Unlike traditional newsroom journalists, “citizen journalists” have no formal way to ensure that everyone maintains similar quality standards.  Which does not mean that quality standards are necessarily (or consistently) maintained at traditional newsrooms, but rather that a traditional hierarchical editorial structure imposes at least theoretical guidelines. By definition, citizen journalism’s inherent difference from the traditional [...]

Kate Tummarello is a Research and Social Media Intern with Mirsky & Company and a reporter at Roll Call/Congressional Quarterly.  Follow Kate on Twitter @ktummarello.  Andrew Mirsky of Mirsky & Company contributed to this post. Gone are the days of bashing your boss in the breakroom. Now, colleagues gather online to anonymously air their grievances.  A [...]

Earlier this month, Dropbox spawned a new kerfuffle in internet-land with changes to its Terms of Service (TOS). The outrage was fast and furious.  A nice deal of blog and Tumblr and other commentary zeroed in on changes Dropbox announced to its TOS before the 4th of July holiday, and in particular how this or [...]

A blogger publishing under the name “WTForever21.com” recently got threatened with litigation for trademark infringement by the LA-based clothing retailer Forever 21. WTForever21.com, a parody site published by Rachel Kane, had prominently disclaimed any affiliation or endorsement by Forever 21.  And as indicated, Kane’s purpose was (some would claim clearly) parody.   Kane was the proud [...]

BitTorrent has been in the (copyright) news lately – and not surprisingly – after the movie studios set their sites on bringing down yet the latest iteration of file-sharing technology. 2 great background sources on what BitTorrent is and how it works can be found here and here.  In short terms, BitTorrent is a file [...]

You go into a conversation from a lawyer’s perspective, expecting the discussion to be all about “ownership, ownership and ownership”.  You might expect app and other software developers to focus on nothing other than ownership. Many times you’d be wrong.  One problem with ownership: Misidentification of value. As Dan Berger of Social Tables pointed out, [...]

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Today, we will discuss the business and, particularly, the legal landscape faced by application (App) developers dealing with mobile platforms (iOS, Android and Blackberry being dominant), including dealing with application interfaces (APIs) when developing based on existing applications, and, of course, client relationships. I am joined today by [...]

Our Twitter chat last week with technology and entertainment lawyer Joy Butler highlighted legal issues with app development, including contract issues between app developers and clients, on one end, and intellectual property (IP) and API issues between the app and the intended development platform, on the other end. Privacy issues become pressing later when the [...]

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] In today’s podcast, we discuss “street art”, which evidently isn’t just your grandfather’s graffiti anymore!  Street art has lately been in the news particularly because of several prominent copyright infringement cases, and most notably fallout from Shepard Fairey’s 2008 Obama “Hope” posters.  An even more recent controversy came [...]

The Las Vegas copyright fair use loss for Righthaven last week was probably less meaningful – and less amusing – than the “money quote” (as Wall Street Journal blogger Ashby Jones put it) from the federal Judge James Mahan, who reportedly mused, “I realize this is going to be appealed.  I tell litigators ‘that’s why [...]