In 2013 local campaigning journalist, Julian Saunders, started a controversial blog, "In The Public Domain" - more commonly known as "The Sandwell Skidder". He sought to expose fraud, corruption, cronyism and incompetence at Labour-controlled Sandwell Council and has done so with some considerable success. Needless to say this has the local Labour politicians greatly exercised and so Julian has been the subject of everything from death threats to industrial-scale social media trolling almost right from the off. One virulent Twitter trolling network centred around a former Councillor is still highly active in attacking him (and others) today.
In addition to the main Skidder blog Mr Saunders is collobaratively involved via a small news team in others - one of which is devoted to recording the history of the various trolling campaigns against him. For the same purpose he set up a Twitter account some years ago but was advised by Twitter that, incredibly, exposing Twitter trolls was, in fact, a breach of its own Terms of Service so that he took the account down.
Last year Mr Saunders acquired a stalker - a resident of Sandwell. Julian says:
"Prior to the General Election a source was passing me Regional Labour Party information that they were is trouble which I duly shared. Suddenly a local woman, whom I have never met, contacted me demanding that I reveal my sources which I obviously refused to do. She then started trolling me, initially through her own Twitter account."
[Of course, the information was mixed but fundamentally true and Labour lost the two West Bromwich parliamentary seats.]
Needless to say the Stalker soon ran into trouble and the Twitter account was closed down. But as is the way with trolls a new "anonymous" account appeared and started a prolific campaign against Julian (from what we have seen at least 95% of the prodigious output was specifically directed at Mr Saunders).
The troll was only followed by a few anonymous troll accounts all of which were seemingly connected with the above-mentioned former Councillor. A Labour source (though currently suspended by the Party) told Julian that he was also communicating with the network and the Stalker although he had never met her. He also said that a currently serving Labour Councillor is involved.
Of course, the Stalker soon began to give herself away and got nastier and nastier. Mr Saunders takes up the story again:
"I do some voluntary work mostly connected with arts and heritage projects. For the last couple of years I have helped out at an annual South-Asian Dance event. When I tweeted about this the Stalker tweeted that I am "racist" and tagged the organisers of the event. The stalker is also aware that my wife's work is principally with BAME artists and so this was a particularly evil, unfounded and malicious attack."
Twitter eventually took the new trolling account down but in a particularly bizarre twist the Stalker herself broadcast that they had matched the phone number of the trolling account to the personal account that had already been taken down! And, of course, a new Twitter account appeared within hours.
The stalker appears to run a micro-business in a self-employed capacity although even this is unclear since in the first Covid lockdown she was tweeting that she had been "furloughed" and that she is a member of Unite the Union - both things indicative of employed status. She also said she was paying tax, national insurance and pension whilst furloughed which again makes it look like the micro-business is not her main occupation.
For those unfamilar with Twitter it is usual to place a very small profile picture in a small disc at the head of the account. We cannot show you the Stalker's profile for reasons which will become apparent but here is the header for Julian's account:
The picture in the roundel is very small. Unless the reader has very good eyesight it is difficult to define detail. Again for non-Twitter users this picture features against each short message, or "tweet", on the site. Where a Tweet contains originallly-created material it is, theoretically, copyrighted to the author. Here's one from Mr Saunders again:
But the whole point of Twitter (and, indeed, Google Blogger) is freely-sharing information - world-wide. Thus, to take the example of the above "tweet", other users can tap the screen to "retweet" or pass on the "tweet" to their own circle of friends and followers. Twitter's Terms of Service provide it explictly, and other users implicity, with a licence to publish and share material (subject to certain other constraints eg in respect of obscene or abusive material) via retweets, comments etc. In the above example, if Times Radio had retweeted the post Julian would not have been able to claim copyright due to the implicit Twitter licence.
However... The Twitter terms also say that a profile of header photo CAN be copyrighted and sharing it even via Twitter can be "unauthorized" subject to American copyright law (the big tech companies mostly being based in California) and to a "fair use exemption".
Some time ago a particular person was involved with another massive trolling campaign against Mr Saunders and he started to make various claims relating to copyright in respect of his abusive output. By coincidence (or not) the Stalker has hit upon the same strategy. In the small roundel profile picture she has embedded a tiny watermark claiming copyright of her picture to her micro-business. Thus anyone in the whole wide world who retweets or otherwise copies any of her tweets is theoretically in breach of her copyright (subject to legal US "fair use" exemptions). This, of course, is directly against the whole rationale of Twitter and its business model yet they have upheld her activities! At least to date.
We have seen the Stalker's current profile. Quite frankly we could not see the miniscule watermark with the naked eye. Even when clicking on the profile image to expand it the mark was tiny. This appears to be a crude attempt at entrapment of other Twitter users whom the Stalker disagrees with and a direct assault on the "spirit" of that social media site.
Needless to say the Stalker soon felt able to comment on Julian but when he, and the local community activist she was also commenting on, copied her tweets she immediately claimed copyright infringement on the basis of the unreadable watermark! As is so often the case with Twitter they turned the tables and threatened Mr Saunders and the activist that Twitter would close their accounts if there are "continuing" breaches of copyright!
The moral of the story for Twitter users is to examine all profiles with a magnifying glass before retweeting or commenting on a post and victims of trolling must find other means of redress outside Twitter itself.
In a further twist, the Stalker complained to Google Blogger about the blog exposing the troll accounts and Google removed the entire blog without providing any real reason. Just think about that for a moment. Google, who do not own Twitter, have stopped a site from showing the public Twitter troll accounts ie posts which the trolls themselves have freely placed in the public domain. Until now, there has been no right of appeal (although Mr Saunders is finally in touch with Google's Legal Department).
Another extraordinary feature of this episode is that the Stalker has used Twitter anonymously and yet we must assume that she has disclosed her identity to Google in making her complaint to them. One would have thought from this that Google must be satisfied that the abusive anonymous troll posts were written by the complainant who has otherwise sought to conceal her identity. They are seemingly prepared to trample on Mr Saunders's right to freedom of speech under UK common law and pursuant to Article 8 Human Rights Act 1998 on the "evidence" of an anonymous troll. Surely the fact of the complaint is an admission by the Claimant that she is the author of the abusive posts or are we missing something here?
In any event, Google have not only taken down the posts relating to the Stalker's output but the whole blog which seems to indicate that any media outlet publishing copies of abusive Twitter accounts has somehow infringed its own policy.
By yet another amazing coincidence, after the Stalker managed to attack the troll blog the serving Labour Councillor made a complaint to Google and they took down a post from The Sandwell Skidder news blog several months after it had been published. Google have only taken down the one post but have failed to say why. This appears to be in direct contravention of UK and EU law (and we are still in the EU - just!) Once again they appear to have discriminated against a well-read local journalism service without proper explanation.
We will let you know how Julian Saunders gets on with Google Legal Department but please email below if you have any comment, legal thoughts etc (unfortunately our small team has had to remove the direct comment section from this blog - because of the same Stalker!)
iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com
