Tag: Legal

Categories
Digital

#DigitalParenting Legal Stories via @drbattytowers

Keeping track of a number of stories relating to ‘Raising Children in a Digital Age‘ in the news:

mnRW5GuOnline games industry given two months to get house in order following OFT investigation

The OFT has today published its final principles for online and in-app games, and given games producers a deadline of 1 April to ensure that their games do not breach consumer protection law.

The OFT principles state that consumers should be told upfront about costs associated with a game or about in-game advertising, and any important information such as whether their personal data is to be shared with other parties for marketing purposes.  The principles also make clear that in-game payments are not authorised, and should not be taken, unless the payment account holder, such as a parent, has given his or her express, informed consent. Failure to comply with the principles could risk enforcement action.

New principles and heightened enforcement action on the horizon for online and mobile app games developers and operators

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has given a battle cry to online and mobile app games developers who may be in breach of consumer protection laws, giving them until 1 April 2014 to fall in line in addition to complying with a new set of consumer protection principles. The principles apply to all online and mobile app games, with principles six to seven mentioning children and principle eight being specifically aimed at protecting children consumers.

Social Media in Education: Pitfalls and Precautions

We live in an age of social media, where an increasing number of students are using sites like Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis. This move away from traditional modes of communication provides universities, colleges and schools with new and exciting ways to interact with members of their community, but also raises problems as a small number of users rely on the perceived anonymity provided by social media to bully and denigrate students, teachers and the institution itself.

 

 

Categories
Academic

Trust in data: about to be compromised?

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/964273

This story just caught my eye, as there’s that interesting balance between privacy in research and open-ness – this time with legal ramifications. Surely in exposing the data, they will be breaching other privacy laws – e.g. they would have collected the data for a specific purpose, and contract said ‘data not to be released until after death’… Quite concerning.

The folk tale about the academic who accidentally deleted his data is older than the PC, but have you heard the one about the researchers who asked their institution to destroy all their work? No? Well that’s exactly what the researchers behind Boston College’s Belfast Project, an oral history of the Northern Irish conflict, have done.

“The archive must now be closed down and the interviews be either returned or shredded since Boston College is no longer a safe nor fit and proper place for them to be kept,” reads a statement issued by the project’s erstwhile director Ed Moloney and former researchers Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur.

The reason for the dramatic declaration is as disarming as it is simple: within the coming weeks, a court in the US is to decide whether interviews with former paramilitaries in Northern Ireland conducted as part of the project should be handed over to the British authorities. All interviewees, including leading figures in the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, were promised that their recordings would not be released until after their death: now they could form the basis for criminal proceedings.

 Read full story.
Categories
Life(style)

Crazy Legal Cases

  • January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running amok inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson’s son.
  • June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbour ran his hand over with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn’t notice someone was at the wheel of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal.
  • October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol, PA, was exiting a house he finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up, the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, so Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. This upset Mr. Dickson, so he sued the homeowner’s insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars and change.
  • October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, AK was awarded $14,500.00 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbour’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced-in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The award was less than sought after because the jury felt the dog may have been provoked by Mr. Williams who, at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.
  • May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, $113,500.00 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
  • December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighbouring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the lady’s room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000.00 and dental expenses.

Love to hear more of these…