Online Reputation Attacks Could Be Significantly More Powerful When Videos Are Used

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Since taking over YouTube, Google appears to be on a mission to turn the internet into a multimedia medium and so are the other major search engines. It is believed that Google uses positive discrimination in order to encourage the use of video on the internet and as a result, it gives priority to video results which contain the searched keywords as well as to web pages which contain videos.

This means that online videos could be used as an explosive weapon by those who wish to harm your online reputation. Online videos can be optimized to obtain good placements without the search engines in exactly the same way that optimisation is done for a web page. In fact, some argue it is much easier to obtain high places in the search engines with videos than with web pages. At the moment, online videos remain a major reputational weakness for many businesses. But this weakness can be turned into strength very quickly.

As a tool to protect your online reputation against defamatory videos, if you make an early use of online videos, having at least 4 or 5 short ones, you will soon find that your business is found also on YouTube and on other websites which pick up videos from YouTube, but more importantly you will have created an important, yet simple and relatively inexpensive defence shield, which would make it more difficult for anyone else to penetrate. There are production companies out there which would create a series of 4-5 60 or 90 second videos for you from as little as £500.

If you don't want to spend any time on this, they can use images to create the videos or they can even speak to your customers and create a compilation of testimonials. For our purposes, having the videos out quickly is the most important thing. Later on, when you are ready to put together a more robust online video marketing campaign, you will be able to add to or even replace your initial videos with your latest Oscar Nominated production. The general rule is: "the more and the quicker, is the better."

Yair Cohen is an Internet Lawyer in the UK. Learn more about Internet Law and Online Defamation - http://www.bainscohen.com/

View the original article here

Should Victims of Online Reputation Attacks And Online Intimidation Report To The Police?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Victims of online reputation attacks and online intimidation should take their cases to the High Court instead of reporting them to the police.

In a recent court case where a hospital administrator became the first man in the UK to be jailed for stalking a woman by blogs, the authorities have sent a strong message to all those who wrongly believe that the internet is a lawless land where stalking, bullying, harassment, defamation and blackmail are a fair game and have demonstrated that online harassment shall not be tolerated in our society.

In a case which was heard by a Magistrate Court in Manchester it was alleged that a 38 year old man continuously attacked his female victim by using no less than 35 website blogs in which he repeatedly insulted her, causing her upset and reputational damage. The man also used emails to harass his victims as well as social networking sites such as Facebook.

It is not surprising at all that it took the authorities 18 months before the man was finally jailed. By this time, his victim must have been completely destroyed mentally and emotionally. Her confidence must have been shattered and her trust in people would have been replaced with cynicism and weariness. Had this hate campaign been conducted offline, I have no doubt that the authorities would have acted much quicker to bring it to a halt.

By the time the offender was jailed, he had already appeared in court on a number of occasions. On one occasion, after he admitted harassment, an order was made against him to refrain from mentioning his victim's name on any websites. Again, it appears it took some time before this very limited court order was made and even longer, before breaches were dealt with.

It is very likely, that had this been a case of domestic harassment, where more traditional methods of harassment were being used, the victim would have been relieved from her pain much, much earlier. It seems that the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Magistrates' Courts are not yet ready to effectively deal with these sorts of online harassment cases. The civil courts however are much quicker to act in response to online harassment cases with injunctions being granted within days rather than months and years. Victims of online harassment should be wise to take their cases to the High Court where solicitors can obtain a much more comprehensive injunction on their behalf within 48 hours. There is no need for victims of online harassment to suffer for such a long time before the harassment is stopped.

Despite him being jailed, large number of the defamatory blogs that the offender had created against his victim still remain active and is visible to the entire world to view. It is likely that a properly prepared High Court injunction would have ensured that the blogs and websites were removed by the internet service providers and that once such an injunction was granted, it could last for life, preventing anyone from taking part in the publication of material which is prohibited by the court order.

During his online campaign of harassment, the offender boasted of being so skilled in IT that he could set up and manipulate blogs about his victim quicker than they could be deleted.

It is not unusual for IT skilled individuals to blackmail their victims by making threats to destroy their victim's reputation unless certain demands being met. The police have seemed to so far, failed to recognise the fact that this form of blackmail is a criminal offence, mainly out of ignorance and lack of resources. These sorts of threats should be taken very seriously and perpetrators of such online threats should be told about the civil as well as the criminal implications of their actions.

Yair Cohen is a leading online defamation solicitor in the UK - http://www.bainscohen.com/.

View the original article here