Schiff vs. Bock

This is another defamatory case that happened in September 2006. A woman from Florida sues against Louisiana woman who posted malicious messages on the internet including that she is a crook and a fraud.

But what is interesting about this case is that despite Schiff (Plaintiff) knows the defendant has no money to pay, she sues against defendant and said she wanted to make to those who unfairly criticize others on the internet. She said I am sure that defendant has not even one million to pay. But the message is strong and clear to people who are using the internet to destroy other people that they don’t like.

The dispute between these two women arose when Bock (Defendant) wanted Schiff who operated in a referral service called Parents Universal Resource Experts to withdraw her sons from her ex-husband. But, Schiff referred Bock to a consultant. Afterward, Bock became criminal of Schiff and posted negative messages about her on internet.

In court, the defendant had nothing to say only she said that I have even no money to have an attorney. But the court condemned her to pay $11’300’000 to Schiff.

Source:www.usatoday.com

Defamation case

In this and next posts I will write defamation cases. This case in reported in July 16, 2008. A man called Robert Griffin took Patrick Sullivan to court because of defamation that Patrick did on him. He (Patrick) has posted false and malicious allegations about Griffin including that he is a stalker, abuser, killer, coward and some other things. Since the defendant could not defend on himself and these allegations damaged Griffin’s reputation, the decision of the court about defendant was that he should pay $150’000 in general. And the court threatened the defendant by injunction if he continue to post any other defamatory messages.

source:www.rexxfield.com

Email Policies

  

As we know, email is a tool for communication and users are allowed to use it in lawful manner. But there are some risks related to it. Like if you send emails with any offensive, defamatory or malicious remarks so you are seen as criminal. If you send confidential information unlawfully again you are a criminal. Even if you copy a message without permission, then you did a copyright infringement. And also sending an attachment that contains a virus cause you to be a liable because it is strictly prohibited by law to send such emails and there would be punishments for such acts.

Here I will only list some policies relating to email. These policies are as follow:

Commercial that is guidelines on how to right effective emails. The other one is productivity and the third one is being legal. It means prohibiting inappropriate email contents and warns about upcoming risks.

I think email policy is more important for companies to prevent from potential threats. And the companies should train their staff to obey and pay attention to all mentioned policies.

Source:www.emailreplies.com

A case about defamation

 In this post, I want to write a case about defamation to understand more about it.

A woman called Sybil Denise Ballow was accused to post false and malicious information or allegations against Gene Cooly, a man who she barely knew him. She posted these allegations on the Topix.com, a common site like other social networks.

She posted on topix.com that Gene Cooly is a drug addicted criminal and pedophile among other things. When she was in the court and asked to tell about her defenses, she told that she accepts her crime and has no defense on it. Then the court condemned her to $404,000 that should be paid by her.

So you obviously see that there happened a defamation crime and if I go through defamation elements so for the first element, it means Refer I should say that she directly pointed out to a person called Gene Cooly.

The second element is publishing that in this case we saw that the allegations was posted and published on Topix.com, The world’s largest community news website.

The third element is false; I mean she couldn’t prove that those allegation were true.

And the last element is that her allegations injured the plaintiff’s reputation and caused him to lose his job and even leaving his living town. Besides it leads to have problems with his fiancé’s family.

Considering all elements and not having defense, the court has summoned Sybil to be awarded $ 404’000.

source:http://www.georgia-trial-lawyers.com

Consumer Fraud

This is a term you all are familiar with and may be encountered to it. This term simply refers to any intentionally deceptive acts that harm the consumers. And the criminals may face both civil and criminal penalties depending on the type of the crime. Nowadays some businesses are doing their business with the intention of tricking their customers out of their money online and offline. Some of these businesses are like banking or online banking that the problems and complaints may be sometimes about handling debits and credits to checking accounts.

Or the next type is internet or better cybercrimes like identity theft, that this kinds of complaints regarding to internet are increasing that this raise causes the governments to legislate some strict laws to investigate these crimes and also launch the laws concerning consumer protection. As you know frauds relating to internet occur in chat rooms, emails, web sites and so on. The fraudsters can easily make their massages real and credible even it is hard to realize the differences between fact and fiction one.

