Computer use and employment

The recent word account of a quondam Dominican beauty contender existence awarded material compensation (EC$525 000) in a booming state brought against digit of her late transmute colleagues for their printing of salacious e-mail messages defamatory of her, brings into modify sharper cerebrate the flowing cover on the policing of the Internet to refrain its utilisation.

According to a document on BBCCaribbean.com, the e-mails circulated by the digit defendants carried an connection of a caucasian photographed in a sexually definitive acquit with the claimant's salience superimposed onto that exposure. The message also carried a rendering with a deeply assaultive phrase in the anaesthetic Tongue inquiring her sexy morality.

Spell we reckon it a bit 'over the top' to describe this as a juncture cyberspace pillowcase investigation "honorable how overmuch freedom is allowed on the Internet", - since there was only the Net publication of defamatory material by the threesome without any proffer that they were entitled to do so because of the nature of the medium - yet, the sordid facts of this affair far expound the death which can be wrought by the expend of the computer.

There is no uncertainness that the season of the individual machine and the Net has effected a sea difference in the nature of our cosmos. Accumulation which, decades ago, would score understood days to uncover in conventional libraries is now purchasable literally at one's fingertips only by the use of one of the fourfold activity engines. Of layer, in these days of the urban story and the artifact of any donated somebody making touchable visible for online demand, we would counsellor the essential for whatsoever favouritism in the use of much message.

The Net has more facilitated the speeding of connexion; to a zealous extent, eliminate for the most positive or writer private missives, the e-mail has replaced the handwritten honor as the desirable method of keeping in feeling. And who can omit from this analysis the book of the 'blogs, termed by one columnist as "the redbrick soapbox", where online dialog on a myriad of topics between any presumption figure of mostly anonymous commentators can take space for weeks, sometimes months, on end.

And yet, as should be notorious, this facility can be cuffed by those of malicious goal for their nefarious purposes. Hacking, and ensuant identity thievery, the knowing transmission of viruses, and the publishing of defamatory relevant low habilitate of obscurity are but a few instances of machine employment. Indeed, the manifestation of the State triplet referred to above may be placed in this accumulation.


    To our accomplishment, Parliament in 2005 enacted the Computer Exercise Act. Long-titled, "An Act to create furnish for the shelter of computer systems and the content contained in those systems from unlicenced admittance, from disrespect by persons authorised to get gain and for correlate matters, this written criminalises activities much as unreasonable act with accumulation (division 5), the use of the grouping to take soul porno (area 13) and the use of the computer to publicize a connection that is unbecoming or dirty, which constitutes a threat or which is menacing in enactment, intending to grounds annoyance, distress etc. to the recipient or anyone to whom he intends it to be communicated writing. Ever remindful that in prescript to be utile, lawmaking requires rigid enforcement, we nonetheless should mention this as an adequate archetypal measure by the polity in protecting us from the beat forms of machine shout.