Contempt

• Media Guardian>>Facebook juror jailed for eight months
• Media Guardian>>Facebook contempt of court case: transcript of the online chat

Libel

• Press Gazette>>Telegraph wins libel battle over MP expenses story
• Press Gazette>>PCC could be asked to mediate libel claims
• Jon Slattery>> CPBF: ‘Tribunals best way to reform libel laws’
• Media Guardian>>Could the PCC become ‘court of first resort’ for libel claimants?
• Press Gazette>>Bond producer Broccoli wins libel payout from Mail titles
• Media Guardian>>James Bond producer accepts libel payout from Mail titles
• Press Gazette>>Indy brands Bahrain’s libel threat a ‘half-cocked pr stunt’
• Index on Censorship>> Bahrani government to sue the Independent for libel
• Media Guardian>>Can Bahrain’s government sue the Independent for libel? | David Banks
• Media Guardian>>Argus editor accuses council PR of libel

Media regulation

• Guardian>> BBC to apologise on air to Primark for Panorama documentary
• Roy Greenslade>> Why the BBC Trust is wrong to have found against Panorama

Phone hacking

• Press Gazette>>Ex judge to oversee NoW phone-hack compensation fund
• Press Gazette>>Giggs to sue NoW over phone-hack allegations
• Inforrm>>News: Home Affairs Select Committee on Hacking – Phone Company Evidence
• Press Gazette>>Report: Met widens NoW phone-hack investigation
• Inforrm>>News: Phone Hacking, Email Hacking and Blagging – the investigation expands

Privacy injunctions

• Inforrm>>Essay: Sir Stephen Sedley on Superinjunctions in the London Review of Books
• RPC Privacy>> Justice Secretary expresses concern over MPs defying injunctions
• RPC Privacy>> A former judge reflects on privacy injunctions
• Inforrm>>Case Law: Goodwin v NGN – Privacy, Intrusion and Novelty – Mark Thomson
• Press Gazette>>Zac Goldsmith defends taking out super-injunction
• Index on Censorship>> Mr Justice Eady on balancing acts
• Inforrm>>Hiding Behind Anonymity – Lucy Middleton
• Private Eye: The Sun & Free Speech

Copyright

• Out-Law.com>>Company acting over use of newspaper snippets did not have right to sue, says US court

Reporting restrictions

• HTFP>> Youths named after reporter’s court challenge

Freedom of expression

• Jack of Kent>>The unanswered questions for Dyfed Powys Police
• Press Gazette>>Photographer covering mass brawl outside court arrested

Want to contribute to Meeja Law?

Meeja Law would love to host guest articles by journalists / lawyers  / students – or anyone with an interest in media law and ethics. If you’re interested please contact jt.townend@gmail.com.

You can find a full stream of aggregated media law news via @medialawUK on Twitter; and Meeja Law tweets go out via @meejalaw.

Please contact me via @jtownend or jt.townend [at] gmail.com with ideas, tips and event notifications. Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/.

I found the relatively new blog Inforrm a very useful bridge before I got hold of a university log-in, but even with my newly acquired access to legal journals, the site remains an extremely useful way of digesting media law news.

Informm has written an introductory guide to blogging in the UK, referencing several other blog lists, which I heartily recommend. It includes its “personal suggestions for of UK blawgs – focussed on those at the ‘serious’ end of the scale, providing useful (and regularly updated) information for practitioners or with some relevance to those with an interest in media related legal issues.”

In today’s media round-up Inforrm picks up on the BBC’s report about a solicitor’s firm which says it has “taken forward six defamation actions involving Facebook in the last nine months.”

Richard Wilson, blogger at Don’t Get Fooled Again, has rightly criticised the article for some of its flaws (via Twitter) but even at the risk of exacerbating the problem, I’m glad to see the issue raised.

There needs to be investigation in this area, but from very informal anecdotal evidence, I’d say that many Facebook users are unware of the libel risks. This is something that should be addressed, through further research and better online guidance.

