Mobile carriers, app developers, and other technology stakeholders will meet with the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Agency on July 12 to discuss privacy standards for mobile use. The focus of the discussion will be the privacy practices of mobile apps and their transparency.
Applications will be the main focus on July 12 when enforcement begins. The initial series of meetings will decide on rights, obligations and enforcement of online and mobile device security under President Obama’s virtual “Privacy Bill of Rights”.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Communications and Telecommunication Administration (NTIA) has made the decision that it is now time to put the president’s Privacy Bill of Rights into effect. In order to get started, they have sent an invitation to all of the “privacy stakeholders” in order to “generate robust input” in the creation of the very first transparency code of conduct for consumer data collection and use.
The White House and Congress hopes that this discussion will eventually lead to a privacy bill of rights. July’s meeting will be webcast for the public.
A New Washington State Law Intends to Make Online Service Providers Criminally Liable For Online Postings. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing the Internet Archive in order to block the enforcement of SB 6251, a law aimed at combating advertisements for underage sex workers but with vague and overbroad language that is squarely in conflict with federal law.
Stakeholders to Discuss Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will convene stakeholders July 12, 2012 in Washington, DC to develop a privacy code of conduct.
Chicago is a new kind of technology hub, and the Techweek Conference is a new type of technology conference.
The Techweek 2012 Conference showcases the technology renaissance evolving in Chicago and the midwest. June 22-26, 2012
Law & Social Data
The past few years have witnessed an explosion of legal and regulatory activity involving social and other new media. This session will examine several key areas, including copyright, trademark and related intellectual property concerns; defamation, obscenity and related liability; false advertising and marketing restrictions; gaming; data privacy issues presented by social media; and impacts of social media on employees and the workplace. Attendees will learn how to identify legal risks and issues before they become full-scale emergencies and how to develop appropriate policies and guidelines covering social media activity.
Sunday June 24, 2012 3:00pm – 3:45pm @ 3 – 8 A/B (222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL)
Pinterest remains a hot social media property, registering major growth in recent months. Business Insider said investors just gave it another $50 million at a $1.5-billion valuation, and employees are leaving other Silicon Valley firms to join.
A surprising outcome from a recent survey, that social media has an equalizing factor among men and women. They’ve got the same reaction to issues, for instance related to women.
The New York Civil Liberties Union is arming city residents and visitors with an app called Stop and Frisk Watch that records video, audio and GPS data.
Last year, some users saw on their Facebook walls enticing posts offering video of Osama bin Laden’s capture. Those that clicked on the link and followed the provided directions ended up giving hackers access to their Facebook accounts; they were victims of a social media scam.
New technologies and services are enabling the growth in employee monitoring, but companies will need to closely manage their monitoring efforts for ethical and legal issues, Andrew Walls, research vice president at Gartner, wrote in the report.
Employers continue to look for guidance on issues related to the evolving use of social media by employees. Creating an appropriate policy remains difficult, but the authors offer some expert advice that may help.
The Virginia State Bar tracks ethical issues concerning how attorneys communicate by and glean evidence from social media, said James McCauley, ethics counsel for the state bar.
This year, law students will be challenged to address the question of “Under what standard should a court subject an employee’s non-business personal computing activities (eg, social media, documents stored on a personal computer, and/or personal email)?
Consider this a skeptic’s guide to the bull case for the social network. Facebook just had modern history’s worst IPO and it’s down again today by some percentage that will be quoted endlessly. Yet Facebook is still the world’s largest social media platform.
The Atlantic
(CNS) — The mass media have done the public a disservice by consistently referring to health reform law regulations so narrowly as the “contraceptive mandate,” because it leads people to think the regulations are a matter of interest only to Catholics.
The research and advisory organisation recently published a report into conducting digital surveillance ethically and legally, and found that 60 per cent of corporations will be monitoring social media channels for security breaches and incidents.
The majority of corporations are expected to monitor their employees’ social media interaction by 2015, suggests research by Gartner, published today. This practice could be increasingly adopted to prevent security breaches and incidents.
