Defamation solicitor servers an injunction via social media

Defamation solicitor Yair Cohen has made a bit of history recently by being the first solicitor to obtain permission from a judge to serve an injunction on an unknown internet troll via Instagram, the popular photo-sharing social media platform. The harassment injunction was granted against the defendant to prevent harassment, defamation and the disclosure of private information, but without knowing the identity or address of the defendant. The student who had instructed Yair Cohen to obtain the injunction was allowed to remain anonymous and has been referred to in the proceedings only as DDF.

The harassment injunction was obtained after unknown Instagram users threatened to publish false allegations against the student and to expose alleged intimate photographs. Yair Cohen, who is a partner at social media law firm Cohen Davis, sought a banning order before Mr Justice Nichols at the High Court of Justice in London. The judge agreed that a permanent injunction was likely to be obtained at trial both under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and against the additional release of private information. Even though the defendant was not present at the hearing and was not notified of it, the circumstances were such that it was just, convenient and appropriate that the banning order be granted, having considered the defendant’s human rights against the human rights of the student.

As the messages included allegations of criminal conduct, to preserve the defendant's human rights, the order allowed him (or her) to not be prevented from repeating the allegations but only by attending a police station in person to make a formal complaint about the student. The judge warned though that making false allegations of criminal conduct can amount to a civil as well as to a criminal wrongdoing. Yair Cohen, a defamation solicitor from London who has so far created a number of legal precedents in online defamation law has confirmed that, to his knowledge, this was the first time in a common law country that a court has permitted proceedings to be served via Instagram.

The courts have previously allowed service of injunction notices via social media including Facebook and Twitter but this is the first time a full harassment injunction was served via social media. Serving court documents via Instagram requires specific preparations to ensure readability and the preservation of continuity of evidence. This particular court order specified that the injunction should be served both as text and as an image, which means it required creation of images of particularly high resolution that actually fit into the Instagram template. Discovering the identity of anonymous, online users could take time but in most cases is possible to smoke out harassing online users. Defamation solicitors Cohen Davis have so far brought to justice a number of anonymous online users, who posted defamation and harassment on the internet by bringing civil and criminal legal proceedings against them.

Defamation solicitor hands online offender Paul Britton to the police and then sues for defamation!

Can webstie operator be taken liable for defamation - defamation solicitor legal advice

Our defamation solicitor says that if you already have sufficient information to take the poster of the defamation to court (for the poster of the defamation you will need the their full name and postal address) then the operator of the defamatory website might escape liability altogether even if they don't remove the offending posts. Unless they act with malice. Our defamation lawyers actively search for evidence of unlawful corroboration between review website operators and certain reviewers. If we find evidence that operators of review websites act dishonestly or negligently or with malice,  our defamation lawyers will pursue both the operators and the posters of the defamation to your benefit.

Defamation on a website outside the UK

If the defamation against you was posted on a website that is located outside the UK and you are unable to obtain the full name and postal address of the poster, then depending on the country where the website is operating from, you will have a choice to use the defamatory website's local laws to facilitate the removal of the defamatory comments or still you will be able to pursue the same goal using UK laws. UK courts might extend their jurisdiction to countries outside of the UK.

It is possible, says our defamation solicitor to obtain various UK court orders to direct website operators who are based outside of the UK to remove defamation from their website. Similar orders are available to direct those websites to provide you with personal information about the users who posted the defamation against you. So far, the vast majority of website operators who are located outside the UK have been hugely co-operative with our efforts to remove defamation from their websites.

Our defamation solicitor notes that in some notable instances however they refuse to do so, in which cases we utilised our strong network of local specialists internet lawyers. There is a small number of high profile rough website operators, particularly in the USA whose websites are designed to encourage users to post defamatory comments against whoever they want. A good example of such website is the Ripoffreport which is laden with defamatory and inflammatory posts against innocent people.

If the defamation against you is posted on one of these rough websites, our strategy is likely to focus on de-indexing (or de-listing) the defamatory web pages from Google, Bing and from other search engines which means the defamatory comments will no longer be visible to around 95% of internet users.

Defamation legal advice. Removing defamation from the internet

If the defamation against you was first published after the first of January 2014 and you do not have sufficient identifying information about the poster of the defamation to enable you to take the matter up with them, then website operator will need to get you this information and if they can't then they might need to take the defamatory post down.

This makes it difficult for posters of defamation on the internet to post defamation whilst concealing their identity. In the majority of cases a responsible UK based website operator will remove the defamatory comments shortly after receiving a properly written Notice of Complaint (Notice of Complaint Regulation 2 and section 5(6) (a) to (c) of the Defamation Act 2013).

