Author: Chris Cook

Last week Facebook was accused of invading personal privacy “by stealth” after it started using facial recognition technology without informing its users.  The technology scans faces of people in tagged pictures and matches that information with other pictures to allow users to tag them automatically.

The technology has been used in the US version of Facebook for a number of months, although in that situation users were informed of the pending introduction of facial recognition technology weeks in advance.

While the majority of users will not be concerned as to the introduction of this technology, concerned users are able to disable the technology by adjusting their privacy settings so as to effectively “opt out” of the service.  However, bearing in mind the current data protection legislation, there is some debate as to whether Facebook has gone about this in the right way.

Where individuals can be identified from photographs on the Facebook site, the information will constitute personal data within the remit of the Data Protection Act 1998.  This in turn would necessitate the person using the photographs to have obtained the consent of all of the individuals appearing in the photograph before posting on a social networking site.  While this would not necessarily be a problem where those individuals are tagged to each other on the Facebook site, it is arguably an infringement of the Data Protection Act for processing personal information without having obtained prior consent.

These issues can also be translated into the workplace, where photographs of employees routinely appear on business websites without due consideration having been given to legal compliance issues.  It is important to obtain prior written consent from all individuals for their photograph to appear on your business’ website before it is used.

If you feel that the time has come to review your business’ usage of personal data belonging both to customers and employees to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act, please contact Chris Cook on 01727 798019 or by email at chris.cook@salaw.com

Author: Nathanael Young

Twitter troubles are already a staple of the celebrity press, but Courtney Love has now given them a new twist.  After a dispute over payment for clothes, the singer is said to have called a designer a  ‘drug pushing prostitute’, and was sued after the tweet was picked up by tens of thousands of fans.

Although the case will be dealt with in Los Angeles under US law, it still highlights the way in which changing technology has an impact on defamation law the world over. Defamatory statements are now as likely to be in blogs, message boards or social media as in traditional newspapers and magazines.

In addition, it provides a salutary reminder of how dangerous new media can be. When angry rants were only oral, English law classified them as slander rather than libel, and made it much harder to sue. Now, even the most momentary anger can lead to a libel claim, with comments  published to thousands at the touch of a button. It is unlikely Love made a habit of counting to ten before tweeting, since she announced she was leaving Twitter in October after posting photographs of herself intended only for her boyfriend.

Let users beware…

Author: Julie Gingell & Simon Walsh

It was widely reported last week that Unilever, the maker of Marmite, took steps to protect its brand by threatening legal action against the British National Party to stop it from using a jar of Marmite in its party political broadcasts.

The jar of spread appeared in a BNP video which featured on its website. Nick Griffin claimed that the BNP had not been responsible for this because it had, allegedly, been inserted by “one of the people to whom [the Party] had given the broadcast to review” However, he went on to indicate that the jar of Marmite had been added to the broadcast in response to Marmite’s “the Love Party and the Hate Party” advertising campaign which has been running on television, radio and the internet. The BNP claim that the “Hate Party” was based on itself. Mr Griffin said, “Although we are not responsible for whoever it was who inserted the Marmite jars into the internet version of the broadcast, we do see the amusing side, quite simply if you start a spoof you should expect to get spoofed”.

Unilever stated, “Neither Marmite nor any other Unilever brand are aligned to any political party. We are currently initiating injunction proceedings against the BNP to remove the Marmite jar from the online broadcast and prevent them from using it in future”.

The video clip has now been removed from the BNP website but is still available on YouTube.

The BNP was involved in a similar controversy back in March 2009 when the Manic Street Preachers’ hit “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” was played over some of its web content. After pressure was applied by the Manic’s record label, Sony, the song was removed with the BNP claiming the song had been mistakenly streamed from the site.

Brand reputation is everything and in today’s high speed digital economy, you can see why Sony and Unilever were quick to move against what they understood to be infringements of their intellectual property rights. Years of investment in PR and brand development can be wiped out if your product/brand becomes associated with an offering that is perceived to be unfavorable. Both incidents demonstrate the importance of policing the use of your brands and products, especially on the internet, to ensure that they are not used for an unauthorised purpose.