“Dear social networks, if you change privacy settings, please ask us to opt *in*, not opt *out*,” a colleague and I pleaded in a blog post written last May. “Social networks should NEVER set the default option to share users’ information,” we argued.

Our concern was about the way social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Friendster and Google, stored and used members’ personal address book data.

For journalists, we concluded, the ‘links’ and ‘recommendations’ created by this data use could potentially destroy or expose relationships with confidential sources.

You can read more about our address importing research at these links:

• Journalism.co.uk >> How social networks are using your email address book data – and what it means for journalists

• Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog >> It’s time for social networks to tell us how our data is used

• Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog >> #snprivacy: Journalists’ privacy plea to social networks

• Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog >> Will Google use email contact lists to build a new social network?

We were worried about social networks’ lack of understanding and in some cases, lack of engagement with us.

And now, four months on from our investigation into address book importing, the ‘opt in’ issue has reared its troublesome head again, with the introduction of Facebook Places.

It was a case of online deja vu when I spotted this Twitter comment made by blogger and author Zoe Margolis:

@girlonetrack – I’m so sick of Facebook making users opt-out from, rather than opt-in to, the site’s settings. FULL privacy should be the DEFAULT. #FBPlaces

There are parallels with the address book importing issue. Once again, users are able to share an individual’s personal information, without that individual’s consent.

Any location based service has privacy issues for journalists who need to protect their whereabouts and activity.

UK users can already see their Places privacy settings, but so far it has only been rolled out as a feature in the US.

Fortunately for us Brits, TechCrunch has provided a detailed description of how the settings work for US users in three sets of circumstances.

Facebook says it is ‘opt-in’ but TechCrunch’s account contradicts that. Jason Kincaid reports:

Earlier today we had a bit of a fire-drill at TechCrunch Headquarters. As I checked into TCHQ on Facebook Places, I also tagged a few of my coworkers, fully expecting their checkins to be delayed until they actually opted into the feature for the first time (unlike some of Facebook’s past controversial feature launches, you have to Opt-In before you can be tagged in Places).

Except, as we quickly discovered, you really don’t have to opt in before you can be tagged. As soon as I checked in on Places, Facebook published News Feed items to my friends indicating that I’d checked in with my coworkers — even the coworkers who hadn’t yet opted into Places. My coworker received an email asking him to confirm the tag, but he had never clicked it. And yet, many of his friends were being notified that he’d just checked into Techcrunch HQ with me.

On the basis of TechCrunch’s findings, another of its writers re-graded the service from ‘B’ to ‘C-’.

In my previous dealings with Facebook, I have found them extremely responsive (whereas press enquiries to Twitter went unanswered) and the social network’s PR representative, Sophy Silver, is engaging with users about Facebook Places on Twitter.

“Just wanted to confirm you knew this was an optional feature? you can only be tagged if you opt in,” she tweeted, for example.

But I don’t understand her claim that “Places is an opt-in feature”, given TechCrunch’s report that even without opting in you can be tagged in place updates that appear in mutual friends’ news feeds, even if not on the ‘place’ page itself.

I’m also a little uncomfortable with the insinuation of another of Sophy’s tweets:

If you don’t trust your friends it is simple to turn off. For most there is a lot of value in being able to share an experience with friends

It’s not about whether or not you trust the people you know, it’s about the basic principle of keeping certain information offline for your security and peace of mind.

If an individual does not want to share geographical information about their activities, they should be able to make that choice. And your closest friends might have very different notions of privacy and safety.

I’ve asked Sophy to explain the ‘opt-in’ issue and I’ll update when I get some more information back.

I’ve added a new challenge to the Help Me Investigate group that sparked off the whole ‘opt-in’ investigation. You can join it at this link.

Update: Sophy tweeted me this:

No you have to actively opt-in to use Places. once you do default setting is Friends Only but can be changed to wider

But that doesn’t explain the confusion TechCrunch has identified.

Further reading

• Gawker: The First Thing You Should Do With Facebook Places: Don’t Let Other People Tag You

• GigaOm: Facebook Turns the Privacy Fear Meter Up to 11

• Guardian.co.uk: Does technology pose a threat to our private life?