Upon receipt of the Notice of Complaint, to be able to successfully defend legal action for defamation, the operator must contact the poster within 2 business days and obtain their full name and postal address. If the operator is not able to obtain this information from the poster, they will have a choice of either removing the defamatory comment from their website or become liable for defamation.

Naturally, most website operators choose to remove the defamatory post altogether rather than have to defend its truthfulness at court.

If the website operator can provide you with the full name and postal address of the poster of the defamation against you, the operator will not be obliged to remove the defamatory post and will have a defence to legal action for defamation. In this case, our strategy will focus on compelling poster to remove the defamatory post.

Remove defamation from a website located in the UK

Regardless of whether the defamation on the internet was posted before or or after the commencement of the Defamation Act 2013, website operators who post defamation on their websites may find themselves liable for defamation in relation to defamatory comments the permit to be published.

In the vast majority of cases if approached correctly, website operators who are based in the UK will remove defamatory comments published on their website. Unfortunately some UK website operators still operate under the misconception that they are entitled to continue to publish defamatory articles on their website as long as they are not taking part in the editing of the defamatory material. 

This error is common mostly among those who operate local and national review websites or online discussion forums. Our defamation solicitor tells us that you defamation lawyers need to take extra care to ensure they make it clear to website operators their  legal obligations and of the extent of their liability towards an individual or an organisation that is being defamed on their website. Educational letters by your defamation solicitor can save you a lot of money in unnecessary defamation litigation. This in turn should result in faster removal of defamatory content from the internet and with great savings for you.

Removing online defamation first published before 2014

If the defamation was first published before the Defamation Act 2013 came into force, our strategy to facilitate the removal of the defamation from the internet will depend on whether or not you already have sufficient information about the whereabouts of the poster and on the location of the offending website.

Typically, the process of removing the defamation from the offending website will involve direct communication with the website host, the website operator or the website owner. 
If the identity or the full contact details of either the website operator or the owner of the website is concealed, we will carry out thorough investigations (on-line as well as off-line) aimed to link the defamatory website to an individual or organisation, with whom we will communicate and if necessary serve upon court orders.

In some cases, our page removal strategy will include obtaining appropriate court orders to compel those who hold identifying information about the poster, the web host or the owner of the website, to disclose to use all the relevant information that they hold. 
Legal proceedings to subpoena information could be relatively straight forward, particularly if we obtain the relevant court orders from the most competent court. For example, if we don't know who is the registered owner of a domain name that hosts the defamation, and the registrar of the domain name is say GoDaddy.com, we will subpoena the required information through a specific Court in Arizona USA because this is where GoDaddy.com is registered and where our USA lawyers are located.

Once we have obtained the identifying information we will communicate with the poster, the website operator or the website hosts and request that they remove the defamatory post from the offending website. 

It is important that a social media lawyer has at least good understanding of the culture, the law and motives of the publishers of the defamatory comments and that those are considered before firing off offensive and often counter-productive solicitor's letters.
Some website operators who are located outside the UK might be entitled to publish the defamation under their own local laws so issuing them with legal threads might backfire on our clients so experience and sensitivity is hugely important here.

When defamation was published on a website prior to the Defamation Act 2013, the website operator might not be able to rely on a 'safe harbour' defence which the Act provides. that says that they were merely publishers.

For this reason, our preferred strategy for removing defamatory comments published prior to 2014 will be to focus our initial communication on the website operator rather than the poster whenever possible. 
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7 steps to make your business compliant with social media laws.

Social media

Social media law is now touching on almost every aspect of business life. So far much of the conversation about social media and business has been about marketing and PR and little has been said about the implications of social media on internal business processes.

Many organisations are yet to revise their aging policies, outdated employment contracts and archaic privacy guidance to provide employees with clarity about their usage of social media.

There are 7 simple steps that you can take today to upgrade your organisation’s internal processes and to ensure compliance with social media laws:

Step 1: Amend the employee’s handbook to include your organisation’s vision and policies on the use of social media, outlining what employees can and cannot do both at home and at work. Consider for example the fact that in some cases personal tweets or blog posts by an employee, outside working hours, could still affect the reputation of your organisation and bring it into disrepute, or that you as an employer could be sued as a result of personal use of social media by an employee during working hours.

Step 2: Update employment contracts to provide you with the right to sanction an employee who brought the organisation into disrepute through social media.

Step 3: Create a clear copyright policy that addresses the use of images and videos on your company’s websites and blogs. Many people are not aware of the fact that you cannot just download images from the internet and make commercial use of them. Just because the material is online does not necessarily mean that it does not belong to anyone. Every time you place a copied image on your website, you open yourself up to major legal liabilities, to high legal costs and to embarrassment.

