February 2010

Legal Love is In the Air: Valentines Day for Law Nerds

February 13th 2010

Romantic-Sounding Case Law In celebration of Valentines Day the hopeless romantics at Legal Blog Watch have launched a survey on the most romantic-sounding Supreme Court cases.  My vote of course is for Loving v. Virginia. After all its about marriage, equality, and it inspired that ad campaign “Virginia is for Lovers“, right? Not Cool as […]

Trademarks in Keyword Advertising: Online Law Trends for 2010

February 11th 2010

The most frequent response to my question about what online law issues our readers are most concerned about centered on the still undetermined law around the use of trademarks as  to trigger advertising in search engines.  The issue is both prominent and vexingly permanent in the minds of both IP layers and and search marketers. […]

Is Your Search History Private? How PII Data Can Be Built From Anonymous Releases

February 10th 2010

Last year I wrote about Latanya Sweeney, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor, who took anonymous data from medical records and used it to identify real patients. She in fact did so on the medical record of the governor who released the data. In the video below, Cory Doctorow (of EFF and boing boing […]

Altaf Shaikh: Do you think that Bill Gates or Richard Branson is always on the other end of your social media conversations?

February 9th 2010

First off, I just wanted to thank Dave for inviting me to join in the conversation on Ghostwriting in Social Media. Secondly, I want to make something very clear before I stand up on my soapbox: I am a marketer—and founder & CEO of the interactive e-marketing firm ListEngage.com—and as a company, we do represent […]

Offensive Game on Yahoo Kids Teaches Girls Age 6-12 to Win By Dressing (or not) To Please Boys

February 7th 2010

A few months ago we got the most offensive legal advertising ever taken down. (Remember,  it advertised a sex offender defense practice using a photo of a girl showing skin and looking guilty….and an adult hand keeping a scared child from speaking.) As the father of two girls who have never watched television, I’m astounded […]

Litigants Are Often Caregivers Who Need Help Too: Online Tools Help Bring Community In

February 7th 2010

Last week a family member had serious enough surgery that I took time away from my job to be a caregiver. Surprisingly, this has connected me more to social networks and this blog. You see,  our hospital has wi-fi in its waiting areas, so writing online is productive way to pass time, and absorb the waiting […]

Shava Nerad: Blog Ghost Writing Amplifies Authentic Voices

February 6th 2010

This response was originally posted on Shava Nerad’s blog Memesplice. It is used with permission. This is a response to Ja-Nae Duane’s article, which in turn responds to Dave Weineke’s article, both on UsefulArts.us, Dave’s blog. You should go read both.  But briefly, Dave thinks a blog article written by one person and posted under […]

Ja-Nae Duane: Ghost Blog Writing & Social Media Ethics Are Different

February 5th 2010

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to yesterday’s post, The Ethics of Ghost Writing and Marionette Social Media. As someone who does a tremendous amount of outsourcing, this is a topic that is near and dear to me. Blogging: I am a huge advocate of outsourcing my blog writing. Why? Well, I have two […]

The Ethics of Ghost Writing Blogs and Marionette Social Media: New 2010 Trend

February 4th 2010

The road to hell isn’t just paved with good intentions. Its slope is masked by perfectly plausible justifications. So here’s the nice, clear thesis this post will advance: Unacknowledged ghost authorship of social media is unethical if you put your name on it. Many errors seem benign in the beginning. But no matter how gradual […]

GPS Surveillance Meets the Fourth Amendment: 2010 Online Law Trend

February 2nd 2010

The parking lot next to my daughter’s daycare warns, “You are under constant video surveillance.”  I don’t think they mean that in the universal sense, but the increasing use of mobile devices, smart cards,  and databases draws the reality of constant surveillance closer. As technologies start to share information, location privacy has the potential to […]