Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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Twitter’s No Place For A Lawyer With An “Aggressive and Zealous Attitude”

April 23, 2013

Image via returntomanhood.org

Via the Toronto Star:

A Toronto criminal lawyer’s Twitter account has sparked outrage online after several offensive tweets were posted in the wake of the Boston bombing.

The tweets were sent last week from Twitter account @Dasilvalaw, which has since been deleted, though several retweets can still be found online.

“I pray for the suspects. May they slay the police army of satan. Death to all police!” reads one posting sent from @Dasilvalaw. Other tweets from that account contained vitriolic responses to offended Twitter users, including “am praying that u get violently raped. May cancer be upon u.!!!”

The lawyer, David Da Silva, 34, said in an emailed response sent Monday to the Star that he is “not the author of any such tweets.”

Asked in a follow-up email if his account had been hacked, the defence lawyer said he is “having this matter investigated at this time.”

Lawyer Nadia Liva, who sent an email to the Star saying she is acting as his counsel, said he is “very concerned” and “we are currently investigating the tweets, which were not authored by Mr. Da Silva.”

I don’t know Da Silva, either personally or professionally, but his website bio is generic: (more…)

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Posted in Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, lawyers, Legal Ethics, legal marketing, professional, professionalism, Rules of Professional Conduct, social media, Twitter | 17 Comments »

Matthew Lafferman, “Do Facebook and Twitter Make You a Public Figure?: How to Apply the Gertz Public Figure Doctrine to Social Media”

March 13, 2013

Matthew Lafferman (JD Candidate, George Mason University – School of Law) has published “Do Facebook and Twitter Make You a Public Figure?: How to Apply the Gertz Public Figure Doctrine to Social Media”,  Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2012. Here’s the abstract:

In Gertz v. Welch, the Supreme Court expanded First Amendment protections to defamation law by requiring a plaintiff who qualified as a public figure to prove a higher burden of proof to recover for damages under a defamation suit. The Court relied on two major rationales to delineate the Gertz doctrine: public figures “voluntarily exposed themselves to increased risk of injury” and had “significantly greater access to the channels of effective communication.” Applying this doctrine to online media poses challenges, specifically when applied to social media platforms. Many scholars have recognized that social media users have equal access to the same basic media features, rendering the Gertz Court’s access-to the-media rationale inapplicable when applied to social media. A 216% rise in defamation suits against Internet users in the last three years alone, due to the recent discovery that most homeowner’s insurance policies cover libel liability, signals an almost inevitable rise in defamation suits that will eventually force courts to face the challenge of applying the Gertz public figure doctrine to social media.

This Comment offers an approach that reconciles the problems of applying the public figure doctrine to social media. This Comment argues that courts should require defendants to overcome certain initial presumptions by clear and convincing evidence before designating a social media user an involuntary public figure or a general public figure. Moreover, when recommending an approach for courts to identify voluntary activity on a social network for limited-purpose public figures, courts should avoid defining mere access to social media as voluntary activity and instead conclude such access is an extension of an individual’s private life. This approach would allow courts to apply much of the currently existing public figure doctrine to social media and help courts avoid the negative legal and policy consequences of abolishing the doctrine altogether.

A pdf copy of the paper is available for download at SSRN here.

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Posted in defamation, Defamation Law, Facebook, First Amendment, free speech, Freedom of expression, freedom of speech, Gertz v. Welch, Public Figure, SCOTUS, social media, Twitter, United States, United States Supreme Court | Leave a Comment »

Kelly Lynn Anders, “Ethical Exits: When Lawyers and Judges Must Sever Ties on Social Media”

March 13, 2013

Kelly Lynn Anders has published “Ethical Exits: When Lawyers and Judges Must Sever Ties on Social Media”, Charleston Law Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 2012-2013.  The abstract reads:

This article addresses the very recent trend of requiring lawyers and judges to sever ties on social media, the professional implications of doing so, relevant rules governing judicial and attorney conduct, and a discussion of “best practices” for lawyers and judges to follow when social media connections must be broken. Recent opinions from states that have issued social media directives in this area will also be discussed, along with a brief overview of three of the most commonly used social media sites at the time of the publication of this article – Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Through this discussion and analysis, one theme will continue to resurface – the increasingly pressing need for guidance and clarity in the MRPC and MRJC so that expectations involving social media connections will be clear, uniform, and much easier to manage for lawyers, judges, and anyone with whom they may communicate, either professionally or personally. Such clear-cut guidance would also decrease the need for severing ties that should not have been formed in the first place, thereby also serving to contribute to the preservation of solid and favorable reputations of all jurists and counselors in an increasingly virtual world.