That is why I think people should be cautious before investing their money in any opportunity they found online.

source:http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

What is phishing?

Have you heard about it? The number of persons, who have encountered this kind of crime, is increasing day-to-day. First, I will give you a simple definition about phishing that is when online confidential and important information of a person is obtained and stolen by another. This stolen information is for example usernames and passwords, credit card information, bank accounts, number and other personal information such as birth dates. Although many people think that phishers are amateurs, I should say that phishers are creative persons that can use any kind of technology and invest in it.

There is a famous case about phishing happened recently. This case is about PayPal which in it the phisher sent emails to people, asking them to call and there was a telephone number within those emails. When people called them, they were requested to provide their credit card details for getting their account verified. Something important about this case was that the mails which were sent to people had no response address or internet link and when users called the phone, and then they were greeted by an automated voice saying “please type your 16-digit numbers”. Although the number provided on the email was in America and because so many people around the world are dealing with PayPal, they were simply tricked to give their information to the phisher as well.

This case brings concerns for those companies who are dealing with their customers online. I think when things such this case happened so people should be more aware of the dangers related to these types of scams. And also I think they should be more aware of various types of phishing scams that are taking place on the internet and learning how they can prevent themselves can reduce the number of victims.

source:http://www.cybercellmumbai.com

In this part I will compare an offline that means in real life and online stalking.

There are some similarities and differences. One of similarities is that in both situations most victims are women and most stalkers are men. The next one is stalkers generally have the desire to control their victims. And some of the differences are that for example there is limitation as location for stalkers in offline stalking. It means in offline stalking it is needed that victims be located in the same geographic area as stalkers but, there is no limitation in online stalking. Cyber stalkers can be anywhere.

The other one is that cyber stalkers have lower barriers to harassment and threats and he does not need to physically meet the victim. But there is some offered simple prevention of being stalked. For instance, not to share personal information online and being cautious about online meeting.  

So, I can say that this issue, cyber stalking, is a huge problem that needs to be considered and taken care of fast by governments. We are still in danger of such crimes even though some countries have made laws that criminalize cyber stalking.

source:www.ccmostwanted.com

Stalking

In this part the discussable subject is cyber stalking that these days we heard a lot about it in news.

Cyber stalking simply refers to behavior of stalking other people by the use of internet, email or any electric communication devices. These threatening behaviors are such as following a person; leave written massages or objects, identity theft, online verbal abuse and sending damaging email from victims to people who know him. There are some facts about cyber stalking, for instance; individuals who do stalking think they are anonymous and can get away with anything. the most happened cyber stalking are not related to romantic or love stories but the majority of the cases that happen are stranger to stranger. And statistics show over 80% of victims is women. It is obvious when these devices like computers and internet become more popular so naturally cyber stalking is expected to increase. It is important to know the main reasons that cause cyber stalkers to stalk; one of the reasons is sexual harassment that this type is the most common type of stalking online .the online harasser has not fear for physical relation and does not have to leave the comfort of his home to find and harass targets. The other one is that stalkers think the victim or target of their desire is in love with them. This behavior starts when the stalkers will be rejected from the target. The other reason is hate or revenge that the stalkers do it to take revenge on victims.

The last one is that usually victims are selected randomly by someone they do not know. In this part the harasser or stalker wants to show his skills to themselves and their friends.

In future posts I will continue the subject of cyber stalking more widely.

Importance of terms and condition

In this part the subject that I am going to write about is terms and conditions that all websites generally should have them to decrease the risk of being damaged by visitors. When a website is accessible to all people, so the owner has not any control over who uses the sites and how the information of the site is used by users. Terms play the role of a contract for owner with users. For example, for websites which do a business and provide any types of goods or services, having these terms and condition will control the process of payment or delivering of that good or service. And visitors are required to click to accept these condition and terms.

