Much has been written about how the Trump family uses their name to market their own businesses, but the Trumps are equally gifted at trading on others’ notoriety to promote themselves and their businesses. Consider the tweets or public disclosures that follow after the President-elect appears with or receives correspondence…
Virtual reality takes to the air and rests beneath your feet, a smart toy and a weaponized GIF inspire lawsuits (separately), Slack invests in bots, and more! Will virtual reality on planes make trips more enjoyable? (A.W., The Economist) Walk a mile in someone’s else’s shoes … or at least…
On December 14, 2016, operators of online extramarital dating and social networking website AshleyMadison.com came to an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, and several States, to settle FTC and related state charges that the website deceived consumers and failed to protect 36 million users’ account and profile information. As…
Worried about a company retaliating against you when you post a negative review on Yelp or TripAdvisor? Worry no longer because Congress has your back. Last week, Congress passed a law that will make it illegal for companies to retaliate against U.S. consumers who post negative reviews online. Specifically, the…
The U.S. Copyright Office issued a final rule effective December 1, 2016, addressing one of the requirements for social media operators and other companies that allow users to post content online to qualify for the DMCA safe harbor. In “DMCA Safe Harbor: Registration Time,” colleagues Michael Heuga and Cydney Tune…
FriendFinder Networks is a company in the adult entertainment, social networking, and online dating space. Several databases from FriendFinder Networks web sites with more than 412 million accounts, including usernames, e-mails, and passwords, have been breached and leaked. November reports of this data breach on The Verge, LeakedSource and TechCrunch,…
Following up on our earlier post regarding the Era of Hashtag Surveillance, the FBI has published documents indicating that it intends to enter into a deal with a Twitter data miner, appropriately named Dataminr (and partially owned by Twitter), for access to its monitoring technology. Techcrunch reports that the FBI…
It is unlikely that when Stephanie Lenz posted a home video of her children dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” on YouTube, she could have anticipated that, nearly a decade later, she would be seeking U.S. Supreme Court review in connection with that video. In Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., Ms.…
It seems like managing data breaches has become a part of doing business these days. From the October denial of service attack on Dyn (a company that provides core internet services to companies like Twitter, Spotify and Netflix) to the recent hacks of the Clinton campaign’s emails, data breaches are…
Earlier this month, the ACLU published a report alleging that it had obtained public records showing that social media user data such as location tracking, photos and hashtag usage may have been used by law enforcement to monitor activists and protests. ACLU claims that records show that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provided…