The net is closing. The e-police are here. Bringing to the fore a powerful debate about the future policing of the internet; a platform from which the crying voices of victims of online crime can be loudly and clearly heard. Telling a painful truth about what really happens online, the net is closing: birth of the e-police calls out internet bullies and online anonymity, and shines a bright light on who (or what) is behind policing our current "virtual" reality. The book is a polemical work about online safety and policing. It argues for a move away from self-policing and towards a more conventional form of state maintained supervision in the still relatively new sphere of human activity of the internet. The inevitable conclusion, that soon, the internet will become neatly policed, is primarily based on the author's extensive experience of working as a lawyer in the field of online defamation, harassment and infringement of privacy. - Have you ever considered what society will look like in 5, 10 or 50 years' time, without online law enforcement? - Have you or someone you know had their lives destroyed by trolls able to hide behind fake profiles, but felt they had no one to turn to for redress? - Can you imagine what it feels like to receive death threats, be sexually abused, be too scared to leave the house or unfairly lose your small family business, only to find that nobody really cares? The author deploys his experience, along with personal observations of the other forces which shape online behaviour, such as the profit motive of large social media businesses, to make a case for an approach to self-expression and anonymity online which is more consistent with the "real-world" already standards applied to offensive conduct by the state. Through powerful real life stories, addressing the conflict between emotion and logic, the author tells the stories of a prominent football coach child abuser who carefully orchestrated sexual assaults on dozens of young victims so that he can freely share the videos of his abuse online, and that of a school teacher whose innocent quest for companionship online turned into a pornographic nightmare involving blackmail and extortion by the Moroccan mafia and many more real life stories. Urging the government, relevant organisations and corporations to work towards providing a better, safer future for us and our children, this book turns up the heat on the privacy vs. safety debate and puts forth some necessary, yet somewhat controversial, recommendations for change. Determined, purposive and armed with real-life cases of online atrocities, author and top UK Internet Lawyer Yair Cohen's fascinating insights into the internet and our society scares, angers, excited and disturbs. Warning: The Net Is Closing: birth of the e-police is not for the faint-hearted. After reading, you will be on one side, or the other.
About the Author: Yair Cohen is the UK's first internet lawyer, specialising in bringing justice to the victims of internet crime. Yair is a public speaker, an internet law trainer and a pioneer in developing internet law as a distinct area of law in the UK. With a reputation for relent- less dedication to helping those whom the current justice system lets down, Yair's accomplishments through his firm, Cohen Davis, have been featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including The Law Society Gazette, The Scotsman, TIME, The Telegraph, LBC, Bloomberg News, The Evening Standard, Forbes, The Times, The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. Yair has gathered over 20 years' experience in the eld of internet law, which began when he was at City University in London and set up his first online e-commerce business (before the phrase 'e-commerce' was actually invented) to fund his law studies. In the early days of the internet, being one of the only lawyers in the UK who knew how to code websites and who already had a deep insight into the back-end of the internet, Yair leveraged his technical knowledge and his legal experience to become the very first lawyer in the UK to specialise in internet law. What followed was unexpected, and unprecedented. Dozens of enquiries from professionals, individuals and companies, who were concerned with issues they were experiencing as a result of having an online presence, and requests from other lawyers to train them in this newly developing area of law. Having built up extensive knowledge of both the back and front end of the internet as well as the UK legal system, and combining that with his analytical and evidence-based approach honed over his years practicing criminal defence law, Yair Cohen dedicated and continues to dedicate his career to winning ground-breaking cases involving internet crime. His many achievements include taking part in the preparation of the first UK court case requiring Facebook to release a user's identity, and being the first lawyer in the world to have obtained court's permission to serve an injunction on an internet troll, via an Instagram message. His passion for what he does is as strong now as it was when he first started out. He has now authored this book to share his knowledge of what happens online, to protect the general public, and to lobby institutions to take a pro-active approach in protecting us, particularly young people, online.