Tag Archives: social media

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As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Twitter’s refusal to simply turn over your tweets to the Court, today we are providing a link to Twitter’s first Transparency Report. The report lists government requests for information, government requests to withhold information, and DMCA takedown notices received from copyright holders. The report is helpfully broken down by country. The blog post by Jeremy Kessel also announces a new partnership with Herdict, a Harvard-based initiative that “seeks to gain insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility.”

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According to Twitter’s terms of service, users own their tweets, but Judge Matthew Sciarrino has issued a subpoena requiring Twitter to release tweets in relation to the Occupy movement in New York. In his decision, Judge Sciarrino states that users have no reasonable expectation of privacy once they post. Twitter, however, maintains that the issue really centers around ownership of the tweets and that rests firmly with users: the tweets simply aren’t Twitter’s to turn over. Read the full story here.

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Ever wonder what your clients are thinking or saying about a particular issue? Social media makes it easy to find out as proven by the number of tweets, posts, blogs, etc that were devoted to Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act. Naturally, it’s helpful to know how your clients feel about certain issues, but it’s also good to know how they are expressing themselves. Deanne Katz’s article, “Everyone Has a Social Media Opinion on the Health Care Ruling, ” examines some of those comments.

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In a widespread student protest in Montreal, Quebec, students are helping raise awareness of perceived unfairness in tuition hikes through social media. They have also effectively harnessed social media to organize their public protests. Perhaps most significantly, the students are doing a much more efficient job of utilizing social media channels than the government is. Nelson Wyatt’s article “Social Media Making It Easier to Organize Student Protests, Get Media Out” provides a good overview of the situation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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Edward Wyatt reports on the FTC charging Myspace with privacy violations in his article, “F.T.C. Charges Myspace With Breaking U.S. Law in Sharing Users’ Personal Information.”


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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.

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