Podcasts

Do Twitter?s new terms of service forsake third party developers?

Posted on September 11, 2009
Twitter announced its new Terms of Service yesterday. One big issue deals with copyright ownership. This is one of the perennial questions in the law of social media: ?who owns the user-created content?? Twitter nods to this issue when it states that ?Twitter is allowed to ?use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display [...

Email snooping can be intrusion upon seclusion

Posted on August 31, 2009
Analysis could also affect liability of enterprises using cloud computing technologies. Steinbach v. Village of Forest Park, No. 06-4215, 2009 WL 2605283 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 25, 2009) Local elected official Steinbach had an email account that was issued by the municipality...

Conviction for sending intimidating MySpace message overturned

Posted on August 12, 2009
Marshall v. State, 2009 WL 2243467 (Ind. App. July 28, 2009) Gotta love the facts of this case from my home state of Indiana. Marshall and Goodman traded cars with one another, but that deal went sour. Marshall then got into an altercation with Goodman’s mother (named Lee) and Marshall was arrested...

Drinkin? photos on MySpace send man to prison

Posted on August 03, 2009
Lesson of the day: don?t post pictures of yourself on MySpace holding a beer if the conditions of your probation don?t let you drink alcohol or use the internet. Defendant Pressley pled guilty to some ugly crimes and was sentenced to a lifetime of probation...

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Was on CNN.com talking about Twitter

Posted on July 30, 2009
Great time today being on CNN.com Live talking about the recent lawsuit filed against a Twitter user for talking about mold in her apartment and an apparently uncaring management company. Video embedded below. (Or click through if it’s not showing up in the RSS feed)...

What the Lori Drew acquittal should mean for service providers

Posted on July 02, 2009
You know the story of Lori Drew — the mom from Missouri who was accused of setting up a bogus MySpace profile impersonating an adolescent boy. Lori acted as this fake “Josh” to stir up romantic feelings in young Megan Meier who, after being dumped by “Josh,” took her own life...

Unauthorized software downloads did not violate Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Posted on June 24, 2009
Cassetica Software made an application available for download on the web and entered into a license agreement for that application with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). Cassetica alleged that CSC continued to download the application after the license agreement expired...

Record companies win $1.92 million in case against individual file sharer

Posted on June 18, 2009
There has only been one copyright infringement case filed against an individual accused of illegally sharing music files over the internet to actually go to trial. That’s the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas. In October 2007, a jury in the U...

Domain name not tangible property that could satisfy judgment

Posted on June 17, 2009
Palacio del Mar Homeowners Assn., Inc. v. McMahon, — Cal.Rptr.3d —, 2009 WL 1668294 (Cal. App. 4 Dist. June 16, 2009) A California state court entered a $40,000 judgment against defendant McMahon in favor of plaintiff homeowners association...

Scope of Electronic Communications Privacy Act may not be so narrow

Posted on June 16, 2009
Brahmana v. Lembo, No. 09-106, 2009 WL 1424438 (N.D. Cal. May 20, 2009) Plaintiff former employee Brahmana sued his former employer Cyberdata, claiming that Cyberdata violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (at 18 U.S.C. 2511) (“ECPA”)...

Has Section 230 immunity passed its apex?

Posted on May 08, 2009
Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., No. 05-36189, 9th Cir. May 7, 2009 Yesterday’s decision from the Ninth Circuit in Barnes v. Yahoo is kind of a big deal. Jeff Neuberger observes that Section 230 took a hit. Characterizing it differently, Thomas O’Toole called it a nice win for online publishers...

My Public Radio debut

Posted on May 08, 2009
Had a great time talking about anonymity and the First Amendment with Sheilah Kast of Baltimore’s 88.1 FM WYPR on today’s Maryland Morning. I talked about the court’s analysis in the recent case of Independent Newspapers, Inc. v. Brodie (which I wrote about here)...

Court allows Wal-Mart to subpoena Facebook and MySpace

Posted on April 27, 2009
Ledbetter v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2009 WL 1067018 (D.Colo. April 21, 2009) A couple of electricians were severely burned when the electrical system they were working on in an Aurora, Colorado Wal-Mart shorted out. They sued Wal-Mart over their injuries...

The Pirate Bay verdict is no big deal

Posted on April 17, 2009
The big news story of the day is the guilty verdict from a Swedish court against the four guys behind The Pirate Bay. The judge sentenced them to a year in prison for facilitating copyright infringement and also ordered them to pay millions of dollars...

Website terms of service provide basis for exercise of personal jurisdiction

Posted on April 10, 2009
CoStar Realty Information, Inc. v. Field, — F.Supp.2d —-, 2009 WL 841132 (D.Md. March 31, 2009) Personal jurisdiction cases — even ones that involve the internet — are generally not all that interesting. But the case of CoStar Realty Information, Inc...

Technology ethics: Seminar on responsible telephone use

Posted on April 01, 2009
As an attorney I feel an obligation to preach to you about what’s right and what’s wrong. People routinely trivialize this important duty by characterizing the subject matter as “ethics” or “professionalism.” As a technology attorney, especially as one cool enough to use Twitter and be on Facebook, I feel a special obligation to instruct [...

