Informationoverlord

It’s has all been about the TV companies being hit for not playing fair with their premium rate phone in competitions up until now, but today Ofcom dished out a £1million plus fine to Britain’s largest radio group GCap. It fined 30 local radio stations, which form part of GCap Media’s One Network, a total of £1,110,000 (£37,000 each) for the unfair conduct in a listener competition; Secret Sound

GCap ran a competition where a sound was played and listeners could call or text in what they thought the sound was. The ’rounds’ ran each hour for six hours a day and the terms and conditions said an answer would be chosen at random each hour and broadcast. If that answer was incorrect all answers from that round were discarded and a new round began with prize money increased by £100.

What Ofcom’s investigation discovered was that wrong answers were deliberately read out to extend the length of the quiz and this practice has been agreed in advance by a programme Director. Ofcom found the practice would increase GCap’s revenue - even if that was not the purpose of the practice - by offering a higher ‘prize’ to encourage more people to enter the competition.

Ofcom also found that there was a lack of supervision and oversight by senior management and even when they became aware of the situation and investigated the situation (’ not as thorough or as extensive as it had claimed’) then failed to produced a written report. It then issued a press release claiming the incident was “an isolated incident” and a “system error”, something Ofcom describes as fundamentally misleading and inaccurate (a lie in normal person language) and ‘an inept attempt at “news management” on GCap’s part.’

The exact wording of that press release states:

“The breach that occurred was an isolated incident and as soon as the system error was discovered, management took swift and decisive action to tighten up GCap’s procedures to prevent any similar breaches occurring in the future.”

Ofcom expressed further serious concern that GCap’s Board had authorised the wording of this statement, and its publication on GCap’s corporate website, and that this and the offer of a refund only appeared here, and was not reposted on the websites of the individual stations involved or broadcast on any of those stations.

Ofcom still isn’t finished. Co-operation with the investigation? Ofcom wasn’t overly impressed with that either claiming GCap had ‘effectively hindered’ the investigation by providing ambiguous information to it and PhoneplayPlus, in particular showing an unwillingness to disclose for who was responsible within GCap and what their seniority was. This lack of frankness by GCap, Ofcom concludes, is the reason the fine is not less than it is.

One of the interesting aspects of this case was that GCap were shopped by someone within their ranks who told PhonepayPlus (ICSTIS as was) about what was going on, who then fined GCap £17,500 back in August last year.

I was thinking about podcasts last week. In particular law firm/chambers ones. Do any law firms actually do podcasts covering legal updates?

I realised I only knew of a few firms that did them, but felt they merited being shared with a wider audience anyway. If you know of any others, leave a comment.

UK

Pinsent Masons - outlaw radio is a legal podcast with news, views and interviews.

Maclay, Murray and Spens LLP - These guys actually have a selection of podcasts.: Charities and Third Sector; Commercial Litigation and Advocacy; Corporate; and Employment, Pensions & Benefits;

Erskine Chambers have a company law podcast

Fisher Jones Greenwood Solicitors LLP have a regular podcast covering a variety of subjects.

Ibrahim Hasan, solicitor, has a Freedom of Information law podcast.

Burness were the first Scottish firm to offer podcast legal updates - ‘the brief‘
Clarion Solicitors LLP offer a podcast covering general legal issues.

Canada

Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP have a regular
Occupational Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation Podcast

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP have regular series of ‘Audio Reports‘ (podcasts) on a variety of subjects.

US
Weiss Berzowski Brady LLP have podcasts covering business law; employment law; employee benefits; estate planning; litigation; real estate law; and tax law.

Pepper Hamilton LLP are another firm with regular podcasts covering a umber of subjects.

Stark & Stark, who run the very good New Jersey Law Blog have an accompanying podcast

Leonard, Street and Deinard do a podcast called the Leonard Legal Buzz

Ricci Leopold have a Podcast covering interesting new legal developments and consumer protection issues.

Hellmuth & Johnson have a podcast covering a variety of legal and business subjects.

A friend of mine was explaining to me yesterday why she had yet to be converted to the likes of Twitter and Friendfeed, and why she was happy with Yahoo Messenger if she wanted to chat/discuss things with friends.

Her first point was that she generally preferred to out living life not posting updates informing people she was ‘putting the kettle on’, ‘watching tele now’ etc. This was also, whilst a facebook user, she had never used the update status function.

Another reason she didn’t see the value in Twitter was that she felt that aside from putting the kettle on type comments it just seemed to be full of people talking about twitter I think this is actually quite a valid point. I am very guilty of ‘twitter down’ posts. Fellow Twitter uses will know it is down without my trying to tell them, so why do it?

Friendfeed is another case in point. I quite like it, but dread looking at it because it is invariable full of people just talking about FF and Twitter. In fact maybe a good filter would be to be able to filter out any mention of twitter and FF unless from FF support people or the FF blog. The fear then might be the tumble weed drifting by as you waiting for any updates to appear. Oh, look, a post about Plurk … Ok, maybe need to widen that filter …

I did defend Twitter, and micro-blogs as a whole, and said that whilst I did not disagree with her view, that Twitter was just a tool and if she didn’t want to tell people she was watching tele, she need not do so. I pointed out that is was an effective communications medium that could be used for both monitoring what friends are ‘up to’ but also to inform friends about things without the need for sending mass emails or texts. I pointed her to a couple of articles on how and why to use twitter, but she still remained unconvinced. Which is fine. Twitter is not for everyone.

