Informationoverlord

The High Court has ruled that Google cannot be can be regarded as a publisher of alleged defamatory statements found on a third party site by means of a snippet of text returned in its search results generated from the combination of terms.

The Court was hearing a request by Google to set aside a Masters Order serving notice on them to appear in an English Court to defend claims of publishing/republishing alleged defamatory / libellous claims against Metropolitan International Schools (t/a SkillStrain and/or Train2game) published on the forums of the Designtechnica (t/a Digital Trends) website.

“Since 25 March 2009 or around 25 March 2009, on each occasion that an Internet search is performed on ‘Train2Game’ the Second and/or Third Defendant published or caused to be published at www.google.co.uk and/or www.google.com a search return for the Train2Game thread which for 3 weeks preceding the date of these particulars set out the following words defamatory of the Claimant as the third and fourth highest search result:
‘Train2Game new SCAM for Scheidegger’ … “

According to Google, California would have be the correct place to bring the action, as there would be no enforceable remedies from pursuing case in UK court. They also stated they had no responsibility for the publication of the words complained of; that a decision against them would harm freedom of expression and create a chilling effect on the internet; and that the case against Google UK should be dismissed because it does not operate the google search engine.

The Court very quickly realised that the workings and functions of a web search engine meant that Google cannot be characterised as a publisher at common law, and would be unrealistic to attribute responsibility for publication to Google , whether on the basis of authorship or acquiescence as it had “not authorised or caused the snippet to appear on the user’s screen in any meaningful sense. It has merely, by the provision of its search service, played the role of a facilitator.”

It went on to say that even after it had been informed about the ‘defamatory’ material, its policies for blocking access to such material were legally sound, acknowledging that it has blocked access from www.google.co.uk to the specific URLs identified on behalf of the Claimant. The court did say there may be room for debate as to what further blocking steps it would be open for it to take, or how effective they might be – the block does not stop people searching on www.google.com – but said it was not Google’s job to actively police the web for instances where the words complained of ‘popped up’.

As a result the court held that the claimant had “no reasonable prospect of success” in its case against Google. Interestingly, the court would have thrown out the Masters order in any event due to what it classified as serious misrepresentations and omissions in the evidence placed before the Master in support of the application to serve out.

Comment: This seems to be a common sense decision. Justice Eady did not seem to have too much difficulty finding that Google would not be liable under common law. This does not stop him exploring potential liability had he not found them in the clear under common law and he looks at the implications of the Ecommece regs 2002,  the Defamation Act 1996,  as well as the UK’s limited case-law in this area: Godfrey v Demon and Bunt v Tilley.Â

SUB: LATE SIR. JOHN PAUL GETTY’S WILL

I wish to notify you that the late Sir John. Paul Getty Jr. made you one of the beneficiaries to his WILL. You are entitiled to 11% of his total funds of GBP88,260,443.00.

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Yours in services,

Barr. Charles Russell

Charles Russell LLP

Do you think this is THE (since they like using capital letters for effect) Charles Russell? You know, the one who founded the firm back in 1891?

Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Blog (yes them again) has a post entitled ‘KM’s View of E2.0 - Savior or Harbinger of Death?’ which I read on the way home. It interested me because earlier in the day I had been reading a post by Sourcepov on ‘KM Evolution’ and touched on some of the same themes: KM Vs Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) /Social Computing (Media).

Greg says “if you look closely, it seems that push of E2.0 into the KM process seems to be coming from external (read: Vendors) rather than from internal (read: KM managers).”

I must admit I found this to be the exact opposite of my personal experience within law firms where it has very much been the internal Knowledge and Information staff who have been the main drivers in pushing E2.0 and recognising its potential to their firms. It has seemed to me that many vendors have been slow to try and exploit the market.

Greg links to a post by Carl Frappaolo entitled “NOW knowledge management is possible - Whaddya Kidding me?” which looks at whether E2.0 is causing an “evolution” or a “revolution” in KM [and also has some funny comments on the idea of ‘pure’ and ‘impure KM] On this, I agree with Greg when he says “KM process is “evolutionary” and can adapt to new ideas such as E2.0 brings to the table”

I agree even more with Doug Cornelius, who in the comments to the post claims “Enterprise 2.0 is savior to Knowledge Management”, and makes a point I keep repeating to people I know looking at E2.0 and this evolving idea of KM, which is: ‘ think selfish’

As Cornelius says, for a long time tradition KM has been focus of the big picture and the need to contribute for the benefit of the wider organisation, but contributing your ‘knowledge’ to a big pot. The problem was (and is) people, whilst seeing there is value to contributing to the pot, also see that it offers little direct benefit to them.

Cornelius adds, “I think of Enterprise 2.0 as more analogous to the personal knowledge management. These are tools focused on the individual or small groups. That is where the direct benefit lies. A by-product is the ability of others to find the information.”

