LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwire) -- 10/08/12 -- Dave King, CEO of Digitalis Reputation, joined an expert panel yesterday at the Convention Centre in Dublin for the IBA's Annual Conference which saw 5,000 lawyers descend on the city.

'Reputation in the Internet Age' formed the key topic for discussion in the main hall yesterday and Dave King was joined by other leaders in the field including the human rights and defamation lawyer Mark Stephens CBE (Partner, FSI Law); libel defence attorney Kelli Sager (Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, Los Angeles); and media and dispute resolution lawyer Paul Tweed (Senior Partner, Johnsons, Dublin). The panel was moderated by David Schulz, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, New York, and Jean-Frederic Gaultier of Olswang's Paris office.

Dave's introductory remarks demonstrated why the reputation lawyer's challenge now so frequently extends beyond the legal remedy. Dave shared statistics on the penetration of social media platforms by geography and on how fast word can travel online. A vibrant debate followed that covered:

--  Freedom of speech 
    
--  Google as judge and jury; deciding what content is appropriate to remove
    on a territory-by-territory basis 
    
--  The threat posed by an anonymous voice online 
    
--  The fact that damaging content so frequently outranks good news in
    search engines where it can persist in perpetuity 
    
--  Whether entries in Google Suggest (Google's search engine auto-fill) can
    be libellous and the extent to which they can be manipulated legally and
    technically 
    
--  Trademark infringement as a method of barring content and reclaiming
    domain names
    

                                                                            
The panel shared advice on:                                                 

--  Legal and technical remedies to reputation damaging content on
    traditional news web sites, social media platforms and search engines 
    
--  How legal subpoena and technical forensic investigation can be used to
    identify the author of anonymous commentary 
    
--  How to approach Google, Facebook et al when erroneous or damaging
    material is published 
    
--  Territorial differences in terms of the legal and technical remedy
    available 
    
--  When legal remedy can exacerbate a reputational challenge

Dave King has held the position of CEO in a number of industry leading technology companies and launched the Digitalis Media Group in 2009. Digitalis Reputation is a global specialist company for Online Reputation Management and is firmly positioned at the forefront of this progressive field.