Cyber love - till death do us part

In an interesting twist to social media, it is now reported that in the United States, 20% of all divorce cases mention Facebook in the pleadings.

In a further twist, this very site is slowing down my access to place blogs.

I suppose the question is - who is looking at who?

Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer

A Hairy Situation

In a Canadian case, Shonn's Makeovers & Spa, Appellant, versus the Minister of National Revenue, Respondent, a hairdresser became unstuck because of his Facebook page.  The case which was heard before His Honour Justice Boyle examined whether or not a Mr William Hall was working for the Appellant as an employee or an independent contractor.

The tests to determine this are similar to those in Australia and include intent of the parties, control over the work, ownership of tools and chance of profit/risk of loss.

Mr Hall was a colouring artist.  His Honour found that it was almost impossible for the Court to determine on the facts what his status was and further that evidence of the financial arrangements between the parties did not usefully point in either particular direction. 

Under cross examination, Mr Hall was asked why he had put on his Facebook page that he was self employed.  His response was that you didn't have to be honest on Facebook.

On further cross examination, it was put to Mr Hall that everything else on his Facebook page was true including his age, his likes and preferences, his hometown, his education and his activities and groups.  The only thing that wasn't true was his self-employment status.  Mr Hall replied that this was for privacy reasons. 

His Honour held that his credibility had been damaged by his responses.  It was not that he lied on Facebook, his Honour said that he did not believe that he was telling the truth when he said that he was lying on Facebook.

His Honour held that on the balance of probabilities that Mr Hall was not an employee of the salon.

In one of his reasons for his decision, His Honour said "Both surprisingly, and perhaps as a true sign of our times, this ends up turning on his Facebook status.  Unfortunately such is the sad state of affairs of this file ..."

Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer
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Cyber OCD

There is perhaps another issue regarding social networking sites.  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

This disorder is perhaps the worst of all.  It is horrific for the person that has it and for those people that surround them.

I first came across this disorder whilst chatting to a friend.  I was cooking a BBQ and placed my beer bottle on the wheely bin.  My friend was startled and asked me to remove it immediately.  I couldn't quite follow.  The chances of a deadly disease travelling up my beer bottle from the bin was highly unlikely.

I talked to him further.  He said that the bin was a 'dirty place'.  Eventually, I discovered that the only 'safe' place' for my friend was his bed.  The world expanded from there.

When departing for school as a child, my friend would be in agony.  Departing the bedroom was difficult.  This involved washing his hands and then using tissues to open the door to his bedroom.  If he touched the door handle, then the whole process began again.  Catching the train involved wedging himself between two poles and not touching anything. 

Everything in the outside world apart from the bed was a 'dirty space'.

Comparing this to the internet and cyber addiction is an interesting nexus.  The OCD works in reverse to the example that I have given.  A person must log on to the internet to satisfy the compulsion. 

Looking at how the brain works, there is within the frontal lobe an area that is known as the 'feel good' zone.  This is tracked from a part of the brain that runs along the top left hand side of the skull along the face.

Facebook appears to have introduced a new part of its social networking site.  I call it 'where am I". 

I have a Facebook page and a limited friend list (indeed only 21).  The average is 120.  I am now being swamped with emails from Facebook from some of the friends which state 'X is now at the Zoo' or 'Y is now at Z restaurant'. 

I have diverted all of these emails into Junk and my Internet security will eventually automatically delete them.

It is intriguing that a person would engage in this behaviour.  If one had say 1,000 friends, the barrage of emails must be extraordinary.  This development is due to the advances made in Smart Phones.

One of the questions that must be answered is whether or not the person actually knows that the phone is continually sending out messages of where they are or if they are personally entering the information.

With the development of GPS, eventually the phone will simply send out the message automatically.

If the person is entering the information (and in some cases it might be morning, noon and night), then is this a form of developing OCD?

Everyone has habits and these form a part of daily rituals.  It is only when one particular habit becomes essential that it starts to form a problem.

There are certain drugs that are used to try and block receptors in the brain such that the habit does not satisfy the 'feel good' part of the brain and therefore it becomes useless.

