Archive for Legal
Legal Concerns: Your Facebook Account as Evidence in a Lawsuit
Social media as court evidence? You have a legal duty to preserve it. From attorney Emily Huters, "If you are involved in litigation where social media evidence within your control may be relevant, don’t delete the data or deactivate the account, which could lead to deletion."
PeopleBrowsr and Twitter Settle Lawsuit Over Access to Firehose
PeopleBrowsr, the parent company of Kred, and Twitter have settled a lawsuit over PeopleBrowsr’s access to Twitter’s data “firehose,” the companies said today.
PeopleBrowsr will retain access to Twitter’s so-called firehose of data until the end of 2013, at which point it will have to contract with one of the three authorized data resellers with which Twitter contracts.
“”We’re pleased to have this matter dismissed with prejudice, and look forward to PeopleBrowsr’s transition by the end of the year off of the Firehose to join the ecosystem of developers utilizing Twitter data via our reseller partnerships,” a Twitter spokesman said.
PeopleBrowsr said the time frame will allow it to maintain its products that use the data while it negotiates an arrangement with one of the resellers, Gnip, DataSift and Topsy.
“We’ve got eight months to look at that transition what it might look like technically and commercially,” said Kred CEO Andrew Grill.
PeopleBrowsr sued Twitter late last year after the social media company cut off its access to its data stream, which it had used since 2008 to build social products like Kred, a social media influence ranking.
In its court filings, PeopleBrowsr argued that the resellers don’t enjoy access to the full firehose of data, leaving it unable to fulfill its existing contracts.
But given the 8-month reprieve, Grill is confident the company will “get everything we need” to support its products.
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Pin It to Win It: Curalate and ePrize Partner on Pinterest Promotion Services
Curalate and ePrize have announced a strategic partnership to improve the process of running sweepstakes and contests on the image bookmarking site Pinterest.
Curalate is among the first marketing and analytics services to focus on image-based sites including Pinterest and Instagram. ePrize works with brands such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, The Gap, MillerCoors, Lenovo, NHL, Yahoo!, P&G and AT&T to improve digital engagement for social, mobile and web campaigns.
Curalate CEO and co-founder Apu Gupta told SocialTimes:
“This really is a combination of two complimentary skills to bring the market a comprehensive Pinterest solution. As the largest online promotions company, ePrize was searching for a Pinterest promotions solution and discovered Curalate in the process of some promotions we ran. Curalate, on the other hand, has no capacity to do legal or prize fulfillment, both of which are ePrize’s core solutions. Together, Curalate brings the technology and ePrize brings the ability to handle the legal aspects and prize fulfillment components of running promotions. This makes this the only comprehensive Pinterest promotions solutions and makes it even easier for enterprises to connect with consumers over Pinterest.”
The company competes with Piquora (formerly Pinfluencer), which also facilitates Pinterest promotions and sweepstakes for its clients. Pinterest, which has only recently opened the community for businesses to set up official pages and track analytics, has yet to unveil its own marketing solutions.
Image by Ilin Sergey.
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Category: curalate, Deals, ePrize, How To, Legal, News, pinterest promotions, pinterest sweepstakes, Platform, strategic partnership /
Is It Illegal to Use Map Apps While Driving?
Centurion Studio / Shutterstock.com
In California it’s illegal to use a mobile phone without a headset while driving.
Steven Spriggs was pulled over and ticketed in January 2012 for using a map application on his smartphone while driving.
He protested. The court found against him. He appealed. And at the end of March the appellate court found that Spriggs had in fact broken the law by looking at a map on his phone while driving.
Although the statute refers in one section to use of “a wireless telephone” and in another to “an electronic wireless communications device,” the court held that the ban on phone use applied to digital maps. The court reasoned that the purpose of the law was to prevent inattention while driving.
“This strikes me as very puzzling kind of statutory interpretation,” wrote cyberlaw expert Orin Kerr on a legal blog.
“The fact that the legislature was worried about distracted drivers in enacting the first ban doesn’t tell us whether the statute enacted should apply to all things that distract drivers or only some things,” he wrote.
