Kremer - Harvard University
Nora Lustig - George Washington University,
Peter Timmer - Stanford University
Gilles Mettetal - EBRD's Director for Agribusiness
Peter Timmer
-Was active professionally through the early 70's food crisis, and sees the two crises as very different in their nature.
- Rice prices have come down off their peaks in May-July, and for other commodities as well, but are still relatively high.
- We've been caught off guard professionally, we don't have an understanding of how commodities are interlinked.
- Price for food commodities was usually flat for over thirty years. In 2004 a gradual increase started, and the sector saw about 10% price increases per annum. Then, in 2007 prices suddenly started to spike dramatically. Even though they have since begun to come down, they are still high.
- Even though India and China are not the cause of the price changes, their significant growth is affecting the world economy, and commodity prices were moving up thus changing the mentality regarding food commodity price rises.
- For investors looking for hedges against a rising US Dollar, commodities seemed like a good place to put their money. Speculation spilled into commodities markets (though in itself it can't change the commodity pricing fundamentals longer-term).
- Ethanol and bio-diesel - big debate whether the mandates that congress has established have been a major factor in causing the food price rise (e.g. maize prices re production of ethanol).
Key things we don't know:
- We know surprisingly little about long-term supply and demand trends/cycles.
- Stockholding behaviour - not enough knowledge about how this works. For some of these commodities stocks are held out of sight, and it is difficult to model pricing.
- Short-run pricing linkages. Links between commodity pricing in short run connections. We identify linkages but know little about why they occur.
- Approach to trade, self-sufficiency, buffer stocks (safety nets) are little researched and modelled. We need to find new models to reflect this area to be able to plan better for buffering and food trade management.
Nora Lustig
- Although the price of food is not as high as it was in the early 70's... There are two areas that may well be the causes of the rises in food commodity prices:
--The reason for the sudden rise in food prices in 2004-05 and then the dramatic further rise in 2007 are due to the rise in the use of bio-fuels. Fuel prices in the US have risen dramatically, and a clear correlation can be seen with the use of bio-fuels.
-- Macro economic causes (interest rates for example) seem to link macro-economics to commodity prices - needs more research, and we need to have multilateral systems to deal with this on a global level.
- Targeted measures to contain food prices should be researched and implemented by governments.
- High food prices hurt some of the world's poor and helps others (because their produce yields more income), but overall research shows that it hurts more than it helps. The problem isn't usually scarcity but purchasing power. Helping purchasers can be done by providing social protection policies, and cash transfers - again, more research is needed in this area. Countries are not properly prepared to deal with the situation.
Michael Kremer
- Populations would continue to increase, incomes will increase in India and China and there will be an increase in demand for bio fuels.
- Thus there needs to be some creative thinking about agriculture research and development (R&D).
- There is less of an incentive for R&D development in poor countries because there are fewer government incentives, and less incentive for return on investment from new products. In areas of agriculture and health this is particularly difficult, as the example of AIDS drugs distribution (or lack thereof) in poor countries shows clearly.
- Despite the above it is worthwhile to move on from the above two (important) points, and try to find models that do work.
- One approach is that sometimes used in medicine, whereby the public funding guarantees an investment in a product if it is successfully developed. This rewards companies who are innovative and supports them in producing successful new solutions.
- R&D for agriculture is challenging because the environments and climates in different areas varies and creates problems for developing solutions that would work cross-countries.
- An example of a technology that could bypass the above issue would be the likes of pest resistant seeds, a technology that can work across world regions.
- Other than cross-environmental solutions there should be new models for "reward triggers" to encourage new solutions to "credibly commit to reward appropriate innovations...".
Short term goals: new technologies to increase agricultural production in poor countries.
Longer term: experiment with alternative mechanisms to reward innovation in the field.
* Covered on ThatDanny.com with permission from the EBRD's press office.
Vodafone Tops-up the English Language
There's nothing wrong with new language trends - and I've noticed how some companies (especially those in new media and technology) are now removing spaces from their names and capitalising mid-name instead, as in SalesForce, WordPress and many others.
But much like with text speak (txt spk), I think we aren't quite ready for this trend to spill into the rest of the language. It would appear that formerly-hyphenated words are the first victims, as is evident in this campaign by Vodafone:
EXHIBIT A:
EXHIBIT B:
EXHIBIT C:
Notice how they use both versions in one ad?