Step 4: Decide whether your employees should be allowed to represent your organisation through their personal social media. Consider that social media is made for people not for organisations and that in order to benefit from the marketing value of social media you need the personal engagement of your employees in it. On the other hand, if and when they leave you, your employees will take their personal contacts, friends and connections with them. Is this a risk worth taking? Perhaps, but this will be the subject of another post.

Step 5: Make sure that those who are in charge of Human Resources in your organisation are knowledgeable in the area of social media otherwise they will be less likely to identify issues or address them properly.

Step 6: Revise your organisation's privacy policies. With social media, employees might inadvertently share confidential information by a click of a button so you need to ensure that your policies give them sufficient guidance as to how to avoid making such mistakes. Compromising privacy could lead to serious legal issues.

Step 7: Pay attention to trading standards issues. You must not make promises that the product or service that you offer cannot deliver. Revise the organisation's website content and any “pay per click” or other internet advertising campaigns to ensure that the claims and offers made in the ads are truthful and accurate. Many organisations leave this task at the hands of their internet marketing people, who often are not familiar with or feel indifference about trading standard’s laws.

Follow these 7 simple steps and upgrade your business to become compliant with social media laws. Click here to read more advice about social media and businesses. 

5 essential steps to follow when dealing with online defamation

Online defamation

It is never easy to decide what steps to take when you have discovered that you are being defamed online. You search the web and find various PR, SEO and reputation management specialists who claim that they can help but which do you choose?

It is vital that you remain focused and act appropriately when dealing with internet defamation. You do not want to damage your reputation further nor do you want to draw more attention to the original defamation.

Here I have put together 5 easy and effective steps to help you in response to your online defamation issue:

1) Be proactive. Consider using blogs to try and push the defamatory web pages out of public view. You do not have to be a writing expert to begin writing about yourself or your company. Google enables people to set up free blogs and these can be quite effective in communicating your message and enhancing your online reputation. If you... read more on online defamation and the other steps on our new social media solicitor blog.

Is an injunction always the best way to respond to online reputation attacks?

The answer would depend on who you are up against as well as what exactly motivates your enemies to tarnish your reputation.

Injunctions to stop online reputation attacks will normally be most appropriate against companies as well as individuals who are generally speaking, law abiding people even if their posts are motivated by a sense of injustice.



Injunction - Internet defamation



A mere threat of an injunction which is coupled with reiteration of the costs that are involved in defending it, is normally sufficient to act as a deterrent and to bring a defamatory case to its successful end.

The trouble of course is what to do when dealing with unscrupulous individuals who consider themselves as having nothing to lose, who are willing to disobey Court orders or who are outside the realm of the jurisdiction of the High Court.

An injunction against further publications of defamatory remarks by those sorts of people could be a complete waste of money and may not necessarily get you any closer to achieving your objectives.

Each defamatory post must be looked at very carefully and if an injunction is to be sought, it is better sought against the companies which are behind the websites where the libellous remarks are published because they are more likely to respond positively to a removal request.

An injunction threat against the owner of a website or even against the Internet Service Provider could produce very good results because these organisations have nothing to gain from litigating with you, but they can lose a lot.

 

Find out other ways to respond to internet defamation at the Internet Law Centre.

Should you respond to negative reviews?

Internet Law Centre

 

If you are in the unfortunate position where you have come across something bad written about you on internet blogs or forums your initial reaction may be to respond back.  However, do consider this option carefully as a response from you can trigger another great deal of problems.

It is not always advised to respond to the negativity but if you do then be careful what you say.  Always be polite and never say anything that can get you in trouble in the future.  If you are responding on behalf of a company then you need to remember that what you say will greatly reflect the company.  If you respond in anger and say things you may regret, your company will suffer as well as you.

Responding to these forums could in turn attract search engine results to the bad review meaning the bad review will increase internet traffic.  This will result in more visitors reading the bad reviews.

This then has a huge effect on your reputation or perhaps your business which could lead to huge consequences. 

Read tips on how to deal with internet defamation at The Internet Law Centre.

Websites never die

Some 15 years ago a young model in her early twenties had photographs of hers being placed on a pornographic website by her ex-boyfriend.  Subsequently the boyfriend agreed to remove all her images and the matter seemed to have been forgotten by all.

The young lady is now in her thirties, a businesswoman and a mother to 3 children. 

A few months ago, almost out of nowhere, 3 of the erotic photographs suddenly reappeared on the internet.

