Professional Update
A
monthly newsletter for KZN Attorneys from the Kwazulu-Natal Law Society

14 August 2009

This professional service draws attention to current and important items of news
 and members are directed to the hosts' websites

 

InfoUpdate 18 of 2009
Useful Links
and Items of Interest 
 

 
Miscellaneous E-Things

An executive guide to social media
How smart companies are using Twitter and Facebook - and what's next on the horizon. - Business Week website

Blogging

'Uh-oh they're here' - 10 August
A 34-year-old woman has been locked up in a Virginia jail for three weeks and could remain there for at least another month. Her crime? Blogging about the police. Although the Charlottesville police chief had previously written to Elisha Strom warning her that her blog posts were interfering with the work of a local drug enforcement task force, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or any similar offense. Rather, she was indicted on a single count of identifying a police officer with intent to harass, a felony under state law. In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers ; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car ; mused about their habits and looks ; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them ; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements. But what seems to have sent them over the edge is Ms Strom's decision to post the name and address of one of the officers with a street-view photo of his house. - Washington Post website

A dangerous blogger - 12 August
Two thoughts come to mind.  As much as I'm disgusted by Strom's politics, so what? That's the beauty of America, room for disgusting political thought, where it will be roundly rejected in the marketplace of ideas. No sale.  hat's how you get rid of disgusting ideas. But not jail. Not prosecution. - Simple Justice : a New York criminal defense blog

The library books nobody wants to borrow - 12 August
A blog set up by two public spirited librarians from Detroit cataloguing the worst books on library shelves has become an unexpected internet hit. From the 1983 hit Hanging Out - The Upside Down Exercise Book, to Vans : The Personality Vehicles, Holly Hibner and Mary Kelly hope that drawing attention to the books will encourage fellow librarians to clear their collections of obsolete, and just plain dreadful, titles. - Guardian website

See : http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/ 

Mxit

MXit aids in drug arrest - 1 August
Popular social network service MXit has almost always been viewed in a negative light, but police are now grateful for the communication system because it has assisted in them in catching a Chatsworth dealer who was selling drugs to school pupils. - IOL website

Twitter

Twitter sued over emergency tweets - 11 August
Alerting the public about a fire, hurricane or traffic accident on Twitter is an unlawful tweet. So claims TechRadium, a company in Sugar Land, Texas, that is suing Twitter for alleged patent infringement for allowing municipalities, companies, and government agencies to use its site as an emergency notification system. TechRadium, an emergency alert provider, argues that it has patents covering the process for simultaneously notifying large numbers of people about emergencies through multiple communication gateways, such as cell phones, pagers and e-mail. The company develops and sells the technology to schools, businesses, governments and the U.S. military but not Twitter. - law.com website

InfoUpdate : an Information Service supplied by the KwaZulu-Natal Law Society