Generally there are some reasons that show having terms and conditions are important and essential. First, with this reality that there is business online and with a number of online customers anywhere so the governing law will be on the website owner’s terms and will be according to their country jurisdiction. So there is no ambiguity despite location of the buyer of goods and services. And also when website that provide goods and services, then it is important to outline that these goods or services are provided upon which term and conditions. These terms and conditions should outline the extent of the website’s liability for these goods and services.

I think website owners who are doing businesses with their customers should try to reduce possible risks by providing strongly worded website terms and conditions.

source:http://www.vanksen.com

Privacy Issues

If you read my previous post, I discussed about privacy policy that it comes to website which users give out the personal details on it.

In this part I am going to speak about issues of internet privacy. One of the issues, more in case of emailing sites is about whether third parties are allowed to store or read the email without the informed permission or consent. The other issue is whether the site that collects the customer’s personal information should store or share it. Some deny the existence of internet privacy while others insist the necessity of it. It is obvious that the intent of internet privacy is achieving a controlled disclosure of user’s personal information and complete anonymity is not the aim of internet privacy. When users connect the internet, they connect to it by an IP address. And for security reasons, a website may track these addresses. Some websites may collect the non-personally identifiable information of their users. It means this information that users inter cannot be used to uniquely identify a person. This form of collecting information is acceptable. And some people prefer one form of privacy such as anonymity to the internet. It means allowing them to use fake or anonymous information. But in these situations, sometimes the cases of being stalked will happen.

I think internet privacy is needed an important in revelation of personally identifiable information but where the privacy puts the internet ethics on stake or in danger so it should be limited.    

source: http://www.e-businessethics.com

Privacy Policy

Anytime the personal information is being collected online the visitors and users of the site should pay attention that what kind of information in being collected and how and why this information is collected. In some sites this maybe straight forward but there is a need to prevent the misuse of information. A privacy or confidentiality policy is found directly on a website. In fact, every website should have a privacy policy. When customers enter their information into a website they may not be sure and have worries that for what their information will be used and also how their information is retained.

So, having a privacy policy on your site will ensure the visitors and customers that their entered information will not use for any unwanted and unfair purposes. In addition, a privacy policy will force the website owners to secure the personal information that is stored and it is important that privacy policy be written and very clear to website visitors.

I think every person who is going to run a business website needs to be aware of misuses of information that happen intentionally or unwontedly. Such as using email addresses to send spam mail or misuse of credit card details. So, the implementing of these policies is a great attempt to prevent such crimes and also to have a successful business website.

continue...

Jurisdiction in passive websites:

There are personal jurisdictions for the publication of the information which can affect the population of the person. As I mentioned there is no jurisdiction on passive sites although some courts have done some analysis to find jurisdiction even when passive websites are used by utilizing an effect.

Now jurisdiction in passive and active sites:

If you read my previous posts so you noticed that these websites provide various facilities for users so courts for determining jurisdiction should find out the interactivity level in exchanging of information. Some of cases are as below: asking money from plaintiff by threatening him by registering domain name of plaintiff by non-resident defendant.

The other one is websites that provide advertisement of goods that are used by many users. And the other is doing business via e-commerce.

 Jurisdiction in active websites:

These websites have personal jurisdiction and one case is as bellow;

For instance websites which provide information about the available products in storage, events that happen in near future and the facility for the user to have online purchase.

In next post I will discuss about cases that contains no jurisdiction and also in which condition there is no jurisdiction in passive and active websites.

Jurisdiction

From two decades ago until now, there is a rapid increasing on number of users and over trillion transactions took place by online commerce. So, these vast uses of internet and transactions bring the fact that there are lawyers who have clients regarding the online exchange of information and also selling and buying goods that become disputable because of internet.

Jurisdiction law, a concept that is using by court is divided in three parts. The first are those sites which provide information with no exchange of information from any of visitors. These sites are called passive sites. There is no jurisdiction in these kinds of websites.

The second is website that allows visitors to exchange information. These are passive and active sites. In this type, the level of interactivity will be analyzed by court to provide Jurisdiction and the last law is for website where businesses take place and customers are able to sell and buy the products.