This early day motion has 8 signatures so far:

Mr John Whittingdale
Michael Connarty
Mr Jeremy Hunt
Mr Don Foster
John Robertson
Pete Wishart
Mr Edward Vaizey
Janet Anderson

That this House welcomes the proposal by the EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Services that copyright terms for sound recordings should be extended from the current 50 years to 95 years; notes that performers will be the main beneficiaries of an extension through the provision of a fund for musicians from the extra money earned in the long-term; further notes that the proposal requires copyright holders to publish their works or else license others to do so, which will ensure that music remains available to consumers; believes that the proposal will mean that British and European musical creativity is properly rewarded and will redress some of the existing unfairness faced by perfomers compared to composers and songwriters in the copyright system while giving European performers the same rights as those enjoyed by performers in most other countries; and calls on the Government to give the proposal its full support at future meetings of the European Council.

[Early day motions (EDMs) are formal motions submitted for debate in the House of Commons. However, very few EDMs are actually debated]

Came across this case yesterday, which involved an employee uploading ‘work contacts’ to his LinkedIn account. Doubt this will be the last time this happens.

The High Court has granted a request for pre-action disclosure in relation to a potential claim by Hays Specialist Recruitment (Holdings) Limited that an ex-employee (Mark Ions) had, during the course of his employment, copied and retained confidential information which he used after leaving Hays, and also that he breached restrictive covenants in his employment contract which remained in place for 6 months after his contract terminated.

Ions, who was employed from 2001 as an HR recruitment consultant handed in his notice on 8 June 2007, making no secret of the fact he intended to go into competition with Hays with his own company, EHR, which he had incorporated on 18th May 2007. Now, according to Hays, Ions uploaded Hays’ database of client and candidate contacts to his LinkedIn account, which would allow him to invite those contacts by e-mail to join his network; and also that he breached a restrictive covenants against soliciting, canvassing, dealing with or accepting instructions from clients or applicants with whom he dealt or had contact during his employment, subject to certain restrictions.

Whilst the court described hays’ main witness statement by Ions’ line manager, Maureen Sullivan as ‘long on allegation but rather short on hard evidence’ he did conclude that Hays had reasonable grounds for a claim; especially as in lawyer correspondence between the sides, Ions admitted he had used contacts from Hays, although arguing that these had been cultivated through his years of business experience and were impossible to divorce from his own; and that Hays encouraged its workers to join LinkedIn and use it to build business. On the issue of the covenants Ions argued that EHR did not break them - although his own submission seem to confirm he may have acted for a least one past Hays client in September 2007.

The Court ordered Ions to produce copies of all his - now deleted - ‘business contacts’ from LinkedIn (by requesting a copy from LinkedIn), as well as emails from Ions’ LinkedIn account and from Hays’ computers from 1 May 2007 onwards; and well as a number of other documents evidencing the use made of ‘Hays’ contacts’.

Hays Specialist Recruitment (Holdings) Limited and Another v Ions and Another [2008] EWHC 745. [NOT ON BAILLI YET - Will update with link when it is]

A sad day at CC today as Dhana Doobay leave the CMT Group after 16 years with the firm. Dhana is currently Director of International Telecoms Projects at CC, and has been a leading lawyer in doing telecoms deals in developing markets for the firm for some years. After a brief break she is off to Ashursts to become a partner in their Communications Group. A good catch for Ashursts.

I wish her all the best, both because she is a great person, and also because she has been to source of many of my more interesting and challenging pieces of research over the past 9 years.

Best of luck Dhana.

Ofcom fined MTV Networks Europe a total of £255,000 today for ‘widespread and persistent breaches’ of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code in respect of its channels TMF, MTV France, MTV UK and MTV Hits. MTV was fined for the broadcast of highly offensive language and material (in some cases repeatedly) before the watershed, that was not justified by context, and that would likely to appeal to children.

Just what kind of thing were Ofcom talking about??

MTV Hits programme, Mr Know-It-All ( a text messaging service for viewers who can text questions which are answered by Mr Know-It-All) apparently(at different times) displayed the following texts on screen.
Q: “What is a spunkbelly?”
A: “A ’spunkbelly’ is a collection of semen which has been consumed
which collects in the stomach giving the appearance of a beerbelly.
Very nice.”
Q: “Will I ever have finger sex with a girl?”
A: “I believe that you will within the next six months. I believe that it will
be the start of a special relationship. She will be called Sally.”

Another text based programme Belge Chat on MTV France displayed texts saying ‘death to all immigrants’; ‘death to gays’ and a few other choice cuts.