It is not illegal to consult a paper map or a GPS in-dash “mapping display” while driving in California.
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Category: Apple Maps, Google Maps, Legal, mobile apps, News, orin kerr, Regulation, steven spriggs, texting /
Minnesota Woman Held to $222,000 Fine for Downloaded Music
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 35-year-old Minnesota woman, was left with no remedy but to pay a $222,000 fine stemming from a 2006 case about music she downloaded from a file-sharing service, when the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal today.
Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum were the only two defendants from a spate of cases brought by music industry groups in the mid-2000s who did not settle. Tenenbaum is facing a $675,000 fine.
Like Tenenbaum, Thomas-Rasset has said she cannot pay the fine.
The Copyright Act provides for penalties of up to $150,000 per violation.
The Recording Industry Association of America initially offered to settle the case for $5,000; it subsequently offered to settle for a $25,000 donation to a charity for musicians in need, according to the Washington Post.
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Square Exec Accused of Harassing a Male Employee Was Involved in Homophobic Incident
Keith Rabois, who resigned as COO of Square yesterday, said today that his resignation stemmed from a lawsuit alleging that he had sexually harassed a male employee at Square, the successful payments processing startup led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
But two decades ago, when Rabois was a law student at Stanford, he faced potential disciplinary charges for calling a lecturer a “faggot,” according to a Stanford press release at the time.
“Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!” Rabois shouted in the direction of the campus residence of Dennis Matthies, who taught at the university for 30 years, according to a professional biography. Matthies has also worked at Microsoft and Cybress Semiconductor.
Matthies could not immediately be reached for comment.
Rabois acknowledged to the Stanford Daily that he had made the remarks.
“The intention was for the speech to be outrageous enough to provoke a thought of ‘Wow, if he can say that, I guess I can say a little more than I thought,’” Rabois wrote at the time.
Then-dean of students Michael Jackson decided that the speech was protected, although he called it a “vicious tirade.”
Earlier today, Rabois released a statement claiming that he and the man had a “relationship” began before the man who is know alleging sexual harassment was employed at Square. Rabois said the relationship was consensual and didn’t influence their work together. He resigned, he said, because he and the company decided that fighting the lawsuit would be a distraction.
It appears to be Rabois’s first published acknowledgment that he is gay or bisexual.
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In Reversal, Court Says Accusations in Yelp Review Can Stand
A Virginia court has lifted an injunction against a woman who posted a scathing review of a contractor on Yelp.
Jane Perez, of Fairfax, Maryland, had alleged that the contractor, Christopher Dietz of Dietz Development, was not licensed and had illegally entered her home and stolen from her. She claimed she’d filed a police report, but no such report existed.
Dietz sued, saying the review had caused a dramatic downturn in his business. Initially, the court sided with him, demanding that Perez remove the implication that he had stolen from her, which, if untrue, could constitute libel.
But after a complain from Public Citizen, which is representing Perez, the court rescinded the injunction late last week, falling into line with the established legal formula that courts can only require speech that has been proven to be false to be retracted.
“The decision confirms the importance of not shutting down public discussion on the Internet just because someone doesn’t like what’s being talked about,” said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney for Public Citizen.
Yelp agreed.
“Consumer freedom of speech provides an important public service, protected by law. Yelp provides a valuable contribution to this dialogue by providing a two-way platform for consumers to share their experiences and for businesses to respond to their customers,” a spokesperson said.
“Businesses that choose to sue their customers to silence them rather than address their comments, rarely prevail and often bring additional unwanted attention to the original criticism,” she added.
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Category: Christopher Dietz, freedom of speech, Jane Perez, Legal, Local Search, News, Paul Alan Levy, Reviews, yelp /
Lawsuit Over Instagram Terms of Service Is Flimsy, Experts Say
Late last week, Instagram was hit with a lawsuit seeking to gain class action status as a result of its changed terms of service, but experts are calling the case flimsy.
