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.
How Do I Embed Google Lively 3D Rooms into My Site or Facebook?
UPDATE: Google Lively has announced that it is shutting down its service on 31 December 2008. More details here.
How to embed Google Lively 3d Rooms into your site or Facebook - I'm getting a lot of questions about this since I posted my article about the launch of Google Lively.
Embedding is really simple, so it should only take a few minutes.
Embedding Google Lively into your website
- 1. Go to Google Lively, register for the service (easy) and create a room.
2. When you go to your Google Lively room, you will see the embedding code just below the room display:
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3. Copy this code, pop it into your website's HTML and that's it!
4. You can control the room screenshot that is displayed by this code by going into your room, finding a pleasing angle to view it, then clicking on "New Room/Room Properties", then "Edit Current Room", and then under the “Webpages” tab, click "Save Thumbnail".
Embedding Google Lively into your Facebook profile
- 1. Go to Google Lively, register for the service (easy) and create a room.
2. When in Google Lively room, the address in your browser should be something like http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-7101804801955543956 (this one is for the UK media room). Copy it.
3. Now log in to Facebook and go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php (my posted items). In the "Post a Link" box on the right hand side post your Room link (the one you copied in stage 3).
4. Enter comments if you like and then Post the new link.
5. Unfortunately this does not allow you to show your specific room screenshot and is only displayed as a shared link for the moment, but I'm sure there will be a Google Lively Facebook application popping out of the oven any minute now - which will enable you to properly embed your Google Lively 3D chatroom.
Good luck!
Younger generation gets news from community, not from news sites (Prof Dr Jo Groebel)
Speaker: Prof Dr Jo Groebel - Director, The German Media Institute
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Research shows that the younger generation doesn't visit news online sites, they collect their news from their online community, and they trust it more.
- We not only show a change in the role of the media, but also in the role of journalists in the community and how they interact.
- We used to think in terms of demography, but many of the old demographic metrics no longer apply. People are more centred on information and situational needs.
- A lot of what we're discussing has been around for 40 years. The Internet has been around in some form since 1969. Most of the ideas that are now in the spotlight have already been discussed. Online community, for example, started in the 90's.
- People are primarily using media for information. We've done studies on what people remember from news items. Within five minutes people forget about 95% of what they read or consume in the news. A lot of information consumption is about the "kick" users get from consuming it.
- The online world increases emotional arousal and information kicks. The more you 'arouse' them, the more likely is your information to be successful. You also need to be aware that if you go beyond a certain level of emotional arousal, you lose the user as well.
- people are now focussing more on visual kicks. Levels of visual intelligence has increased significantly, and levels of verbal intelligence has decreased.
- Lots of media use is about excitement, mood. It is absolutely crucial to target this emotional area.
- Unlike TV, online and newspapers are high-attention media. Whereas TV may be on in the background (and the ratings show that you are watching although your attention may not be there, also for ads).
- Community - even in the world of user content creation, it is still the professionals who produce the quality content and are the catalysts/moderators of what happens in the community. This is not going to change.
- The most crucial change in the online world is that you don't need to care about demography, in quite the same way.
- Convergence has become a reality, a people expect to get everything on all platform, e.g. mobile.
- Immediacy has also become the expectation.
- English has not become as prevalent online as many expected. People still use their local languages mostly online.
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"
BBC shuts Today Programme discussion boards – Moderation on media sites
Not so surprising news that the BBC has decided to close down its Today Programme discussion boards, in a similar way to how the Daily Mail closed their news and Sports forums (some now re-opened), and The Mirror closed their Maddie forum.
I still recall how the online editor of a tabloid newspaper rang me up when I was working for a rival and said: 'we are banging our heads against a brick wall here. We don't know what to do about moderation.' It was unheard of for a rival to call and ask a question like that, but it highlighted the severity of the problem.
The truth is that you either do it properly, or you don't. The key is threefold:
1. You have to define very clear moderation guidelines, so that staff who are moderating have a crystal clear understanding of the parameters they are working to.
2. Your senior stakeholders need to understand what your parameters are, and that to maintain integrity it is best if senior staff do not change those parameters when it suits them, otherwise your credibility is in doubt.
3. You have to make a commitment to properly resource moderation.
The problem is that good moderation costs time, commitment and money, and many media websites stick to what their lawyers think they can get away with, rather than trying to build a quality discussion outlet.
The first test for a UK media provider is usually the BNP (British National Party) tirade that appears in almost any news-related discussion board. Although their right-wing hate infused detestable views are unpalatable for many, they are still a legal party in the UK, and so forum owners are unsure what to do with their postings. What makes it even more difficult for those same media websites is that the BNP has a very organised political-spam operation, whose sole purpose is to promote its message by any means necessary.
A good community professional will tell you that this sort of thing can be resolved through clear policies, and some clever community management, but then there are few with that sort of experience in the market, and media owners are often tight with their money when it comes to the resource required to manage communities properly.
I have a friend and ex-colleague who has been managing abuse on community sites for years. When I met her recently she told me it has now become a pattern in her working life: she joins a company that has no clue how to manage their user generated content and abuse, she puts the right sort of processes into place, and suddenly the community thrives and traffic increases.
Mark Fothergill, another very experienced ex colleague, commented that the BBC had 'too much [user generated] content and no idea what to do with it.'
I think they're both right, and either one of them could have sorted the Beeb out. Perhaps times call for a new discipline?