Social Media Law - The Non-NLRB Legal Reader
So. Turns out there’s more to be discussed at the intersection of social media and the law than the latest NLRB report.
The Labor Board’s latest guidance is doubtless important (which is why we wrote a post on it) - but, for your interest, here’s a mix of other socmed-focused writings from lawyers and law firms on JD Supra:
Text Message Complaint Against Sports Team Highlights Risks Associated with Using New Media to Interact with Fans (Loeb & Loeb LLP):
“A California resident filed a complaint against the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, claiming that the Penguins violated the federal telemarketing law that regulates promotional text messages by sending more text messages per week than the Penguins stated it would send. The plaintiff claimed that he signed up to receive hockey news and special offers from the Penguins and its affiliates in the form of text messages sent to his mobile device…” Read on»
Socially Aware: The Social Media Law Update — Vol. 3, Issue 3 — June 2012 (Morrison & Foerster LLP):
“In This Issue: Lawmakers Rush to Ban Employers From Demanding Facebook Passwords; California Provides Social Media Guidance for Financial Institutions; What’s Not to “Like”? Facebook Usage and the First Amendment; New York Court to Criminal Defendant: Your Tweets Can and Will Be Used Against You; A Dirty Job: TheDirty.com Cases Show the Limits of CDA Section 230 Immunity; FTC’s Privacy Report Suggests Tightening of Privacy Regime, Provides Guidance to Business; Twitter’s Twists, Turns and Terms: A Brief Overview of Twitter’s Online Legal Documents…” Read on»
Why Every Company Needs a Geolocation Policy (Foley Hoag):
“Technology companies typically first think about geolocation when they have grown to the point where they need to locate data somewhere other than their home base for redundancy reasons or to reduce network latency. While companies usually don’t have much of a choice in deciding where to geo-locate their first servers (because the servers are located wherever the company was founded), companies should be conscious of the impact that the geolocation of data has on the privacy and freedom of expression rights of their users…” Read on»
Keeping The FTC Out Of Your Space: Lessons From Myspace (Mintz Levin):
“Most recently, the FTC entered into an agreement with Myspace and issued a consent order to settle a complaint it filed against the social networking website. This article will examine the important components of the FTC complaint, focusing on how Myspace indirectly shares its users’ personally identifiable information (PII) in violation of its own privacy policy, and the FTC consent order, which provides yet another roadmap for companies to stay on the “right” side of the privacy road…” Read on»
The Troubles With The New Crowdfunding Law? (Davis Wright Tremaine):
“The law is onerous. It is going to be difficult and expensive to comply with. The burdens of the new law are plenty, but the benefits of the new law are capped. In short, the crowdfunding law as currently written is, in my opinion, needs to be fixed. I don’t mean to be just negative here. Crowdfunding enthusiasts should take their enthusiasm back to Congress to try to get the law fixed…” Read on»
Facebook “Likes” Are Not Protected Speech Under the First Amendment (Cullen and Dykman LLP):
“Despite the fact that public employees can speak as citizens on matters of public concern, Judge Jackson ruled that affirmatively choosing to click the “like” button on Adams’ Facebook page was not a form of expressive speech protected under the First Amendment as writing an actual message on Adams’ page would have been…” Read on»
The Legal Four Corners Of Social Media And E-Discovery For Businessess (Michelle Sherman):
“Companies should update their document retention policy to include social media activity. The procedures that the company is following for e-mails in terms of storage and retention periods may be a good starting point. By having established processes and following them, adversaries in litigation will have a hard time arguing that the company has destroyed relevant and possibly damaging information…” Read on»
Should we all be getting the Twitter ‘jitters’? – Be careful what you say online (Morrison & Foerster LLP):
“Law enforcement authorities in the UK have not found the absence of a codified ‘social media law’ to be a problem. They have applied a ‘horses for courses’ approach and brought prosecutions or allowed claims under a range of different laws that were designed for other purposes. Of course, this presents problems to social media platform users, developers and providers who can be by no means certain which legal standards apply…” Read On»
Houston CFO Fired for Social Media Activity (Looper Reed):
“It was not clear in the article if the CFO had a contract. It does appear, however, he was not engaging in protected activity. Instead the company claimed in a release the CFO was terminated because he ‘improperly communicated company information through social media’…” Read on»
Users Pin on Pinterest, But Pinterest Pins Users (Sedgwick LLP):
“Pinterest’s business model certainly appears to be problematic when viewed from an intellectual property perspective. Pinterest encourages its users to “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” Even the simplest transaction on Pinterest may result in copyright infringement. For example, a user who maintains a board about ‘Places I Can’t Afford to Visit’ finds a beautiful picture of the Colosseum in Rome taken at sunset from the website of a photographer…” Read on»
Twitter: A ‘Caveat Emptor’ Exception to Libel Law? (Pryor Cashman):
“…reviews recent court rulings concerning claims of Internet-based libel and “addresses the challenges that plaintiffs should face in asserting claims for libel over Twitter” in particular. As noted in the article: ‘Twitter is a ‘buyer beware’ shopping mart of thoughts, making it an ideal public forum to spark imagination and further discussion. In and of itself, however, Twitter should be viewed as a dubious medium through which to spread libel.’” Read on»
Twitter Responds to Criminal Judge’s Decision to Deny a Defendant’s Motion to Quash Subpoena on Third Party Website (Cullen and Dykman):
“…Do you agree with Twitter’s position? After considering these arguments, does it make sense that Twitter should have to comply with every Subpoena issued to them? Personally, I think that the Court will most likely deny Twitter’s motion for the simple fact that if a bank is not burdened by a similar request for financial data, why would requesting simple data that can be easily obtained through a well designed SQL statement be any more burdensome?” Read on»
Subpoena Twitter Accounts - New York Court Says “Yes!” (Tyson Snow):
“An interesting decision came out of New York recently. It is a criminal matter involving an Occupy Wall Street protestor who was arrested for disorderly conduct as he marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. While the case was resolved on unique procedural grounds (briefly discussed below — I only do a little white collar criminal law so I’m not particularly familiar with some of the intricacies of criminal procedure in other states), it does present some solid information for practitioners with respect to the ability to subpoena information from a user’s Twitter account…” Read on»
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