The suit was filed in San Francisco by New York class action attorneys Finkelstein and Krinsk on behalf of California Instagram user Lucy Funes “and others similarly situated.” The lawsuit asserts breach of contract and unfair competition. It also claims that Instagram violated California’s privacy laws, which are stricter than any other state’s.
In an analysis of the case, Seattle technology lawyer Venkat Balasubramani called the suit “borderline frivolous.”
The case has two major legal shortcomings, Balasubramani said: Courts have held that revising terms of service is not sufficient grounds for a lawsuit, and the new terms of service haven’t even taken effect yet so there can be no real harm to the plaintiff.
The lawsuit points to the new terms’ ban on class action lawsuits to justify its pre-emptive filing.
According to Balasubramani and Eric Goldman, the director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, the change to Instagram’s terms of service likely stemmed from Facebook’s experiences with a previous class action lawsuit, Fraley v. Facebook, in which California users claimed that Facebook’s Sponsored Stories violated their privacy by using their likenesses without permission. Facebook eventually paid $20 million to settle that case. It also stopped displaying users’ likenesses as part of its social advertisements.
The most controversial change to Instagram’s terms of service, which the company has since retracted, appeared merely to clarify its existing terms using language similar to that found the settlement Facebook reached in the Fraley case, Goldman noted.
“I can’t say I’m a fan of Instagram’s recent behavior, but I’m even less of a fan of publicity-seeking throw-lots-of-garbage-into-a-complaint-and-hope-something-sticks lawsuits like this one,” Goldman said of the Instagram lawsuit.
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Lawsuit Alleges Cal.’s New Anti-Sex Trafficking Law Limits Online Speech
The ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit in California today to block enforcement of parts of Proposition 35, a California ballot measure designed to help prevent human sex trafficking.
The law expands the registration requirements for convicted sex offenders, requiring them to notify law enforcement of all of their “Internet identifiers” and “Internet service providers.”
According to the ACLU and the EFF, the law would require the roughly 75,000 convicted sex offenders who live in California to tell law enforcement not only of their Facebook accounts, but of logins used for newspaper and e-commerce sites, for example. Failure to report the information within 24 hours of creating a new account could result in prison time under the law.
Sex offenses include everything from statutory rape and indecent exposure to felony rape and child molestation.
“It’s much too much speech to curtail,” said Michael Risher, a staff attorney with the ACLU who is leading the case.
“All of us, including people with past convictions, have the right to engage in online speech, and unless the government has a compelling need to infringe on that speech, it can’t do it. It may have a compelling need to infringe on some people, but the vast majority of these people never used the Internet to commit a crime, they never committed a crime against a stranger,” Risher said.
The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It was filed on behalf of two unnamed plaintiffs who are required to report their Internet information.
The law went into effect immediately after the measure passed yesterday, but the California District Attorney has said the state will give those affected time to comply. The plaintiffs are seeking quick relief from the courts, and Risher told SocialTimes that they’ve already had a phone hearing on the matter.
SocialTimes was not able to reach Prop 35 supporters for comment.
Image: Andrii Kondiuk / Shutterstock.com
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Pandora Sues Music Catalog ASCAP Over Licensing Fees
The Internet music service Pandora filed suit yesterday against the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers yesterday, asking the court to establish reasonable licensing fees for the titles in ASCAP’s catalog.
Pandora has been negotiating with ASCAP for more than a year in an effort to establish licensing fees that are acceptable to both parties.
U.S. law requires copyright holders to license use of their intellectual property at reasonable rates.
ASCAP holds the rights to works by roughly 435,000 artists, according to the lawsuit. Pandora is the largest Internet radio station, with 150 million registered users in the United States who listen collectively for more than a billion hours a month, it said in court papers.
“ASCAP continues to seek rates higher than the current rates and above the agreement that they reached earlier this year with all of the major radio groups, which covers both broadcast and Internet radio usage for the majority of our competitors,” a Pandora spokesperson said.
ASCAP declined to comment.
The suit was filed in federal district court in the Southern District of New York. The same court approved in January 2012 ASCAP’s licensing deal with broadcasters the Oakland, Cal.-based Pandora sees as competitors.
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