1. The Emergent Threat of Defamation Online: The need for a new model governing online defamation with the emergence of social web technologies Sarosh Khan, Phd Candidate, shrk106@soton.ac.uk Dr Roksana Moore (Faculty of Business & Law) Dr Mark Weal (Faculty of Applied & Physical Sciences) Web Science Doctoral Training Centre, University of Southampton Introduction The development of the Web has led to the development of the Web as a medium of dissemination Including potentially defamatory. The Essence in the emergence of the social Web whereby no longer is the Web merely an informational resource but an interpersonal network. The Web ha shifted from merely a resource with which the vast majority of individuals have simply taken from what has been presented on the browser to being a resource that has allowed individuals through their ability to publish content to become an interpersonal network. Twitter is the most popular with 400 million worldwide users with individuals able to publish 140 character pieces. The Interpersonal network is developed through retweeting and searching content on mass. Online Defamation The multiple publication rule dictates that a publisher is liable every time a defamatory publication is read, along with any subsequent republisher and intermediary involved. The protection of reputation is one of the most important aspects of the legal landscape of the U.K. Defamation on the Web is governed through the same principles as govern offline defamation; cyberpaternalism. A publisher will be liable every time a defamatory comment has been accessed, any individual that republishes will be liable every time the republication is seen and intermediary liable for its active role in publications. Cyberlibertarianism says that you should leave the community of Web users to govern themselves through norms and standards that will develop but it was disregarded for paternalism because of a lack of homogeneity amongst people online. Decisions in Berezovsky, Dow Jones, Loutchansky, Godfrey, Bunt and eBay have affirmed the application of the paternal approach in the U.K. These rules have developed to continue to protect reputations, one of the most fundamental aspects of the legal landscape of the U.K. Variation# of adopters % of # of adopters of total # of retweets RT1,836,85289.2%53,221,529 Via751,54736.5%5,367,304 Retweeting50,4002.44%296,608 Retweet36,6011.78%110,616 HT8,3460.41%22,657 R/T5,3000.26%28,658 Recycle icon3,3050.16%18,225 Total2,059,350 59,065,627 VariationUsernameDateText Via@tagami16/03/2007 @jasonCalacanis (via@kosso) – new Nokia N- Series phones will do Flash, Video and YouTube. HT@TravisSeitler22/10/2007 The Age Project: how old do I look? http://tweetl.com/21b (HT @technosailor) Retweet@kevinks01/11/2007 Retweet: @AHealthyLaugh is in the Boston Globe today, for a stand-up show she’s doing tonight. Add the funny lady on Twitter! Retweeting@musicdt05/01/2008 Retweeting @Bwana: Is anyone streaming live from CES? #ces RT@TDavid25/01/2008 RT @BreakingNewsOn: LV Fire Department: No major injuries and the fire on the Monte Carlo west wing contained east win nearly contained R/T@samflemming20/06/2008 r/t: @danwei Live Online chat with Chinese President Hu Jintao,. He claims he uses net to know netizen concerns. Recycle Icon@claynewton16/09/2008[recycle icon] @ev of @biz re:twitterkeys [star] http://twurl.nl/fc6trd Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of 80 million tweets from Jan 2007 to Oct 2009, we can demonstrate the way in which the convention of ‘RT’ has spread across the non homogeneous community of Twitter users to become the accepted method of communication among the community. We see, ‘RT’ and ‘via’ exceed all others with no written rules as a standard of behaviour through the existence of weak ties. Weak ties mean that even if individuals do not believe in a standard, they will adopt it if they see others have adopted it. RT Convention Proliferation The Problem The continued adoption of the paternal approach is no longer appropriate to govern online defamation in the U.K. in light of the essence of the Web 2.0 environment. The ability to republish and search for content means that more individuals are engaging with potentially defamatory content than ever before.