By John Bowker | MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian social network VKontakte says it won’t risk going ahead with its planned initial public offering fearing a repeat of the botched Facebook float which left US regulators red-faced.
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Government agencies looking to make greater use of social media and other collaboration tools face a raft of legal issues with the potential to sink efforts to better connect government and the public.
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Social Media Legal Best Practices: Problems and Solutions with Photo Uploading and Tagging …
They still resonates today, maintaining a perfect five-star rating among iTunes customers.
“I always thought it was a wrong-headed decision, one that really made hash of the First Amendment with respect to the broadcast media,” says Floyd Abrams, one of the foremost legal authorities on the First Amendment.
USA Network will additionally support the partnership via on-air, online, VOD, paid media (including a special insert in the July issue of Vanity Fair) and in-show integration and messaging. All will compliment USA’s massive multi-pronged marketing.
“People are creating a media (with blogs and other social media) they’re not getting from traditional media,” Nodland said. “Maybe it’s a little crude, hard-hitting … and traditional media fear it.”
App highlights: http://www.docstoc.com/apps/ Social Media for Business: This app will explain how can you leverage social media to get an edge. How to Get a Job Interview: This app is a complete blueprint for landing your dream job.
The original version of General Electric’s circular logo and trademark. The trademark application was filed on July 24, 1899, and registered on September 18, 1900 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sometimes the Adler Law Group, (“Firm”) is called upon to perform trademark searches or trademark application filings. However, it is vital to understand the limits inherent in the process and the ability to determine the availability of any given trademark. The Firm NEVER conducts a search to determine, or opine on, the availability of any given trademark unless specifically engaged to do so.
A Trademark Search should always be conducted well before one begins using a trademark. For example, if you are planning a marketing campaign around a name or phrase, you should make sure that the proposed mark is “clear”, i.e., no one else is using anything “confusingly similar” for the same or similar goods and services. Failure to clear a mark for use can lead to claims for damages for infringement and/or dilution, loss of goodwill and loss of the goods themselves, not to mention loss of the time and expense creating, developing and marketing the product or service.
Trademark Searches Have Limits.
Although the search process is intended to reduce the potential for infringement and dilution claims, the risk of challenge to an application, registration or mere use of a mark is never completely eliminated. Even an especially thorough search may not uncover every potentially conflicting mark.
Registration Is Not Required For Trademark Rights.
Registration with the Trademark Office is not a prerequisite to obtaining trademark rights in the U.S. Many valid trademarks exist at common law without ever appearing on the federal trademark register. Some appear in state trademark registrations (although these registrations do not always reflect actual use); others are not registered at all.
Misspelled And Slang Words & Phrases May Be Trademarks.
Trademarks are source identifiers. therefore, to the extent that a trademark is distinctive, identifiable and memorable it is more protectable. Brand names often incorporate deliberate misspellings, puns, slang, and other variations on otherwise common words. Although a search would attempt to retrieve corrupted spellings, word plays and colloquialisms, there is no guarantee that all such variations will be found. As an additional precaution one should consider a search for foreign language equivalents and other variants on a proposed mark.
Mere Use of a Trademark Confers Common Law Rights?
Although some effort should be made to conduct a “common law” search using Internet search engines and news databases, this is not always conclusive of common law use. Since these databases were not expressly designed for trademark searching, there is no guarantee that all common law uses, corrupted spellings, irregular spacing or punctuation, or other variations will be identified.
The Existence of a Live or Abandoned Application Is Not a Legal Opinion About The Right to Use a Trademark Registerability, Strength or Weakness.
Please note that filing an application to register a federal trademark is not a legal opinion about the registerability of any particular trademark, the right or absence of the right to use a trademark, the strength or weakness of any trademark registration or application, or the likelihood that any third party may, or may not, seek to register a similar mark, seek to oppose any application, or seek to cancel any registration.
