R. v. Coban 2022 BCSC 1810 In the Supreme Court of British Columbia Docket X078463 Before Justice Devlin Decided on October 14, 2022 Relevancy of the Case: Appeal against the final sentencing in a case of online sextortion where a minor victim suffered for over 3 years Statutes and Provisions Involved The Criminal Code, 1985 (Section 163.1, 172.1, 264, 346) Relevant Facts of the Case In 2012, AT, a British Canadian teenager, tragically died by suicide. She was the victim of sexual extortion by the accused, Coban. From November 2009 to February 2012, he bombarded AT with over 700 messages on ..read more

Do you (and the people around you) have access to the Internet and related digital technologies? Do you make use of these? If you pick yes as your answer to these two questions, congratulations! You comprise one part of the 4.9 billion people (or 63% of the global population) who are online. One-third of the world, however, cannot say yes to this answer, for they lack access to these digital services. It is this divide that digital inclusion seeks to eliminate. According to the UN, digital inclusion refers to “equitable, meaningful, and safe access to use, lead, and design of digital technolo ..read more

There is no denying the European Union’s (EU) groundbreaking work in regulating tech. The 27-member Union has been elbow-deep in building policy around technology since 2016. In that year, it published the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a defining data privacy and security law put into effect in 2018. It covers data protection, security, accountability, consent, and privacy rights. Thus, it attempts to give people more control over the processing of their personal data. Subsequently, the EU introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Market Act (DMA), a single package ..read more

The twentieth century has introduced some of the greatest inventions humankind has seen. The internet is one such invention. There is barely any area untouched by its very presence in our daily lives. Due to its intangible and boundaryless nature, it is complicated to establish its actual haven, which hosts a plethora of cyber criminals. In such circumstances, unified legislation is called for to address the cross-jurisdictional nature of crimes committed on the internet. The Convention on Cybercrime is an important development towards a unified cyber crime regulation. Considered the Council o ..read more

Dark Patterns or Deceptive Design Patterns are certain dirty tricks websites and apps use that make consumers or users take specific actions they do not mean to. In 2010, Harry Brignull coined the term dark patterns. For example, whenever WhatsApp updates its policies, it only gives the users the option to “Agree and Continue“. The users do not have an option to select or express their disagreement. Since users rely heavily on such apps, they quickly fall for such tricks. The service providers save a lot by drafting a standard agreement, but the consumers are at a loss. Alongside, Brignul ..read more

The words halo and horn evoke some celestial images in the mind — of angels and devils, of hell and heaven. However, the psychological effects they reflect aren’t as literal. Oxford defines the halo and horn effect as “an effect in which one person’s judgement of another is unduly influenced by a first impression”. The impression may be positive, as reflected by the halo, or negative, as reflected by the horn. First Impressions and Physical Attractiveness When first impressions are a thing of real life, virtual life has heightened it to another dimension. One of the most common trait ..read more

You have heard of psychology, but have you looked into the fascinating area of cyber psychology? This field investigates our digital behaviour, revealing how we navigate the online environment and how it informs our offline activities. Social media is a strong tool for connecting and sharing information with our social networks. However, it is also a place where people sometimes show irrational behaviour. This could be owing to the internet’s anonymity or the lack of immediate consequences. Anonymity, accountability, and the perception of free speech all play a role in this phenomenon, providi ..read more

The Internet has opened up interactions across the globe. In particular, it has made it possible to bring street protests online. Indeed, digital protests have gained increasing relevance since the virtual sit-in developed by the hacker group Electrohippies against the WTO in Seattle in 1999. In this incident, over 452,000 people flooded the WTO’s website and sent around 900 emails daily to make the site ineffective. Hacktivism has thus become a new way to carry out street protests in the digital sphere. When talking about hacktivism, a question arises concerning the protection of human r ..read more

I like wordplay, that’s my cup of tea (check the title for reference). Redditors, however, seem to like increasing the stock price of a company by 1,700% — that’s their cup of tea. GameStop, an American video game retailer, was seeing a downtrend in its stock price by the end of 2020. Prominent investors were shorting its stock. When members of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets grasped this, they decided to trigger a short squeeze. This meant that the price of the stock rose substantially. The stock borrowed by the investors would be bought by them at high costs and thus at a loss. The Redditors ..read more

Human beings make decisions in the most humane ways. Several psychological, social and personal elements underpin our decisions. More often than not, these decisions may not align with rationality or logic. Take, for example, the following of social media “trends”. Usually, trends on the Internet develop and unfurl in a fashion that isn’t all that rational. One such trend was the #IceBucketChallenge. This trend gained traction in 2014 and saw people pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads. The objective behind this trend was to promote awareness around and increase donations towards res ..read more