Jurisdiction is taking place for websites with high interactivity.

I am going to talk more about Jurisdiction in coming posts.

Simply Defamation means speeches in which social form is threatened and is divided in two parts. Libel which is when defamatory materials are published via printed or written format and the other one Slander is when spoken words are the tools to defamation. In this part I try to speak how cyber space can be a place for defamation.

One of the issues is publication of problematic speech via internet. When cyber space becomes a place for individual activities, the popularity of cyber space increased when the number of internet users is rising. So in this situation, one of facilities for any user is connection to the internet and be an online publisher. There are some other ways that become problematic. One is the picture that post on a photo sharing websites to show different face. The other way is destroying the reputation of others for example, showing the wrong face of a person because of revenge or any other reason. Or other way would be getting the private information of one individual and posted them online.

I think that increasing the number of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and other networks increases the probability of defamation. Although social networks have many positive effects on people’s social living, it provides a virtual world that everybody can infiltrate the others’ privacy and threat the reputation of victims in cyber space. The focal sad point is that individuals can defame others and conceal behind a virtual name or ID.

source: http://www.writing.upenn.edu

Personal Information Protection

Jack McCoy, a person who paying back all the loans that had to apply for his education received a letter from his university that the laptop computer with all his account information is stolen. The university set up a credit monitoring service for him, but it was expired after one year and he was worried that he is still at risk for being on the thousands of Dollars that someone using his identity could spend.

This was not the only case in 2008 because the data for more people was stolen from there and this was the largest breach of its kind. It is obvious that thieves will not commit identity thefts themselves but they sell the information to those who can make money from these identities.

Most of the credit card companies and banks offer some resources if customers are victim of the internet fraud. But when the company is the victim of crime, then it is unclear that who the main responsible of it is. Some events happen annually in lots of universities and businesses because of a simple mistake or the criminal acts. Many laws dealing with internet protection are not always able to catch up to evolving cybercrimes but, the Personal Data Privacy Act 2009 would require companies to notify anyone affected by a security breach in U.S.

 From my point of view, the importance of personal information protection is increasing daily in result of raise in using of internet. It means that both individuals and also organizations such as banks or loan companies must be careful about the information. Governments must have strict laws and implement them seriously to protect information against theft or misusing.

P.S: www.topics.cnn.com

Cyber Terrorism

Nowadays, computer and internet are becoming vital and essential requirements of our life. As a matter of fact, the philosophy behind internet and computer is to create facility and provide a situation for both individuals and governments to make life easier. But internet, like many other facilities, has positive and also negative sides. Evidences show a sharp increase of criminal acts against individuals and governments in cyber space.Although countries spend tremendous money to protect themselves against cyber attacks yearly, every day we can read news about crimes in cyber space.

One of the newest challenges for modern societies is cyber terrorism. According to the FBI definition, cyber terrorism is the premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs, and data which result in violence against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.

 In modern world, the definition of many things has been changed. One of the negative aspects of human life which has been changed in term of definition is terrorism. In fact, internet simulates a virtual battlefield for countries to attack against each other. Possible targets for cyber terrorist include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers, and water systems. 

For example, in first days of 2011, Iran claimed that Israel creates a virus called Stuxnet to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. 

Governments or individuals use cyber terrorism method due to its advantages rather than its traditional method. Terrorism in cyber space affects a large number of people and also they can hide their real personality and location. Also it is very difficult to track action in cyber space. And the main point is that cyber terrorism is cheaper than its traditional way.

The threat of cyber attack has forced countries to doing against cyber terrorism. For example, the Interpol members help each other against cyber terrorism and also train their personnel. Also, ASEAN countries are going to create a regional cyber crime unit.

resource: www.crime-research.org

              www.telegraph.co.uk

Linking

The issue of deep linking presents a number of legal (copyright) issues. It is linking directly to a sub-page of a side rather than the home page. The owners of web sites have concern about deep linking. The problems in this case includes avoiding ads on sites, loss of computer pacity and other problems resulting from deep linking. And also, the use of framing that refers to web pages which are divided into multiple areas that each of those areas can contain material from other remote sites.

