Social Networking Sites and the Legal Framework in the UK - Literature review Example

?Social Networking Sites and the Legal Framework in the UK Introduction Social networking sites are growing in use and popularity in the present age all over the world. Much of the expansion in the use of social networking sites has occurred after the enactment of the laws that regulate its use in general and the signing on the European Convention of Human Rights in particular. However, many changes in the use of social networking sites have taken place ever since which imparts the need to study the extent to which the legal framework in the UK protects the innocent users of the social networking sites. “As such, it is important for the [legal] profession to keep up-to-date with developments in social media which present real opportunities if harnessed effectively” (Law Society, 2012). About 50 per cent of the total population of children in Britain between 9 and 12 years of age use the social networking sites in spite of the established limits of minimum age. According to EUKidsOnline, at least one in every five children has a profile on Facebook despite the fact that the rules require children to be 13 years old to have a Facebook profile (BBC, 2011). The matter of safety of the innocent users of social networking sites like children is debatable. This paper draws a critical analysis of the argument that social networking sites pose threats to the safety of children. An Overview of the Laws in UK related to Social Networking Sites Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998 Organizations in the UK that deal with the information about living as well as the identifiable people are obliged to show compliance with the DPA 1998 provisions. Service providers have to be very careful while processing children’s information to comply with the DPA 1998 provisions. This includes the providers of social networking sites that gather the users’ personal data to enable the registration. Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008 A law was passed in the year 2008 which is not yet fully enforced. According to this law, certain provisions have been made to enable the Secretary of State to increase the sex offenders’ requirements of notification. Currently, the details that the sex offenders are required to notify to the police include but are not limited to their name and address. However, the new requirements of notification also include the email addresses’ registration. The government has proposed that these blacklisted email addresses be forwarded to the social networking sites so that they can check the email addresses against the ones in their user base and accordingly, deactivate the matching accounts. Guidance Report by the Home Office Task Force on Child Protection The Home Office Task Force on Child Protection published a note of guidance on the Internet in April, 2008 whose objective was to enhance the safety of children using the social networking sites. Along with serving as a resource of education for the parents, the guidance provides the providers of the social networking services with recommendations on ways to operate the sites in such a way that safety of the users is maximized. The guidance report of the Home Office acknowledges the fact that no environment is completely safe for children in any circumstances, though risks can be reduced by changing the default settings of privacy for the users under 18 years of age to private, making the private profiles of the users below 18 years of age non-searchable without the users’ consent, clear declaration of the information that would be publicly available that what would be private at the time of registration, declaration of simple and user-friendly ways of reporting abuse, discouragement for children to provide excessive information about themselves, and establishment of a system of sharing of reports of abuse between the law enforcement agencies and the industry (The In-House Lawyer, 2008, p. 82). In addition to that, the government of the UK “set guidelines requiring the sharing of the ‘email addresses’ of registered sex offenders to social networking sites to make it harder for sex offenders to groom children online” (Davidson and Gottschalk, 2011, p. 128). Safety of Innocent Users of Social Networking Sites: Challenges According to the results of an assessment made by the European Commission, above 50 per cent of the social networking sites do not hide the personal details of their users below 18 years of age by default. This is a highly risky behavior on the part of the administrators of the social networking sites considering the fact that at least half of the total population of teenagers using the social networking sites displays personal information on them (The Register, 2010). The European Commission assessed a total of 25 social networking sites that were operated by 20 companies that had signed up to the EU principles of safer social networking a year before, and 19 of the sites did have the links that people could use to report suspicious activity or abuse. In spite of the flaws in the system noticed, measures are being taken to improve the safety of the children using social networking sites in many ways. “Most of the companies empower minors to deal with potential online risks and employ a safe approach to privacy by making it easy for users to block other users and remove comments from their profiles; making privacy options easy to change so that users can choose whether only their friends or the entire world can see what they post online; [and] giving users control over the display of their online status (which allows other users to see whether they are online or not)” (European Commission cited in The Register, 2010). One of the most complicated issues regarding the safety of innocent users of the social networking sites is the establishment of age restrictions for their use as no single solution can be implemented to keep the innocent users from lying about their age while signing up for the social networking sites. Acknowledgement of the use of such social networking sites as Facebook by children under 13 years of age imparts the need of implementing protective measures by the social networking sites. “Since children often lie about their age to join 'forbidden' sites it would be more practical to identify younger users and to target them with easy-to-use protective measures” (Staksrud cited in BBC, 2011). However, such an approach has its own advantages and implications. Although it would improve the safety of the existing users of the social networking sites, yet it would also cause a considerable increase in the number of underage children that have their profiles on the social networking sites. “Automatically