Facebook message was not witness tampering

Posted on March 17, 2009
Maldonado v. Municipality of Barceloneta, 2009 WL 636016 (D. Puerto Rico March 11, 2009) Diaz was a defendant in a federal case in which Febus was a witness for the plaintiff. Diaz invited Febus to join a Facebook group, but Febus declined. Later Diaz sent a message through Facebook which, after translation, read as follows: If you [...

Clickwrap binding despite claim of no opportunity to read terms

Posted on February 23, 2009
Via Viente Taiwan, L.P. v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 2009 WL 398729 (E.D. Tex. February 17, 2009) A federal court in Texas held the clickwrap agreement between United Parcel Service and one of its customers was binding. After plaintiff Via Viente sued UPS in Texas, UPS moved to transfer venue to the Northern District of Georgia, [...

My law firm?s newest blog: Practical Ediscovery

Posted on February 19, 2009
Please take a moment to visit Practical Ediscovery, a new blog written by a team of attorneys at my law firm, Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP. I’ve already contributed one post, and plan on generating as much content for the blog as I reasonably can...

RIAA?s need for discovery was not so urgent

Posted on February 13, 2009
Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Does 1-6, No. 08-444 (S.D. Ohio February 5, 2009) The RIAA’s de-emphasis on lawsuits against individual file sharers may underlie the result in a recent case from a federal court in Ohio. The music industry plaintiffs had sought expedited discovery so they could learn which members in a household (either the [...

Does the Kindle 2?s text-to-speech feature violate copyright law?

Posted on February 11, 2009
The executive director of the Author’s Guild apparently objects to a feature of Amazon’s new Kindle 2 that would permit the vision impaired to hear the book’s text read in a computer generated voice. The Wall Street Journal quoted Paul Aiken yesterday as saying “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud...

Trademark infringement and false designation claims not subject to heightened pleading standard

Posted on February 06, 2009
Court also foreshadows that if all they’re talking about is metatags, there won’t be much of a case. Indiaweekly.com, LLC v. Nehaflix.com, Inc., 2009 WL 189867 (D. Conn. January 27, 2009) In moving to dismiss claims brought against it for trademark infringement and false designation of origin under 15 U...

No CFAA claim where no impairment of system or data

Posted on January 12, 2009
Andritz, Inc. v. Southern Maintenance Contractor, LLC, 2009 WL 48187 (M.D. Ga. January 7, 2008) When defendants Pettit and Harper worked for plaintiff Andritz, Inc., they had company-issued laptops with which they accessed proprietary information. After defendants resigned, they allegedly took that proprietary information and gave it to defendant-competitor SMC...

Should ISPs get paid to respond to DMCA takedown notices?

Posted on December 22, 2008
CNET News is running a story about how Jerry Scroggin, the owner of Louisiana’s Bayou Internet and Communications, expects big media to pay him for complying with DMCA takedown notices. No doubt Scroggin gets a little PR boost for his maverick attitude, and CNET keeps its traffic up by covering a provocative topic...

What could the RIAA?s switch in strategy mean?

Posted on December 19, 2008
The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that the Recording Industry Association of America is adjusting its strategy for combating the massive infringement occasioned by the sharing of music files over the internet. Since 2003, that strategy has been to pursue copyright infringement cases against individual file sharers...

Disclaimer in trademark registration sinks UDRP action

Posted on December 18, 2008
Ideation Unlimited, Inc. v. Dan Myers, Case No. D2008-1441 (WIPO November 12, 2008). A trademark owner who notices that someone else has registered a domain name incorporating the owner’s mark can file an arbitration action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP for short)...

Site operator successfully challenges subpoena which sought to unmask anonymous commenters

Posted on December 16, 2008
Enterline v. Pocono Medical Center, 2008 WL 5192386 (M.D. Pa. December 11, 2008) A federal court in Pennsylvania has denied a motion demanding that a website operator turn over the identity of persons who commented anonymously in response to an article posted on the website...

Cisco accused of violating open source licenses

Posted on December 11, 2008
Free Software Foundation, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 08-10764 (S.D.N.Y., filed December 11, 2008). [Download the Complaint] The Free Software Foundation (”FSF”) has filed a copyright infringement suit against Cisco claiming that Cisco has violated the GPL v...

What are the top 10 internet cases of 2008?

Posted on December 10, 2008
I’m working on gathering a list of the most important internet- and technology-related cases from the past year. There are many cases to choose from, and I’m trying to crowdsource the nomination process. I invite you to nominate the case or cases you think have been most significant by leaving a comment to this post...

Is Twitter is a big fat copyright infringing turkey?

Posted on November 26, 2008
Here’s a topic you can mull over if conversation gets slow during tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner: Does Twitter infringe your copyright every time you post to it (i.e., put up a “tweet”)? Consider this: One of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner (under 17 U...

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