Events
IAGA SUMMIT New York 2017
Te Torrenzano Group The Torrenzano Group is a reputation and high-stakes issues management firm specialising in building and protecting corporate reputations, helping clients grow their business and enhance brand and shareholder value. Torrenzano hands-on senior level business people work in a culture of critical thinking and focused results.
Torrenzano builds on selective long- term relationships that add value to client business goals and objectives. The Group create a Reputational Cushion that actively protects corporate reputations, helping clients grow their businesses and enhance shareholder value.
A large global transportation company sought to sue the sponsors of website that used their brand followed by the word “sucks.” The company sought an Internet takedown order, only to discover in court that such orders only pertain to strict copyright violations, such as a pirated movie for example. The court held that critical or satirical sites are protected under the US Freedom of Speech Act. The result was that this transportation company now has to pay monthly expenses to this website to defame them for many years to come.
you could, Internet archival sites like the ‘Wayback Machine’ ensure that everything that was once on the Web will remain on the Web, even though it has been changed. Most people just do not understand that. And it has been the downfall of a lot of people.
“Robin Williams in one of his routines used to talk about ‘Little Snitch,’ and when I do these speeches I hold up my iPhone and introduce the audience to ‘Little Snitch.’ Corporate espionage has been around for a long time, but with the iPhone or any kind of Smartphone, it has become easy. You can hit the record button and video and audio record a conversation and within minutes play it for all the world to hear.”
LAWYERS RUNNING AMOK It’s Richard’s view that, for the most part, lawyers just
don’t understand the concept of digital assassination, and that you can’t use the same tactics carried over from the old media world in this new digital one. Te example Richard gives is of a lawsuit brought by singer and actress Barbara Streisand, which ultimately became known as “Te Streisand Effect.” It describes her efforts to sue a photographer, but whose efforts in trying to suppress online information backfired spectacularly.
In 2003, Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for distributing aerial pictures of her mansion in Malibu. But Adelman was not a photographer looking for a sensational story, he operated the California Coastal Records Project, a resource providing more than 12,000 pictures of the California coast for scientists and researchers to use to study coastal erosion. At the time Streisand sued Adelman for $50m, the picture in question had been accessed a total of six times - twice by Streisand’s own lawyers. Nonetheless, her lawsuit stated that the photos explicitly showed people how to gain access to her private residence.
Of course, news outlets around the world reported on Streisand’s outrage, and before long, the photo on Adelman’s website had received over a million views. Te photo was also picked up by the Associated Press
P64 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE /
247.COM
and was reprinted countless times. As if single- handedly causing the exact thing she didn’t want to happen wasn’t bad enough, Streisand also lost the lawsuit, whereby the judge ordered her to cover the $155,567.04 Adelman incurred in legal fees.
According to Richard’s book, ‘age needs to approach technology with great skill, while youth needs to approach technology with greater wisdom.’ “You have a great divide between young people and older people in their approach and use of the Internet,” he explains. “My friend’s daughter who I have known all her life, applied last year to medical school. She was an ‘A’ student, but there were a number of photographs of her on Facebook, with her boyfriend in one arm and a red cup in the other arm. She doesn’t really drink, but she looked terrible in the pictures.
“Te medical school, despite her grades, refused her admittance, because they said she’d used ‘poor judgement,’” describes Richard. “In this new digital world others not only have the ability to shoot at us, we also have the ability to shoot ourselves. Grad- schools, universities and corporations are now all checking the Internet for personal profiles. Were once you would obtain a credit report on a person, you’re now able to view a digital report to see how wise or smart they are when they’re socialising and what kind of employee or student they’re likely to be in the future. Te Internet is affecting all of our lives, our corporate lives, entertainment lives and shopping lives. Most people just don’t understand that yet and most corporations have not dedicated the necessary resources to fully protect themselves and their brand from it.”
Of course, this type of ‘accidental’ assassination can also be also be conducted by third-parties. In 2007, female students studying law at Yale university came under attack via an Internet message board’s graphic description of how each student had traded top grades for sexual favours with their professors. It was carried out on a largely unmoderated blog and it’s believed that most readers knew it was a joke, so you’ve got to ask - what was the big deal? Well, Google and its search engines became the big deal. Several of these
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