There was also a lot of swearing in other programmes and in a music video - Windowlicker by Aphex Twin [ Ofcom describe it as a music video by ‘the band Aphex Twin’ - Does Richard James consider himself a band?], and a film review programme showing scenes from Superbad.

The sanctions committee further warned MTV than any further code breaches which warranted possible statutory action would be regarded with the ‘utmost seriousness’. So pull your finger out or face more fines and possible licence revocations essentially. Ofcom made it clear that whilst it accepted MTV had made moves to remedy its compliance issues, it still had to use fines as an incentive to encourage compliance.  Indeed,  Ofcom has not been shy with the fines of late, and we still have some to come on the quiz call tv.

For an experiment yesterday I decided to ditch my microblogging/chat service of choice, Twitter, and give Jaiku another go.

Now I liked Jaiku from day one, and my original thought was that it was actually a better product than Twitter, but had just failed to get the attention of the internet early adopting elite, so never really took off.

My problem was/is that all my internet ‘friends’ are on Twitter not on Jaiku. So for several days I posted on Twitter a call to arms to those people to join me, and a few of them did, coming kicking and screaming; others could not pull themselves away from Twitter (even when the service was down for one of its regular ‘rests’), which showed what an uphill battle other similar services have - Plurk being the latest of many (looks nice, not very stable and novelty value of it will be one that wares off quickly).

So am I saying that Jaiku is the betamax to Twitter’s VHS? Maybe, and maybe current internet darling Friendfeed maybe the VHS to Twitter’s Betamax in turn. However, that hammer should still be hovering above that last nail in Jaiku’s coffin. Why? One word: Google.

Google bought Jaiku last October. Twitter was already out there, and Google could have obviously afforded to buy it, but it choose Jaiku. Why? Again there could be a number of reasons. It may have just been buying people - Jaiku was developed by some very talented ex Nokia people, and Google had already signaled its intention to get more involved in all things mobile. It could have been because Google saw it (as I did) as the better product, and wanted to get a foothold in the microblogging space as it have previously done with blogging and the acquisition of Blogger.

I think the truth lies somewhere between these reasons. I am sure there will be place for Jaiku or gTer on Google’s mobile Android platform, which could give it a potential big mobile footprint. I think it is on the mobile space where Google really sees Jaiku or some form of it delivering for the company. It could also be rolled into Google Apps of course. We also need to remember Twitter is not mainstream - yes it has made the news a few times, but the average web user has no idea what it is. This market is still there to be taken. Google has been sitting on Jaiku for 8 months already (it sat on wiki platform Jotspot for 17 months), but this need not be a problem. I liked Jotspot and I don’t think Google Sites (its new name) is as good, but I would bet it has a lot more users. And remember, Jaiku closed its doors to new members when Google took over (I still have invites if anyone would like one) so it has not really had a clear run at Twitter, or Friendfeed. When it does, who knows what will happen.

Why do I mention Friendfeed as well? Because, like Friendfeed, Jaiku lets you pull in your ‘lifestream’ from other social media sites, and allows you to comment inline on any ‘post’. It was doing it before Friendfeed.

So, what about me. Did a Twitter free day on Jaiku make me want to switch or run back to Twitter asking for forgiveness for cheating on her with another microblogging site?

What I realised is that I still like Jaiku a lot. It still seems the better platform to me.I like that you can comment on posts and comment on comments and display it all in-line. And all this without having to write @ as on Twitter, where often the @ will not be tied to the correct item you’re commenting on.

The comments/replies still display in your normal stream ala Twitter, but are Yellow for comments as opposed to Blue for posts.  Simple, but I like it.

However, unless my ‘friends’ can be convinced, no amount of it being better is going to work for me personally. I could of course post to both services, and there are ways to do this. Will I? I think I might keep a presence on Jaiku and post some things there and wait and see what Google does. I should also point out that there are also problems with Jaiku. Whilst it can pull in your lifestream, it does so very badly - maybe Google have given up on this bit, as I recall it working better before.

So, for now Twitter still has me, although people are trying to convince me that Friendfeed is the way forward. I’m not yet convinced on that one, especially as most of its traffic is Twitter posts.  But, time will tell.

Update:

If you like this post you should also read …

Mike Gunderloy at Web Worker Daily - How Twitter Could Crash and Burn
Steve Matthews at Vancouver Law Librarian - Breaking the Twitter Habit? or, Is Jaiku betamax?

So there I was, sitting in front of the tele last night and Doctor Who starts and they are suddenly in a Library. Hang on, I think, that looks familiar. Seems I was right to think so too, as last night’s episode (and hopefully some of part two of the story next week) was mostly filmed somewhere I worked for around 6 years - Swansea Reference Library.

It made a terrific backdrop to the story. The round, domed room was always a marvellous sight and (multiple leaks aside) was always a great space to work in. If you were a fan of architecture it was impossible not to like Swansea Ref.

Those following Paige Turner’s blog on the goings on in Swansea Libraries will know that around fifty years after it was first promised the central library, including the Ref have now been relocated to a new building, with an easier more flexable space.

I have yet to revisit and see the library iin its new home, but when I do it will be with a touch of sadness at the end of the old Ref.