Articles

• Vaciago, Giuseppe, ISPs and Civil Liberties: the ”Reasonable Expectation of Privacy" of Twitter’s User from People v. Harris, Finding the right balance between privacy and security, CRI 2012, 137-141
  On January 26, 2012, the New York County District Attorney’s Office sent a subpoena to Twitter, Inc. seeking to obtain the Twitter records of a user suspected of having participated in the ”Occupy Wall Street" movement. Twitter refused to provide the law enforcement officers with the information requested and sought to quash the subpoena. The Criminal Court of New York confirmed the claim made by the New York County District Attorney’s Office, rejecting the arguments put forward by Twitter, stating that tweets are, by definition, public, and that a warrant is not required in order to compel Twitter to disclose them. Twitter’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court; before the final verdict in this case, the interesting debate that this case brought about prompts considerations of the grey zone that exists between privacy and security.

• McLean, Susan, Overseas Website Operators Beware? – The International Reach of the UK Defamation Laws, Status quo and potential changes by pending Defamation Bill, CRI 2012, 141-147
  From the early days of the internet, it became clear that the potential for defamation claims would rise, given the increased ability of individuals to publish their opinions to a wide audience, often with little or no prior review or vetting. Lawmakers have been grappling ever since with the challenge of applying existing defamation laws to the internet. This has been further exacerbated by the rise of social media sites such as Twitter that have enabled a form of even more raw and immediate communication. Users often pay little or no attention to the legal implications of a tweet or blog post. Of course, the questions of jurisdiction and law are brought into sharp focus by these cases because the internet does not respect international borders; a blog post or a tweet made by a user in one jurisdiction are easily accessible to a user in another jurisdiction. Given the UK’s claimant-friendly libel laws, in recent years many (including the UK government) have become increasingly concerned about a perceived rise in so-called ‘libel tourism’, with foreign claimants opting to sue for libel in the UK, even where the claimant has limited connections to the UK.This article outlines what website operators based outside the UK need to know about UK defamation laws and what steps they should take to try to keep on the right side of the law.

• de Castro, Ignacio / Toscano, Leandro, Resolution of ICT Disputes through Mediation and Arbitration, Cost- and Time-Efficient Alternatives to Court Litigation, CRI 2012, 147-153
  Parties to ICT transactions must anticipate the right means to resolve potential disputes out of court in a time- and cost-effective manner to avoid lengthy and costly court proceedings. The experience of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center demonstrates that mediation and arbitration leave ample space for the parties to settle their disputes and to achieve results tailored to the special circumstances of their relationship. This article presents first a comparison of cost and length of litigation of ICT disputes (I.) before exploring in detail the key features of the WIPO mediation and arbitration (II.).

• CRI 2012, 153-159
• CRI 2012, 159-162
• CRI 2012, 162-165
• CRI 2012, 165-167

About the Authors

• About the Authors, CRI 2012, 168