Naked Law

Legal Wiki

The concept of a wiki is spreading to the law. Professor Richard Susskind recently asked lawyers in a speech to the Society for Computers and Law: "Why aren’t we putting together a multimedia encyclopaedia of English law in the Wikipedia spirit?"

UK lawyer Andrew Keogh has kicked off the first known attempt at this for UK criminal law called WikiCrimeLine. Will technology law be next? Get typing...

£10,000 awarded for chat room libel

On 21 March 2006 in the English High Court, Judge McDuff QC awarded Michael Keith-Smith, a member of the UK Independence Party, £10,000 in damages for libellous "chat room" comments made about him.

Mr Keith-Smith complained that the comments, posted on a website chat room by the defendant Ms Williams were defamatory.  The posts alleged that he had been charged with sexual offences and was a racist and a Nazi sympathiser.

Although the internet discussion group allowed users to be known by pseudonyms, the claimant's details could be located via the discussion group website as he had decided to reveal them. The defendant did not reveal her identity.  The claimant had to secure an order to reveal the defendant's identity and then brought the main action against Williams for libel. 

Notably, Ms Williams did not appear at Court and was not represented.  Also, comments continued to be posted after proceedings had commenced.  The court order obtained was for an injunction against repetitions of the posts and damages of £10,000 made up of £5,000 of general damages and £5,000 of aggravated damages.

Blogger Learns "Major lesson"

The BBC has reported that US political commentator and blogger Arianna Huffington has said "sorry" to users of her Huffington Post blog.  The apology follows comments made in a blog entry which appeared to have been submitted by George Clooney, but was actually a post made by Ms Huffington including a collection of various interview quotes made by Mr Clooney.

Ms Huffington has been quoted as having learned a "major lesson", but strangely George Clooney's publicist does not appear to have received an apology.  One wonders what Mr Clooney's view might be of the blog entry, but it is perhaps a lesson to all bloggers to ensure that all sources are accurately attributed.  Although in this case it appears that matters have not been taken any further, it has been embarrassing for Ms Huffington.  There may be some comfort however in the inevitable increase in the numbers of hits on the Huffington Post website (in the short term at least). 

polo.eu - its a car, not a mint

A BBC report shows the value of getting your 'sunrise' domain name application in first, and that every second counts.

In the battle for polo.eu, Volkswagen beat off competition from Nestle (the mint with a hole) and Ralph Lauren to take the name, all three companies apparently applying within five minutes of each other.

The 'sunrise' period is an opportunity for those with established rights in brand names to register domains, but for trade marks like 'polo' where several brand owners each have registered the same word mark but for different goods and services, it is still a case of first come first served. Domain name registrar NetNames reports that in the case of over 44,000 .eu domain name applications filed within the sunrise period two or more applications have claimed rights in the same name.

The 'sunrise' period for .eu domains commenced in December and runs until 7 April, when .eu names become available for anyone to register.

Whilst many are skeptical about the value of yet another category of domain, for brand owners it is cheaper to register first, rather than be involved in a potentially expensive battle to recover the domain name through the relevant dispute resolution procedure if it is registered first by a third party.

DoS prompts Computer Misuse Act review

We have posted several times before about the all-too-familiar deficiences in the Computer Misuse Act 1990 - but it finally looks as though there may be light at the end of the tunnel.  At the end of January, the UK Government published the Police and Justice Bill, Part 5 of which includes new provisions for dealing with computer crime, and specifically denial of service attacks.

The 15 year old Act has been subjected to criticism from reformers for many years now: its antiquated provisions seem woefully inadequate to cope with the rush to mainstream use of the worldwide web, e-mail and now wireless access. The stark deficiencies of the Act have been cast in relief by a long line of case-law – most recently and notably in November 2005, when a teenage boy launched a denial of service attack against his former employer.

The new reforms look to be far-reaching, introducing purposefully severe sentences to act as a deterrent while aspiring to tackle quickly-evolving menaces, such as denial of service. The key proposals include:

• an increase in the penalty for unauthorised access offences from six months to two years;
• an increase in the penalty for unauthorised modification of computer systems from five to ten years; and
• an attempt to make denial of service attacks illegal by making it an offence to "impair the operation of a computer".

Today, in the UK alone, attacks on IT services are estimated to cost businesses £3bn a year and reforms are badly needed.  Elsewhere, Spy Blog has posted an interesting critique of the Bill and Lilian Edwards looks in detail at the wording intended to deal with denial of service.

"Howzat!" (Gowers' call for evidence)

The Gowers review team, which we mentioned in a previous post, has now published its call for evidence.  Note in particular the specific questions about the future of the UK's fair dealing provisions and digital rights management.

The call for evidence asks for responses by 21 April; the review is expected to deliver its findings in the autumn.