Social media might seem like a lawless environment where cruel comments and reckless libel are simply the order of the day—but there have been instances where courts have classified social media posts and comments as defamation. This is true both in a country like the UK, where defamation is generally easier to prove, and the US, where the legal threshold is much higher.
Almost every day after a European football match, there’s another media headline highlighting a player who received racial abuse on social media. Football clubs condemn it. The content gets reported to social media platforms. Accounts are deleted. Authorities are notified and declare a ‘zero tolerance’ policy against discrimination and prejudiced behavior. Many players share the posts, highlighting the racism they continually face.
Social media offers investigators incredible opportunities to collect evidence. There are plenty of examples on the Internet of supposedly injured individuals posting runs and rides on Strava and incriminating car crash footage making its way onto YouTube. In fact, social media intelligence (SOCMINT or SMI) has become a standard part of many investigations—including insurance fraud, IP theft, online defamation, and even criminal cases.
The issue of defamation has been in the news a lot over the last few months. Johnny Depp lost a prominent case against the publisher of the UK’s The Sun newspaper. Prince Harry sued a tabloid. The source behind the New York Post’s infamous Hunter Biden laptop article sued Twitter for allegedly making him out to be a hacker. And an Indian court cleared a journalist in a #MeToo defamation case involving a major political figure.
Pagefreezer recently published a guest article on the Association of Certified eDiscovery Specialists (ACEDS) Blog that discusses some key takeaways from the Legalweek virtual conference sessions, which took place from February 2 – 4, 2021.
A key aspect of the discovery process is the request for production of documents, which allows both parties involved in a legal matter access to crucial evidence. Being able to file a request is very useful—but responding to one is often less convenient. Depending on a legal team’s litigation readiness, a request from opposing counsel can leave them scrambling.
One of the reasons Slack saw such widespread adoption, especially early on, was the fact that companies could use it for free. Like many SaaS tools, Slack operated on a “freemium” model, meaning organizations could use it for free, and then upgrade as their needs grew.
We recently published an article on what is needed for a financial firm’s website archiving to meet SEC and FINRA requirements. This article follows on from that one by looking at the specific storage requirements, which is very technical and can lead to uncertainty with regards to compliance.
A good litigation readiness and eDiscovery strategy, like a good football strategy, is a combination of solid defense and clever offense. If you ignore either one, your ability to win will be compromised.
Is there a difference between data retention and data preservation? The terms retention and preservation are often treated as synonyms in day-to-day language but they aren’t the same thing.