(See “Protect Our Data! A Digital Consumer Bill of Rights” and “A Bill of Rights for Facebook Users” for related discussion.) The temptation to exploit user data in ways that erode privacy will always be present. Just by joining Facebook, …
In addition, in February the White House proposed a “bill of rights” to protect consumer privacy online, including an easy way for users to tell Internet companies with one click whether they want their online activity to be tracked.
Howard A. Schmidt is returning to the private life, but the White House is still pushing for some kind of legislation in the Consumer Prvacy Bill of Rights fashion. While the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act passed the House of …
Your decision to hold this hearing will help protect important privacy rights. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (“EPIC”) is a non-partisan public interest research organization established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy …
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The Supreme Court showed unanimity in its discomfort with electronically tracking people without a warrant in its GPS tracking decision in January. But as conveyed by the justices’ written opinions, the splintered reasoning behind rebuking the practice of placing a geo-tracking device on someone’s car without a warrant laid bare the disconnect between how far our technology has come and the outdated privacy protection laws that are struggling to keep pace.
At issue is the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act. Different jurisdictions have issued conflicting rulings about how to handle location-based data.
Cell phone data grabbing, GPS tracking, “national security letters”. Law enforcement argues that accountability via taping violates officers rights to privacy. ACLU disagrees.
The Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, sponsored by Reps. … if a grand jury prosecutor could subpoena historical GPS data in an investigation, …
In fashion, innovation never goes out of style. Therefore, it is no surprise that fashion houses and clothing brandsmarket across many different
Fashion (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
social media platforms. It is axiomatic that fashion marketing requires a deep understanding of the target audience, regardless of whether that knowledge comes from online or offline interaction. Social media provides a forum for a more authentic, transparent and personal engagement with the customer, but also highlights whether a brand has judged (or misjudged) its customer base.
To be successful in social media, brands need to harness the personality, wit, charm and, in all likelihood, free time of their staff. In order to ensure positive, informative and engaging social interaction, a fashion brand’s social media rules must be smart, positive and inclusive. Here are some guidelines for drafting a social media policy that will bring out the best in your brand, your employees (brand ambassadors) and your customers.
Rather than writing out a lengthy, legal boilerplate script, keep these considerations in mind when drafting your policy:
Philosophy. Begin with a discussion of how social media fits into an employee’s job expectations and performance. For example, guidelines are important, because if not followed “bad things” can happen, such as losing customers or vendors, the company could get into legal trouble, or worse, you could lose your job.
Behavioral Expectations. This is a good place to remind employees that even though it’s a big world, you are often in a small community and, on the Internet, it’s forever. What a person says can be seen by customers and employees all over the world. Remind employees to stick to their areas of expertise and use respectful conduct. Other watch words include “timeliness” (posts should be fresh, current and relevant), “perspective” (something that may sound clever and racy to one person may be inaccurate or offensive to another), “transparency” (be the first to point out that you are an employee and make it clear that you are not a company spokesperson) and “judiciousness” (use caution when discussing things where emotional topics like politics and religion and show respect for others’ opinions).
Channel expectations. If your company has a social media strategy, make sure employees know which sites (communication channels) are appropriate for which types of communications and marketing messages.
Contextual Expectations. Help employees understand the context within which they are engaging customers. Suggest using a conversational style. Remember that in customer’s eyes, “perception is reality.” Add value: Make sure your posts really add to the conversation. If they promote the company’s goals and values, supports the customers, improves or helps to sell products, or helps to do jobs better, then you are adding value.
Content Expectations. The policy must have clear and conspicuous language about what is considered company proprietary information, including current projects, trademarks, names, logos and how they may be used. Never: (i) discuss or post about financial information, sales trends, strategies, forecasts, legal issues and future promotional activities; (ii) post confidential or non-public information about the company; (iii) give out personal information about customers or employees; or (iv) respond to an offensive or negative post by a customer.
Consequences. Lastly, be upfront about the very real consequences if mistakes are made. If a mistake occurs, correct it immediately and be clear about what’s been done to fix it. Contact the social media team if there’s a lesson to be learned.
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