you'll have a greater increase of those at risk of bullying online. Abolishing the age limit is an absolute cop out really” (Bradley cited in BBC, 2011). Peter Bradley thinks that parents share the responsibility of restricting children’s access to the social networking sites before their appropriate age. “Children are children, adults are adults. Sometimes you have to say no to your child” (Bradley cited in BBC, 2011). Facebook itself has emphasized upon the role of parents in protecting their children in these words, “Just as parents are always teaching and reminding kids how to cross the road safely, talking about internet safety should be just as important a lesson to learn” (Facebook cited in BBC, 2011). The current legislative framework in the UK regarding the social media imposes a chilling effect upon the free speech, which imparts the need to have new guidelines regarding social media’s policing. These days, people are denied the right to be offensive whether or not their posts are actually harmful for the society in some way. Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions emphasized upon the need to protect the right to be offensive on the social media in his conversation with BBC. Starmer said this in response to two prosecutions made on the basis of offensive postings. In one of the prosecutions, Matthew Wood was imprisoned for commenting on April Jones, the missing girl. In the second case, Azhar Ahmed, a 20 year old boy was imprisoned for 12 weeks and was subsequently given a community service for 240 hours for having posted an offensive comment about the dead soldiers of Britain on a social networking website. “A freedom of information request revealed that there were 2,347 investigations after complaints regarding posts on social media in 2010. This number rose to 2,490 in 2011 - about 50 different cases across the UK each week” (BBC, 2012). These incidents have spurred debate regarding the punishable behaviors on social networking websites among the lawyers, academics, and the social media companies’ representatives. The present legal framework in the UK poses a lot of challenges in front of the prosecutors to work within it. It might be more reasonable to distinguish between the cases including a harassment campaign and the cases in which a general threat reflects. One solution can be swift removal of the offensive content from the social networking sites through improved moderation procedures. Currently, many resources are wasted on the online petty rows. According to the co-founder of a musical social network, Ralph Cowling, such an approach may not work for smaller networks. “There's no way with a team of four people we could monitor the hundreds of thousands of posts that go up every week… Ultimately, we wouldn't want to - it's not our job to police individual comments. What we're here to do is to suggest community guidelines and have the community discuss that between themselves” (Cowling cited in BBC, 2012). Conclusion The protection offered to the innocent users of the social networking sites is not satisfactory. Although laws have been established to ensure the safety of children who use the social networking sites, and they have also been modified from time to time to keep pace with the changing needs of time, yet the laws are not fully complied with and there is ineffective supervision of their implementation. In the present age, a friend is not necessarily somebody one has personally met since the quick development of the social network on such websites as Twitter and Facebook overlooks such niceties. Children using the social networking sites have the option of choosing what details may be seen by a particular individual in their friends’ list. There is need for Facebook to monetize its users. Providing the advertisers with information regarding the consumers since this policy does not comply with the concept of privacy. These days, Facebook is frequently consulted as evidence in the trials of divorce. The communication with friends published on Facebook often undermines the statements made and activities of a party. The issues of copyright infringement linked with the social networking sites are often well-rehearsed. “However, with the choice by Warner Bros of Facebook as an online rental platform for “The Dark Knight,” the 2008 Batman film, the scope for file sharing and copyright infringement on social networks becomes ever greater” (Halberstam, 2010). From the perspective of marketing, re-tweeting is frowned on and also carries the copyright infringement risk. Tweets made for the first time are original and obtain literary copyright irrespective of whether the tweet reflects the point of view of an individual or it is simply a glorified report depicting the schedule of a celebrity. The gauntlet of defamation can be easily run by 140 characters. It is important for the addicted tweeters to develop interest among the audience and keep growing them. One way this can be achieved is by knocking the copy. In fact, there is risk in any kind of interactive session on any website because the owner of the website faces the risk of libel proceedings when people comment on others. Nevertheless, in un-moderated sites, the remedy is often the immediate take-down of the comments that are defamatory allegedly. By doing so, the owner makes use of the Defamation Act 1996’s innocent dissemination defense that is in its Section 1. Website owners need to have a defined set of terms and conditions on the websites to clearly depict the unacceptable behaviors. References: BBC 2011, Many under-13s 'using Facebook', BBC News Technology, [Online] Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13129150 [accessed: 24 November 2012]. BBC 2012, Social media laws to be discussed in wake of prosecutions, BBC News Technology, [Online] Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19910865 [accessed: 24 November 2012]. Davidson, JC, and Gottschalk, P 2011, Internet Child Abuse: Current Research and Policy, USA: Routledge. Halberstam, S 2010, Social networks and the Law, [Online] Available at http://www.weblaw.co.uk/articles/social-networks-law/ [accessed: 24 November 2012]. Law Society 2012, Social Media, [Online] Available at http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/advice/practice-notes/social-media/ [accessed: 24 November 2012]. The In-House Lawyer 2008, UK government’s guidelines for social networking sites, [Online] Available at http://www.harbottle.com/hnl/upload/documents/Guidelines%20Social%20Networking.pdf [accessed: 24 November 2012]. The Register 2010, Social networking sites slack on secreting kids' details, [Online] Available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/11/social_network_kids/ [accessed: 24 November 2012]. Read More