Defamation Questions
April 16, 2008DEFAMATION QUESTIONS. 
1. Give the definition of identity theft?
Indentity Theft is the stealing of a person’s financial information, for example credit cards and Social Security number, with the intention of using that data to commit fraud. (Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/identity%20theft, 2008)
2. How many people suffer from identity theft, each year, worldwide? Make a hyperlink to the page from where you obtained your stats.
The FTC estimates that ten million people are victims of ID theft each year. (http://preventidentitythefttoday.info/)
3. What is character defamation?
When someone says something that is not true about other person and it hurts the reputation of the person.
4. Are there currently any defamation of character lawsuits going on in Spain? Give a minimum of three sentences describing the lawsuit and include a hyperlink to the article.
I couldn’t find any defamation of character lawsuits going on currently in Spain. But there has been some known cases in other places, like this one is Illinois: "The Chief Justice alleged in his defamation court case that a newspaper columnist and the columnist’s publication, the Kane County Chronicle, defamed him and his character by making false statements and, in particular, by falsely accusing him of a felony in a series of articles written in 2003. The Chronicle’s columns had accused the chief justice of interfering in the disciplinary case of a former Kane County state’s attorney" (Source: http://www.prslaw.com/news.php?id=17 , 2007).
5. What are the dangers of posting videos on Youtube, or any related site? Give a minimum of 5.
1. Someone that you don’t know can see your video.
2. You can hurt someone’s feeling.
3. They know your name or your apperience.
4. They know the names of your friends and teachers.
5. It can hurt your reputation.
6. Find two newspaper reports or stories that discuss today’s dangers of internet use, such as chatting, youtube, etc. Summarize these articles in your own words and put a hyperlink at the bottom of the summary to the article.
1) The police has arrested a man from Peru that had been blackmailed a whole family of two minors in Tarragona, Cataluña, Spain. He has obtained photos and videos of the two girls in the family with sexual content. He got those photos and videos connecting with them through the Internet. It has been proved that he had already acted like this with other minors. This man is accused of children’s pornography distribution. This individual threatened the girls by publishing the photos and videos if they didn’t pay him what he asked (Source: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/362281/0/extorsionador/menores)tarragona/ ).
2) A 31 year old man and a girl, who had talked with him in an aol internet chat room, dated. When they met in person the man picked her up and went home with her, where they had sex. Fortunatley, the man was arrested and has to go one year to jail and 10 years in probation. (Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86192,00.html)
7. How can images damage your school’s reputation or your own? Give an example of a situation that you have seen that could have been damaging had it been put on youtube.
In one of the videos there was a image in where some boys painted another boy. If anybody saw this, they would think there is no discipline at this school in that aspect. If somebody reports what is shown in the video to the government, it would be qualified as bullying, therefore the school would be in serious trouble. This and many other actions can damage you as well because maybe you were filmed (without you noticing it or not) while you were doing an infraction. If the discipline committee gets the image you could be in big trouble. To begin with, you can be damaged just because it’s not allowed to bring cameras or any other electronic device to school.
8. If you wish to put something on Youtube that involves a school related project what steps must be taken?
Firstly, you have to get the parent’s permission to show their kids on Youtube,. If they are adults, then you have to ask for their own permission. The teacher and the school that have given you the instructions to do the project have to know what you’re are going to do with the project, too. After having everyone’s permission, you have to ask the place that you filmed. You have to make sure there are no illegal activities shown in the video. You also have to be careful with what information you give in the video, whether you speak or give information, and like that you won’t be damaged.
9. Do we need to protect ourselves from others only, or also from ourselves?
We need to protect ourselves from other but also from ourselves because, overall, at our age, we’re more able to trust and easy to be convinced by older people. We could also think that posting this kind of things on Youtube is very appropiate thinking its fun, not knowing the consequences. So we need to be protect us also from ourselves.
10. How can computers been found? How can the police find out that your computer was responsible for posting something illegal?
The police can find the ZIP code and the computer. There are new methods to find out where a video has been uploaded and where it actually comes from. These methods might improve with time and it might not be an easy task but the police can act really quickly with the necessary machinery. The person that has been involved in posting something illegal should go to a lawsuit and would go to jail.
11. How can you protect yourself from stalkers or pedifiles finding you on the internet?
There are many ways that you have to know to avoid this. You should not mention any personal information or any date or any name in the video and neither in the description of the video. You have to be aware of who you talk with if you answer someone’s comment and of what you say in the video. Or maybe just not post the video in YouTube avoiding any person seeing it apart from yourself.
12. Is technology creating unforseen problems in our lives, give at least two examples in areas beyond identity theft and defamation of character, give at least two examples of other areas.
Technology has been a great advance with new devices like video games, or PC games that have become very addicting whether it’s played in a computer or in any other device like a cell phone, a game boy, etc… Another example would be obesity because this habit becomes more usual and people, specially children, can become obese because they’re all day long sitting in the chair playing in the computer. In other areas an exmaple would be pornography and another example would be false information that you find on the net and you might want to use in a school project. This last example also makes us forget about books like enciclopedias and other sources besides the Internet.
