The following is our first twitter chat on trending legal issues. This one focused on legal issues involved with app development and APIs and featured thoughts from attorneys Andrew Mirsky and Joy Butler (@joybutler). Be sure to stay tuned to the @MirskyLegal twitter account for more information on the next #lawchat and please tweet in using the provided unique hashtag!
Read MoreThanks to Andrew Mirsky for contributing research and feedback to this post.
Does a corporation have the same rights as a person?
It really depends on the context. In the context of personal privacy, the answer is no.
In a unanimous ruling this month, the Supreme Court found that corporations are not entitled to the same “personal privacy” rights as individuals under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
After a 2004 investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into AT&T’s billing practices, a trade group including AT&T competitors submitted a FOIA request to the FCC seeking records of the inquiry. The FCC protected some of AT&T’s trade secrets and customers’ personal information, but refused AT&T’s request under the personal-privacy exemption in FOIA to protect certain other information. The FCC ruled that AT&T’s records should be publicly released under FOIA because the company could not claim “personal privacy.”
Read MoreThanks to Andrew Mirsky for contributing research and feedback to this post.
Let’s say, like most of us, you run a Justin Bieber fan blog. You try to keep it up to date, especially with his latest songs and footage from recent concerts. This involves going on YouTube, finding the new single, and grabbing the embed code, to throw the video up on your site.
The question is… does embedding video (or photos, etc.) make you liable for copyright infringement?
In a word, the answer is yes, although recent major cases on the subject indicate that convincing a court of such infringement is an entirely different story.
Read MoreLast 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 covering more ground.
Some think the next phase in the check in revolution is coming soon to a couch near you. Entertainment could be the next big thing that draws users to check in and share what they’re doing with others. Services like GetGlue, Miso, and Philo encourage you to share what you’re watching and engage with people doing the same. Besides the social networking incentive to interact with fellow fans of your favorite shows, these applications offer tokens and badges for every time you keep up with the Kardashians or tune in to see what Snooki will do next on Jersey Shore.
Read MoreImagine you’re in the company boardroom, and you propose to let every single one of your thousands of employees offer advice to customers… on the Internet.
Although most of your employees may offer advice in the company stores on a daily basis, isn’t allowing all of them to do it on the Internet a huge risk? Wouldn’t everyone in the boardroom look at you like you were insane?
Best Buy decided to take this risk using Twitter. One year later, the gamble appears to have paid off.
This July marks the one-year anniversary of Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” (i.e. Twitter help force), a social media experiment in customer service. Any Best Buy employee can sign up using his or her own personal Twitter account, and whenever they add the hashtag “#twelpforce” the tweet gets added to the Twelpforce feed. No tweet is added to the feed without the hashtag.
To ensure employee accountability and allow customers to build a relationship with a specific employee, each tweet posted on Twelpforce includes a signature at the end indicating the personal Twitter account of the employee.
Read MoreNPR’s “All Songs Considered” is a show representative of the station’s embracing all things new media. Through digital tools like podcasts and streaming video, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the show has gained serious clout with both fans and musicians. While much of NPR’s older audience may stumble upon “All Songs Considered” between radio news programming, the new media tools enable NPR to reach a younger audience. This audience comprised of multiple generations attracts musicians to the show, as they see the potential for new fans and national exposure.
“All Songs Considered” was recently featured in The Washington Post as gaining the reputation of an indie rock tastemaker. Though perhaps not as scientifically sound as other methods, a comparison of the show’s Facebook page to that of other indie music blogs affirms this characterization. Indie music blogs Indie Rock Café and Stereogum respectively have 4,098 and 3,622 “Likes” on their Facebook pages. “All Songs Considered” has 12,839.
Is such a comparison even fair when considering NPR’s advantages? Probably not. Most indie music blogs do not have national radio shows, fully equipped studios, and salaried employees. NPR has clearly learned, though, from how these popular blogs engage an audience. Both Facebook and Twitter enable fans to comment on what songs they love or which new artist should be featured, while web polls allow NPR to track what listeners are enjoying the most. One recent episode of “All Songs Considered” focused on listeners’ picks for the best music of 2010 so far. Fans cast thousands of votes on the NPR Music website.
With “All Songs Considered” embracing a new media model and receiving a good deal of exposure for it, NPR helps to bridge a generational gap between young people and their parents. For those of older generations who do not download podcasts to their iPhone, they may end up reading about “All Songs Considered” and NPR music in The Washington Post or The New York Times (read the New York Times article here). Both these articles discuss the prominence of the website, podcasts and a new iPhone application, which may lead members of an older generation to put down the paper, go to their children or grandchildren, and ask, “How can I download a podcast?”
In this way, the rise of “All Songs Considered” represents a recurring cycle in our society today: the new media attracts the traditional media and the traditional media audience is intrigued to learn more about new media.
Stay tuned to see whether or not this leads to 20-year olds and their parents listening to the same music.
Read MoreCopyright 2022 Mirsky & Company, PLLC