Her ex-boyfriend denied anything to do with this and it took a while to trace these pictures back to the original website which like tens of millions of other websites had been archived on the world’s largest internet archiving project, The WayBack Machine.

Someone must have downloaded these old pictures from the archive and reposted them on the internet.

The point is that a website, a picture or video might remain on the internet possibly for ever more and it is always advisable to check The WayBack Machine for any backup copies of unwanted websites, images and videos.

 

Learn as much as you can about internet law. At the Internet Law Centre.

Promoting your business

The internet is a fantastic way to promote your business.  We are in the 21^st century and almost everything we do now is based online so it is important that the marketing is done correctly.

Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have proved to be very beneficial when it comes to promoting a business. It is a good idea to update people daily about new business ideas, interesting news and blogs to keep them interested in your business.  These websites also allow the opportunity for feedback so is a good way of discovering ways to improve the business. 

Blogs are excellent in increasing the popularity of a business.  Links can be added which can also be linked to your website.  The more links and people you have clicking on your online material, the more popular your sites will appear on search engines such as Google.  Google notices which websites are proving more favourable and will automatically move them to a higher position. 

It is always a good idea to post something new every day, adding more links and creating more blog posts as this will rapidly increase the popularity of your company.

 

Visit the Internet Law Centre for more tips!

What to do if you are being defamed over the internet

If you are being defamed over the internet and your reputation is at risk, you want to get this resolved as quickly as possible.

Don’t click on the link of the URL that contains the defamatory material as Google begins to assume that it is a popular site and will position it towards the top of the search results.  Also tell family and friends not to do so.

It is important that you receive the relevant advice in relation to your problem.  The Internet Law Centre comprises specialist knowledge and experience to help you through these defamation attacks.  We have the skills to remove derogatory web pages. Visit the internet law centre today.
 

Internet Law Centre

The phenomenon of trolls

Trolling has increasingly become a notorious problem for online users.  Predominantly celebrities are being targeted on social media sites such as facebook and twitter.  Individuals who are not in the public eye are also finding themselves victims of these vicious online attacks.

In serious cases people have had their privacy completely breached by trolls when their personal information such as names and addresses have been disclosed online as well as photographs of themselves.  Trolls will also verbally abuse their victims and go to any extent to destroy their reputation.

There have been cases recently where trolls are being sent to prison for their online behaviour.  This form of cyber bullying and defamation is completely unacceptable and needs to be monitored more extensively.

There may soon be changes in the law to amend the Defamation Act to ensure that there is a balance between the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation.  This will hopefully enforce stricter rules on trolling and potentially have more serious consequences for people's actions. 

 

How to avoid defamation by employees and former business partners

It is very common that in many cases it is the former employees and business partners who are responsible for the defamatory content you find written about your business on the internet.  They are often motivated by their sense of injustice and anguish towards the company.  This is normally a result for them losing their job.

During their employment with your company, they may have had access to confidential information and in some cases wrongdoings by you the employer.  They may also be able to obtain large amounts of information about you which they can use to their advantage.

Although some of these cases are inevitable there are some ways in which Companies can avoid defamation by employees and former business partners.  To read these useful points read on at the Internet Law Centre.

 

Internet Law Centre

Internet Defamation at work

When your reputation or business becomes a victim of interent defamation you may not be too sure on what is the next step to take.  This short video gives a helpful insight into what the Internet Law Centre offers and how they can help you overcome this disastrous issue.

Read more on internet defamation and how we can help at the Internet Law Centre.

Website Removal

If you are in the unfortunate situation where you have discovered there is something written perhaps about you or your company it CAN be removed.  There are a number of ways this can be achieved that have proven to be a success.  These unwanted web pages can usually be removed easily and efficiently without the usual hassle associated with these potentially unexpected problems.  To find out more about website removal follow this link.


Internet Law Centre



Internet Defamation Crisis Management

Internet Law Centre

When a company discovers that negative information (whether true or false) is being written about them on the internet they must act quickly to prevent the reputation of their business deteriorating. 

This means they will need to implement a strong crisis management strategy to ensure they make the best out of a bad situation.  Speed and efficiency is very important when this occurs and if dealt with effectively it can even make the business come out stronger because of it. 

There are various ways in which a business can deal with unwanted material.  To find out ways of dealing with defamation and becoming more aware of the effects it can have, read the article on Internet Defamation Crisis Management.

Defamation Solicitor

Internet Defamation can be a person's worst nightmare.  You immediately want to find a defamation solicitor to help get rid of the problem.  Time is vital - every second that passes, your reputation is increasingly becoming more prone to being targeted.  You want to find the best solution all in one place so click here to be in the know on internet defamation and what the best solution is for you.