To be frank, many web sites owners earn more money from their advertisings. So, bypassing the main and initial pages that have ads will cause to decrease value and also will threaten the profitability of the site.

One example is Ticket Master vs. Tickets.com that some tickets are exclusive to Ticket Master so ticket.com created some links directly to the sales pages on Ticket Master. This arrangement threatened Ticket Master advertising income.

Generally speaking, all site owners should be careful about web pages that confuse the visitors as to ownership and also should avoid web pages that take an unfair advantage of other site content.        

source:http://www.bna.com

Copyright law in Iran

          One of the misconceptions about Iran is that this country has no acts under copyright law. Unawareness of law and maybe weakness in news transmission of related organizations breed lots of infringements in this country. And each year, there are more complaints about violation of copyright law against real and legal personalities in Iran.

          For example, the last case was about a scenario of “Yusuf the Prophet” directed by Farajollah Salahshoor. In this case, Shahbeddin Taheri ,and author, claimed that this film and its scenario was written based on his own scenario without his permission. 

  

It is considerable that court found Salahshoor as guilty and he was condemned to fine.

• But, how law defines the author’s right in Iran?

          High Council of Informatics (HCI) in 1992 prepared a draft of copyright law by devoting 50’000’000 Rials to this study that last as long as 18 months.

In 1995, Majlis Shora Islamic approved computer crime law offered by HCI including information theft, data destruction and program damage caused by viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and logic bombs, hacking and unauthorized access and also, the law of protecting domestic software producers.

          The article 74 of the E-Commerce Law declares that based on protecting domestic software producers, if a person found guilty under this article, he is liable to maximum 50’000’000 Rials and three months to one year imprisonment.

As far as Iran is not a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, or a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) this law is not protecting the foreign software producers. Although, if Iran wants to be an official member of WTO, it should implements the copyright law completely in that country.

Source:

·        http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Iran_and_copyright_issues

·        http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc126.html

This weblog is created for the purposes of assignment for the subject BYL 7134, Cyberlaw by Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Malaysia. The materials posted on this weblog are for the purposes of the assignment as well as study and non-profit research only. Appropriate acknowledgements to the materials that do not belong to the weblog owner have been publicly made. If you are the author or a copyright or a trademark owner of any of the articles or images or graphics or pictures or any material posted in this weblog herein and you object to such posting on any grounds, including copyright or trademark infringement, please contact me and I will take your material down. I state herein that I am relying on the doctrine of fair use. “

Nigerian woman jailed for online scam

Okotie, 26, a Nigerian woman studying at a private college in Kuala Lumpur is said to be the first to convicted under the Penal Code for such a scam.
Based on Asiaone.com she attempted to cheat a government officer in 2009 through some emails by the name of  "Microsoft Internet Promotion" saying that he was a winner of the lucky draw. Through the second email he has received, he was asked to pay a processing fee of $2'750 to deliver the prize money to his house and Okotie claimed to be the representative of the delivery company and settled an appointment with the victim( government officer) to take the money and also she asked him to send the copy of his identity card and related documents.
But suspecting something amiss, the officer contacted police and she was arrested for future investigation.
This Nigerian woman was jailed for a year and three months and also is condemned to pay a hefty fine.


According to the mentioned subjects of Cyber Law, this act is categorized under the Penal Code, online fraud, sec415.

Opening a window to discussion

Most people think they are not involved in cyber law issues. Others know computer crimes only as hacking but these are merely some misunderstandings about cyber space issues. 
In this weblog I tend to discuss more about this subject. In today's world, daily increase in using of computers and internet lead to appear some new phenomenons in social life, social interaction and also social networks, trade, etc. 
As we know, these phenomenons innovations or better technology devices around us have some affective and serious advantages and disadvantages based on the use of users. computers and internet could be two of them.
Primarily, the goal of internet and computer or technology overall is to facilitate some aspects of living but, day-to-day we witness some misusing of computers that I am going to discuss about it in future posts.