Download a pdf copy of the article via SSRN here.

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Posted in ABA, American Bar Association, ethics, Facebook, internet, internet law, Judge, judging, Kelly Lynn Anders, LinkedIn, MRJC, MRPC, social media, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

UPDATED: #BOREALISGATE: Why Has SPACE Channel Removed #Borealis Blog Comments?

January 25, 2013

VIC AND TAQ TALKING ABOUt BOREALIS

I’m a fan of the SPACE Channel.

I enjoy watching many of the entertaining sci-fi and genre programs SPACE Channel has to offer, including Supernatural, Merlin, and Doctor Who, to name a few. I also enjoy watching  INNERSpace, hosted by Teddy Wilson, Cynthia Loyst and Ajay Fry to catch up on the latest news about  ’film, television, video games, technology, comic books, gadgets, and all things genre.’

I even don’t mind that @SPACEChannel blocked me on Twitter for my spamtastic vigorous support of the #Borealis Twitter campaign led by @TyOlsson, the star of Borealis (link to the spacecast.com webcast) and his co-star, Patrick Gallagher (@PatrickGman) among others of the talented Borealis cast and crew, and the legion of their online fans. I remain undaunted by the lack of response from Bell Media, the parent company of SPACE Channel, or its President, Mr. Kevin Crull to whom I wrote an open letter:  UPDATED: Open Letter to Bell Media’s President, Kevin Crull: #Borealis: A Missed Opportunity to Promote Great Canadian Content.

However, many of us are confused and upset by a tragicomedy of errors —including website and webcast technical glitches, lack of availability to non-Canadian viewers and programming delays -all of which have the telltale marks of a haunting or demonic possession that has plagued an otherwise successful launch of the Borealis 2-hour pilot two weeks ago.

Aside from the Twitter campaign, many of Ty Olsson’s fans have posted comments on Facebook and the SPACE Channel blog (in fact there were about 267 comments the last time I checked).  Dave Maltman (Twitter: @dmalted), whom I describe as a fellow #Borealis mercenary (or. Taqtician), first noticed that the Borealis blog post containing hundreds of favourable comments recently disappeared; well, deleted is probably more accurate.

There is a possibility that the removal of the Borealis blog comments is a technical problem; however, it is curious that among all of the hundreds of INNERSpace blog posts, only the Borealis post returns the following error message:

SPACE Borealis Blog Post Server Error message

I remain confident that there is a simple explanation as to why the Borealis blog post link with comments is borked and no longer available on the SPACE Channel website. Of course, if SPACE Channel wishes to offer up the explanation, we’re all ears.

I’m sure SPACE Channel and Bell Media don’t want to get on this guy’s bad side:

Borealis Ty Olsson Meme

UPDATE:
Well, folks, here’s SPACE Channel’s response to @leessaa1 on Twitter this morning on why they took down the blog post (and, effective today, also the video link):

SPACEchannel SPACEchannel on Twitter

SPACE Channel Twitter

smh

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Posted in Bell Media, Bell Media PR, Borealis, Kevin Crull, Patrick Gallagher, Ty Olsson | 1 Comment »

UPDATED: Open Letter to Bell Media’s President, Kevin Crull: #Borealis: A Missed Opportunity to Promote Great Canadian Content

January 17, 2013

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Kevin W. Crull
President
Bell Media

Re: #Borealis: A Missed Opportunity to Promote Great Canadian Content  

Dear Mr. Crull:

I write to you in my personal capacity as a Canadian citizen and an avid supporter of Canadian content in broadcasting.

As President of Bell Media, self-described as “Canada’s premier multimedia company“, Canadians will be intimately familiar with your stable of conventional channels like CTV, Canada’s #1 television network, as well as over 29 specialty channels (including SPACE), 33 radio stations, and over 55 websites, Sympatico.ca and Dome Productions.

Most of your loyal Bell TV subscribers will appreciate that business decisions are primarily driven by ratings and profit.

However, there are other two other factors that impact on whether a particular television show should be renewed or picked up as a series. (more…)

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Posted in Arctic Sovereignty, Bell Media PR, Borealis, Climate Change, Geopolitics, Kevin Crull, Patrick Gallagher, Science Fiction, The Space Channel, Ty Olsson | 11 Comments »

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