Regulated companies face additional challenges when incorporating social media into their communications network. Bloomberg BNA will hold a special online educational forum this week to address many of these quickly changing challenges. They envision the program as being valuable for attorneys and senior executives. To learn more, follow the link.
Police in Michigan are refining and increasing how they use social media to solve and prevent crimes. Cecil Angel writes about how “Michigan Police Use Facebook, Twitter to Catch Crooks.” Michigan police are using social media to track down criminals, but they are also using it proactively to reach out to the public and to detect and prevent crime before in can happen.
A new law in Maryland will protect employees from having to disclose passwords to employers. The new law is likely to be followed by a similar one in California and Senate has a bill- the Password Protection Act 2012. Thomas Bartlet’s article “Online Privacy Laws Can Cause Discovery Woes, ” looks at why too much information in Discovery is neither helping the system nor individuals.
By Michael Kernan
A major issue for Facebook going forward is going to be how it handles Right of Publicity claims by its users. Advertisers love Facebook because they have found that a friend endorsing their product has more impact on you as a consumer than a costly celebrity endorsement. The problem, as identified in the Facebook lawsuit recently settled, is Facebook users are claiming that Facebook has no right to use their name or likeness in such ads. Facebook sought to dismiss a lawsuit based upon claims that it violated its users’ Right of Publicity, but the judge refused to dismiss that lawsuit.
Facebook has now settled that lawsuit by paying $10 million to charity. (See Kevin Smith’s article.) It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles these claims going forward. The solution may lie in Facebook amending its terms of use. “Consent” is a defense to Right of Publicity actions.
Please see our article next week on terms of use.
You may also be interested in our previous entry on “The Right of Publicity in the Digital Age“.
For further background on the class action lawsuit and Facebook’s initial reaction to it, see the following two articles:
“Facebook Class Action Lawsuit Seeks$15 Billion for Privacy Violations” by Brian Prince.
“Facebook Hit with Lawsuit Alleging Privacy Wrongs” by John P Mello Jr.
The Password Protection Act was introduced in both houses of Congress this week. The Act would protect employees from having to divulge any social media passwords to their employer. Read more in Bob Sullivan’s article Bill Would Make Facebook Snooping, Digital Spying By Employers Illegal.
US protections for Free Speech may keep Facebook from having to adhere to new EU laws. Dinah Greek looks at how “EU Data Privacy Directive Loophole Affects Social Networking Sites.”
Here is another look at the ramifications of banning the use of social media in California courts. This article looks specifically at why this law was needed, particularly to avoid mistrials and appeals: “Jurors Social Media Use Banned In State Courts.”
Pinterest is the hot new social networking site that allows users to “pin” pictures in a series of “albums” that they create. Pictures can be taken from one’s own personal library or from anywhere – almost – on the internet. Numerous questions about the copyright legality of this practice have lead to sites like Flickr, Yahoo and Facebook adopting Pinterest’s “kill switch” which disables users ability to pin pictures from those sites. Christopher Mims explores “The Genius of Pinterest’s Copyright Dodge.” And here are three articles on how Flickr is responding:
*David Murphy “Flickr Adopts Pinterest ‘Kill Switch’ to Prevent Photo Sharing.”
*Jennifer Van Grove “Flickr Disables Pinterest Pins on Copyrighted Images.”
*Dylan Love “Flickr Is Fighting Copyright Theft On Pinterest.”
Michael McHugh looks at how much social media and its users are worth in “One Facebook User = Two LinkedIn Users, and Other Things the Stock Market Tells Us.”
The rules for online defamation may be a matter for individual courts to determine according to “Online Defamation: Is it Any Different?” by Steven Price. Like many issues in cyberspace, defamation is still being defined and refined in the online environment.