One such drug is Anafranil.  From the drug company's website, this drug is used for a variety of purposes, one of which is OCD and phobias in adults.  Strangely, there is a warning that grapefruit, grapefruit juice or cranberry juice can interfere with the drug's capability. 

Perhaps part of the internet is a form of OCD after all. 

Finally, as an example of my own personal experience with gaming, there was developed in the late 80's a game called Super Mario Brothers.  This game was the first of its type in that it could remember and hold your position wherever you were.  The game had 8 stages and was complicated.

I was studying law at the time and also addicted to this game.  It came to the morning of my Tax exam.  The exam was at 2pm.  Rather than study, I played the game as I was within hours of beating the whole thing.

I finally did at 11:20am.  As soon as I won, I realised that I could never play a game like that again.

Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer

Cyber Insanity - One Solution

The internet has a number of games.  Some of these games are highly addictive.

Other parts of the internet are addictive.

One of the objects of this blog is to identify the legal issues surrounding social networking but also to look at the practical realities.

Parents are faced with a real problem.

There is one game that is so addictive that it now has warnings on its label.  I cannot mention the name of the game for defamation reasons.

However, there is hope.

One of my clients is a leading expert in I.T.  I have spent some hours with him discussing how to resolve the problem of adolescent internet addiction.

There are a variety of solutions.  However, an effective solution is set out below.

Every computer in the common age that has any sort of network connectivity, whether it be on an internal home network that does not have access to the internet and computers that are configured for internet access will be assigned an IP address. Normally the IP address is assigned by a modem/router provided by the internet service provider.

All computers with an IP address then communicate with other computers and the internet using specific ports assigned by the IP address. For example, when you use Internet Explorer to visit the Sydney Morning Herald website, your IP address will communicate with that web site using port 80, which is the standard port used to communicate via unsecured HTTP. When you visit the ANZ website and make a “secure” transaction, your IP address would not only use port 80 to load the web page using HTTP, but also use port 8080 as that is the “secure” HTTP port.

All applications use various ports to communicate and there are tens of thousands of ports available that applications use, however they are assigned ports so that they can be controlled and monitored on networks. 

It is possible to “rate shape” ports on specific IP addresses using the modem/router. Rate shaping allows you to assign a finite variable as to “how fast” and “priority” on the network so that you can effectively make the network traffic that travels (or uses) certain ports so slow, that although it will work, it will become tedious and unusable. Given the changes are made on the network infrastructure they can not be overridden from the client laptop or computer.

This is not a simple task as to implement this in a transparent manner. My I.T. expert would need:

·         Access to the router/ADSL modem at the premises

·         Activation of logging on the modem to determine what applications are being used, as per IP address and port number along with an analysis of this data

·         Advice as to what the make/model of the modem/router is (as it may need to be replaced as to allow rate shaping)

·         Additional configuration of the modem so that static IP addresses are assigned to any devices that need to be rate shaped

·         Training for the parents so that they can initiate the “slow down” on demand from their computer or their phone

As configuration can be made to “slow down” specific ports, like the ones games use, this will still allow general access to the internet to be at “full speed” referencing the above where HTTP traffic uses port 80, there would be no modification as to how that specific port works, so only games or applications that are deemed to be appropriate for “rate shaping” would be modified so anything deemed appropriate would still operate at “full speed” which is convenient.

Corporates use rate shaping for sites like Facebook and other network intensive (costly) non-critical applications like internet radio streaming over the internet. In the case of internet radio streaming, you need a large amount of bandwidth so that the music streams properly and doesn’t pause or break up. Initiating rate shaping makes it so slow it is unusable so the users do not bother with it. To ban it outright just causes angst.

With respect to costs, there are three phases.

1    Analysis and recommendation 

        

      Purchase of new network hardware if required.

3.      

            Implementation and training.

This is not a cheap process.  On average, the cost is about $2,000 plus GST depending on the complexity of the systems involved.  As parents, you have full rights to implement the process without the child/children even knowing.


For more information, you can contact me via my Website - stephen-wilcox.com or email direct at australianlawyer@bigpond.com


Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer