My yearly social media reflection article is out on The Star newspaper under the Putik Lada column!
This time round, it’s about new social media legal cases that happened in 2011. For the first time (probably), my Putik Lada article got onto the most read article in The Star online!
If you missed it, here’s an extract of the article:-
It is going to be a tempestuous year with more developments in the social media scene, and a digital war may erupt between Internet users, companies and governments.
MALAYSIA’S social media sphere hit a milestone last year. Facebook users reached 12 million in Malaysia as at December and Twitter users reached about 470,000 as at October.
Defamation actions and criminal charges against people for alleged misuse of social media have also become normal. There have been interesting developments in the social media and Internet legal scene.
Last year saw an increase in the use of social media by the legal profession to market their services. Some lawyers, law firms and courts have their own Twitter accounts.
Former Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan (@Ambiga_S) has over 6,000 followers, international law firm Allen & Overy (@AllenOvery) has more than 6,600 followers and the US Supreme Court (@USSupremeCourt) has 23,000 followers and counting.
With such extensive use by legal practitioners, the Law Society of England and Wales issued a practice note for the use of social media by lawyers.
Back home, Cybersecurity Malaysia introduced a new Internet guideline called Best Practice on Social Networking Sites (SNS).
The guideline is used as acceptable practices in usage of SNS with heightened ethics as well as in protecting the security of users and privacy needs. It is very useful for companies as guidance when drafting their social media policies.
Interestingly, the High Court of Malaya recognised that misappropriation of a domain name by a former employee is actionable under conversion of and trespass to property and breach of fiduciary duty in the 2008 case of Ogawa World Bhd & Anor v Ch’ng Wai Loong.
Normally, misappropriated Top Level domain names are recoverable through the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre.
In Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada in Crookes v Newton (2011) delivered an important decision on the status of….
You can read the rest of the article at FoongChengLeong.com. By the way, my blawg is now on Twitter. Please follow FCLco for latest legal updates on intellectual property, social media, data privacy and the likes!