I totally agree. I save (and share) things to delicious/Diigo/Google Reader, not because I want to contribute to creating a knowledge base, but out of selfishness. The fact that the bi-product of my doing that benefits others makes me happy, but is not my prime reason for doing so. Exploiting this natural feeling within the enterprise is the best way to drive KM and the idea of betting knowledge sharing.

P.S. Can we also just agree that Knowledge Management is a stupid term? How do you ‘manage’ knowledge? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Ofcom has published copies of 3G coverage maps for each of the UK’s 5 national 3G licence holders – 02, Vodafone,T-Mobile, Orange, and H3G.

It makes for a very entertaining read for such a short doc. Ofcom can’t state enough that you really shouldn’t rely on these maps for anything, all but saying they are worthless.

“coverage maps are based on theoretical predictions”

“The shaded areas on the maps indicate areas where customers have the possibility of making and receiving a call outside over a 3G network (but with no guarantee of being able to do so).”

” they are not suitable for assessing the quality or depth of coverage within the indicated areas”

” the data used to generate the maps was not collected for the purpose of examining detailed mobile coverage therefore the availability or quality of mobile services cannot be assumed from these maps”

And just in case you have not got the picture yet …

The maps are provided without any representation or endorsement made and without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy.

Ofcom also point people to the mobile operators own websites saying that all operators produce their own coverage indicators which are likely to provide more reliable guidance to network availability in any given area.

Having looked on the operators’ sites it looks like Ofcom’s maps are fairly spot on. It is true you need to go to your mobile operator’s site to drill down to place/postcode coverage, but Ofcom’s maps do seem fairly accurate at showing how piss poor 3G coverage still is in the UK – especially if you haven’t decided to live in a city, or England actually. Frankly if you live in most parts of Scotland or Wales, the good news is you don’t need a 3G phone! And as for a 3G iPhone … on 02? hahahahaha.

Vodafone
02
Orange
T-Mobile
3

In the course of searching for some information on a company yesterday I came across as presentation sharing site I was not previously aware of called Bloobble. According to the site “Bloobble is offering a new service for professionals of the electronic sector to watch and share presentations through a web experience”.

It’s a French run site targeting the telecom, media and tech sectors and one that well worth a look, if you need presentations in these sectors. The presentations are divided into the following categories : - DTT, VOD, Satellite, Cable, IPTV, Mobile, Internet, Security
There is an rss option to get updated with the latest uploaded items. This is for all content. I would prefer if this was done by either top level topics or by tag to make it a more useful tool.

Whilst much smaller than sites such as Slideshare, Scribd and Slideboom, its business focus makes it of more use to me.

Two articles on the subject of Twitter have caught my eye today, both concerning aspects of advertising. The first article by Phil Bradley asks whether Twitter’s ‘Re-Tweet’ functionality could and is starting to be exploited to an extent where it will effectively kill Twitter. Phil highlights the growing use by companies of all sorts asking users to Re-Tweet a message and/or add certain #hashtag to be in with a chance of winning ’some piece of tat or the other’.According to Phil this results in three problems:1 – Multiple re-tweets of same post in your timeline.2 – Contamination of ‘Trends’ section.3 – Possible swamping of companies getting people to people constantly tweet and re-tweet nonsensical messages.Thankfully the re-tweeting that goes on in my timeline tends to be people re-tweeting interesting content and not marketing rubbish, but I can see how it could become a problem unless twitter introduces a filter/block for this type of content.The second article by Laurie Sullivan on Media Post does kind of fit in with Phil’s as it is about ‘legitimate’ marketers complaining that Twitter is starting to be taken over by spam, porn, and escort services. According to Sullivan, ‘marketers relying on the site to promote family values tied to goods and services don’t seem too thrilled’.I have to admit this made me smile. Why I would be any happier having these marketers trying to spam me more than I am of porn or other spam messages, I don’t know. I’m not really sure where the complaint is. Are they worried that some porn accounts/escorts are ‘following’ them? For starters, I’m pretty sure escorts buy stuff too. Are they worried that people with nothing better to do that go through pages and pages of ‘followers’ lists are going to see/click on one of these types of followers and go – oh no ‘ pure and innocent product’ is being followed by @hotxxx, therefore they must be evil or associated with porn?If it isn’t that then all they have to do is not follow these people back. All very easy. I only follow about half those that follow me, partly it is because I don’t think I have anything in common with them, and partly it is because it when I see an account like this I just ignore it. However, if someone chooses to follow this ‘person’ then that’s their decision.For me, the issue is spam. It doesn’t matter who is creating it or what the content is. I don’t personally have a problem with porn or escorts on Twitter -I follow US porn star jessica drake. If all Twitter does is starts to make it easier for marketers to use the service, without adding effective means of allowing users to block/filter their content, to keep this and other content out, then people will just move elsewhere.