For businesses, is there an obligation in the United States to do anything more than simply have a privacy policy?  The answer is not much of an obligation at all. Put another way, is it simply a question of disclosure – so long as a business tells users what it intends to do with their [...]

A recent New York Times article discussed the case of an artist was sued for copyright infringement after he created paintings and collages based on photographs without crediting or obtaining permission from the photographer. The artist, Richard Prince, based his works on photographs from a book about Rastafarians “to create the collages and a series [...]

“RTs do not = endorsements.” We’ve all seen it on Twitter bios, usually bios belonging to members of the media. These kinds of disclaimers, disassociating the tweets from the people who retweet them, are common. The Twitter bio belonging to Brian Stelter of the New York Times (@brianstelter) notes, “RT & links aren’t endorsements.” A [...]

It is a task often relegated to the office interns: posting promotional content to outside social media sites. Despite the fact that this practice is officially frowned upon in the Federal Trade Commission’s 2009 endorsement guidelines, companies will often engage paid individuals – either employees on the payroll or outside bloggers who receive compensation in [...]

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 [...]

Two dueling tattoo parlors down the road from one another in Mobile, Alabama. It could be the premise of a TLC reality show.  It’s not (yet) a TV show, but it IS a court case recently decided by the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. In September, that court ruled in favor of Chassity Ebbole, owner [...]

“With regulators considering easing fund-raising rules for start-ups …” a recent Wall Street Journal story began, “social-networking sites that link entrepreneurs to large pools of donors are gearing up for a boom.” First, the background.  Federal and state securities laws govern the sales – including the solicitation of sales – of securities, affecting all efforts [...]

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 [...]

Last month I wrote about an NLRB complaint against a Connecticut ambulance company, American Medical Response (AMR), for wrongful termination of an employee who had complained on Facebook about her supervisors and the company. The NLRB had begun proceedings against AMR for violating the employee’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act, specifically rights to [...]

(Thomas Yarnell contributed research and writing to this post.) In a past post, we wrote about copyright as it relates to how preemption of state law civil causes of action in the same or related cases.  In writing about the Perez Hilton and NFL Films cases, we noted that federal copyright law did not preempt [...]