If you promise customers that their personal information is secure, you had better deliver on that promise. That is the message of last week’s settlement between the FTC and Twitter — the FTC’s first case against a social networking service. It’s a message the FTC has sent to industry before.
The matter arose when hackers twice secured administrative control of Twitter in early 2009. (How? In one case, an automated password-guessing tool smoked out the administrative password – ”a weak, lowercase, letter-only, common dictionary word,” according to the complaint.) The breach led to a series of phony tweets from a number of user accounts — including one from then President-elect Obama. Hackers also reviewed non-public user information. Read more »
We reviewed Judge Stanton’s comprehensive decision in this closely watched case. If upheld on appeal, it’s a victory not only for YouTube and Google, but for all Internet service providers (ISPs).
If you haven’t followed the case, Viacom had sued Google and YouTube for intentional and contributory copyright infringement, alleging “tens of thousands of videos on YouTube … were taken unlawfully from Viacom’s copyrighted works without authorization.” In defense, Google and YouTube asserted DMCA section 512. This so-called ”safe harbor” limits ISP liability for copyright infringement in certain situations. Whether defendants in copyright cases enjoy the limitation of liability is based on, among other things, their knowledge of — and response to – infringing activity on their service of which they become aware. Read more »
Tags: Copyright Infringement, Digital Millen. Copyright Act, Google, safe harbor, Viacom, YouTube
Copyright Act, Court Cases, Google, Viacom, YouTube | editor | 
June 25, 2010 2:21 pm | 
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There’s big news in the CyberLaw world today. The Associated Press is reporting that a federal court in New York has dismissed Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google and YouTube. It appears the defendants’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act sec. 512 safe-harbor defense carried the day. We are reading the 30 page decision by Southern District Judge Louis Stanton now. More to come.
Social media and other electronic messages continue to find their way into court. Three recent cases — from Minnesota, Indiana, and California — illustrate the trend.
LinkedIn Posts Lead to Lawsuit. In a case making news in the employment law world, a recruiting firm has sued a former recruiter for sending LinkedIn messages to its clients in violation of the employee’s non-compete agreements.
TEKsystems is a technology staffing and services company. In an effort to protect its client and prospect lists, client service agreements, billing rates, client preferences, and other confidential information, TEKsystems required its employees to sign three “restrictive covenants” — an agreement not to compete, an agreement not to solicit clients, and an agreement not to disclose confidential information. Read more »
Facebook has been under a microscope lately. So founder Mark Zuckerberg, criticized for keeping his head down in the face of growing criticism, penned this op-ed for the Washington Post. Zuckerberg acknowledges some mistakes, and that “the biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information.” He promises in the coming weeks ”privacy controls that are much simpler to use.” [UPDATE: at his May 26 press conference, reported here, he said the changes will include simpler controls for determining whether information is visible to friends, friends of friends, or everyone, and an easy way to turn off "instant personalization."] We eagerly await the changes, as well as the soon-to-be-published David Kirkpatrick book The Facebook Effect — The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Indeed, we plan to host the author as part of a star-studded Gotham Media Ventures panel on June 18th. For good networking and an insider’s view of the business of Facebook, register here. Frankfurt Kurnit tech group chair Jerry Spiegel moderates. Only a few seats remain.
The Federal Trade Commission voted five to zero to give regulatory approval to Google’s acquisition of the mobile advertising network AdMob. The deal was first announced last November. The Commission concluded the acquisition is unlikely to harm competition in the mobile advertising networks market. The Commission relied on recent evidence demonstrating Apple will be a strong competitor in the mobile advertising market. (Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless for use in connection with the Apple iAd service.) The deal may signal increased interest in acquiring businesses in the digital advertising space — Gavin D. McElroy
What is the significance of these numbers? If you guessed “number of words in Facebook’s privacy policy compared to number of words in the US Constitution,” go to the head of the class. As today’s New York Times reported here, the Facebook privacy policy has grown from 1,004 words in 2005 to 5,830 today. Facebook’s privacy policy word count not only has eclipsed the US Constitution, it has also passed other major social networks such as Flickr (384 words), Twitter (1,203), Friendster (1,977), and MySpace (2,290). According to the Times‘ analysis, a Facebook user now needs to click through more than 50 privacy buttons with more than 170 options in order to opt out of full disclosure of his or her personal information. The complexity and arc of the current policy – the evolution of which is neatly summarized here – has driven some interest groups to file a complaint with the FTC. More legal and regulatory action is coming. You can count on it.
Facebook’s new online social paradigm, called “The Open Graph,” has been stirring up controversy. For a quick review of the latest commentary, check out Nick O’Neill’s post about privacy, Pete Cashmore’s article on “social links” and how they may change the way we search the web, and Farhad Manjoo’s article on “Facebook’s Plan to Take Over the Web.”
A New York Times article reports on the increasing attention Craigslist is receiving from law enforcement officials for its alleged failure to remove ads for prostitution from its site. As we have reported, Craigslist has so far been able to deploy the Communications Decency Act’s safe harbor provisions to elude legal liability for posts that violate prostitution laws. The article notes that Craigslist is on track to boost revenue 22% this year, “largely from its controversial sex advertisements.” UPDATE MAY 4: The Times is now reporting that the Attorney General of Connecticut has served a subpoena on Craigslist. The article quotes the attorney general’s position: ”We are asking Craigslist for specific answers about steps to screen and stop sex-for-money offers — and whether the company is actually profiting from prostitution ads that it promised the states and public that it would try to block.”
The FCC’s mission of promoting Internet neutrality suffered a significant setback yesterday when the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in Comcast Corp. v. Federal Communication Commission that the FCC lacked authority to prohibit Internet service providers from monitoring and restricting their subscribers’ use of certain peer-to-peer applications.
The controversy arose in 2007 after Comcast subscribers noticed that the company was impeding their use of BitTorrent, an open source, peer-to-peer networking protocol that has rapidly grown in popularity due to its speed and efficiency, but has notoriously been exploited for the unlawful exchange of copyrighted material. Read more »
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