May 8th 2008
Last year, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company launched a virtual ventures contest in Second Life. Now the firm has published an outlook report on how established businesses are reaching consumers in virtual worlds, and notes that many companies are”ignoring them at their peril.” Current business uses of virtual worlds extend beyond marketing to training, […]
May 6th 2008
Colorado has passed new anti-spam legislation, which establishes violations of federal CAN-SPAM law as also being fraud under state law. It then extends the law to those who knowingly falsify routing of point-of-origin information, while establishing protections for plaintiffs, and a statutory penalty of $1,000 per email with a ceiling of $10 million. You can find […]
May 6th 2008
In the court case of Atlantic v. Howell, the judge denied a request of summary judgment against the Howells. The court decision was surprisingly incisive, rejecting the RIAA’s argument that merely leaving copies of copyrighted works in a place where someone might copy them, without any evidence that they did, is a violation. This so-called […]
May 3rd 2008
Put your trademark into Tweet Scan, a real-time database of Twitter postings, and you can see what people are saying about it, or any other topic of interest. This free service provides automatic daily or weekly summaries of up to five terms sent by email or RSS. Go ahead, see what people are talking about, it […]
May 2nd 2008
The New York Court of Appeals 1st Division recently upheld a lower court ruling that emails with signature lines “constitute ‘signed writings’ within the meaning of the statute of frauds, since plaintiff’s name at the end of his e-mail signified his intent to authenticate the contents.” At issue was the modification of an employment contract […]
April 30th 2008
Word-of-mouth marketing, including blogging and using “brand ambassadors,” will face legal restrictions in the UK starting May 26, when seeding positive messages online without making the origin of the message clear becomes a criminal offense. Specific penalties haven’t been spelled out, so it will likely take a test case, reported to the Office of Fair Trading […]
April 24th 2008
Music giant EMI is demanding that music file storage company MP3tunes turn over all music stored on its servers. Apparently, EMI is demanding this irrespective of who owns, or published, the music. What is unclear is what “hand over” means in this context. Clearly, though, it does mean EMI seeks to violate the privacy and personal […]
April 23rd 2008
Universal Music Group (UMG) is suing Troy Augusto, owner of Roast Beast Music Collectables, who sells promotional CDs on eBay. UMG claims promo CDs are for personal use only and, according to the agreement contained thereon, cannot be redistributed —including being sold, given away, or even thrown away. The discs are usually sent out to […]
April 14th 2008
This week, Alaska and Idaho passed laws that prohibit the state from taking measures to comply with the REAL ID act of 2005. That now makes nine states who refuse to participate in the new federal identity system, which is due to start operation in about a month. My friend and former state government colleague, Dazza […]
April 9th 2008
Last week I wrote about how Craigslist benefited from a 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that it is not liable for discriminatory housing messages posted by users in its forums. The court ruled the site serves as an intermediary party, not a publisher. Therefore it was protected by the safe harbor provision of […]
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