What is the legal significance of a website’s privacy policy? That question lingers when reviewing such policies for legal compliance and for consistency with a company’s actual practices.  Problem is, lawsuits involving claims of breaches of privacy policies have failed even in cases of clear and egregious violations by the service provider, where there was [...]

Last week, Facebook joined the social media craze of “checking in,” with its new service called Places. The move indicates an increasingly popular trend, pioneered by services like Four Square. Whether at a famous historical landmark or their local Starbucks, people use location check-ins to let friends know where they are and earn badges for [...]

I wrote last week about the proliferation of the law of libel on the internet, but the same explosion of opportunities for litigation – and risks to would-be publishers – applies via the internet to all forms of speech.  Libel is still libel, but more cases are pushing arguments that speech is conduct that can [...]

Eric Felten brilliantly skewers the supposed credibility of the online “marketplace of ideas” when he recently wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal: Spend any time on the Internet and – like the naif in the ‘Casablanca’ gambling room dumbfounded when the wheel comes up 22-black twice in a row – one’s bound to [...]

Publishers are worried about cookies, specifically talk of regulatory action on the privacy front.  What’s the story here? A Privacy Policy might typically say something like this: “A ‘cookie’ is a small text file on your computer’s hard drive that our Web site uses to collect information about how you use our site.  The cookie [...]

What does it mean to give up privacy? Adam Cohen wrote last week in the NY Times about the demise of “locational privacy”: your right – presumably it’s a “right” – to keep a lid on who knows where you are. Cohen’s onto something bigger than just a rant against modern technology. The problem with [...]