Uncategorized – Page 4 – Media Tech Law

Aereo and WWE: Disruptive Upstarts in the Land of Live Broadcast TV

Posted May 5, 2014 by Rob Ellis 0

Ever since YouTube streamlined the process for allowing anyone to easily post and watch videos online, the barrier to entry to provide and consume video has become incredibly low. Traditional television outlets have embraced online video to some extent, offering access to their most popular shows within a week, or sometimes a day after they originally air. What’s more, Internet-only services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon’s Prime provide an extensive catalog of shows available on demand. One of the few remaining holdouts regarding online access to broadcast television is in the arena of live sports. Organizations like the National Football League (NFL) tightly control broadcast rights for live events, while other organizations, like World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), control access to their live events through pay-per-view broadcast. Both of these models, however, threaten to be up-ended by the new and novel approaches to content delivery.

WWE and the Digital Only Approach

A shake-up in the delivery of live sports can be found in this February’s launch of the World Wrestling Entertainment’s WWE Network. The WWE Network is a subscription-only streaming Internet video service that broadcasts professional wrestling events that were previously only available on cable and satellite television. The $9.99 a month subscription provides subscribers with access to WWE’s pay-per-view events, network original series, as well as a catalog of vintage wrestling programs from the past four decades.

Privacy Roundup: 4/21/2014- 4/27/2014

Posted April 29, 2014 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Sarah N. Lynch reported that Digital 4^th, a group that defines itself as “ a non-partisan coalition dedicated to bringing Fourth Amendment protections into the 21st century.”, is slamming the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for resisting changes to federal privacy laws proposed in Congress in 2013. The legislation would force government agents to obtain warrants prior to accessing the email of any individual under investigation. In urging the public to lobby the White House to support this reform, Digital 4^th launched the website notwithoutawarrant.com. Lynch writes that, currently, government investigators can legally access certain emails with only a subpoena, which has a lower legal threshold than a warrant since it doesn’t require a judge’s approval.

In The Economist’s “Babbage” blog, H.G. reported that a couple of Harvard students created a service which allows users to delete or alter the content of messages that they have already sent. The service, Pluto Mail, also lets email senders see whether or not recipients have opened their messages. The service was released in beta on March 1, currently has about 2,000 users, and accepts new recruits each day from a waitlist. H.G. reports that, although the sender can access and alter or delete the content of a message via the cloud, senders cannot delete the actual message from a recipient’s inbox. “The ability to delete all trace of an email would require access to all other messaging services, obliging Pluto Mail to collaborate with every other email provider in the world—a feat they did not consider feasible.”

Open Source, Dynamic Linking and Licensing Consideration for Developers

Posted April 25, 2014 by Rob Ellis 0

Introduction:

There is often confusion among software developers regarding the licensing of open source code. Questions center on what can be done with open source code and what is considered a derivative work. One particular area of confusion arises when the derivative work uses static or dynamic links when compiling the source code. This distinction is critical and implicates different licensing requirements dependent upon this decision. It is important for developers to have an understanding of the basic principles of the most popular open source licenses and how static versus dynamic links can affect the end result from a licensing perspective.

GNU GPL

The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is the most widely used free software license. It grants end users the freedom to use, study, copy and modify a piece of software. Originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation in 1989, the GPL is now in its third iteration with the GPLv3. The GPL is based on the idea that nobody should be restricted by the software they use. To meet this goal, every user should have the freedom to: use the software for any purpose; change the software to suit a particular need; share the software; and share changes to the software. To this end, GPL-licensed software requires that source code be made available to all users. Furthermore, users have the right to use and modify that source code. Should those modifications be distributed, the source code of that distribution must also be licensed under the GPL.

Privacy Roundup: 4/14/2014- 4/20/2014

Posted April 21, 2014 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Hunton & Williams’ Privacy and Information Security Law Blog reported on the FTC’s settlement with two data brokers, Instant Checkmate, Inc. and InfoTrack Information Services, Inc., in connection with those firms’ practices of selling public record information about consumers. The FTC had filed complaints against the 2 companies claiming for “providing reports about consumers to users such as prospective employers and landlords without taking reasonable steps to make sure that they were accurate, or without making sure their users had a permissible reason to have them.” The FTC entered into consent orders with each of the companies (together with payment of fines) requiring future compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Mary Ellen Callahan and Esteban M. Morin wrote on the blog of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) about a workshop last week hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the topic of privacy engineering, and in particular, the “lack of clear standards that exist for regulating privacy”. Similar to concepts broadly being espoused by proponents of Privacy by Design, the authors “stressed the importance of organizational structure that emphasizes privacy, the value of developing a ‘culture of privacy’ that raises every employee’s awareness of privacy issues and generally explained how to establish a privacy-protective environment”. For more on Privacy By Design and its concepts and proponents, please see our separate recent blog post here .

The Candy Man Cometh: Candy Crush Developer King Crushes Sweet Dreams in Trademark Disputes

Posted April 17, 2014 by Britnie Morris 0

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) records indicate that King, also known as Digital Entertainment PLC, publisher of the popular game Candy Crush Saga, applied to register a trademark for the word “candy” in February, 2013. (US Trademark Application Serial Number 85842584.) PCMag reported that King had already trademarked “candy” in the EU where, according to King’s spokesperson, the company’s intellectual property is constantly being infringed upon. The firm sought the same security in the US market, leading critics to pounce weeks before March 26, when, according to Forbes, the company tanked in its market debut.

The application to register the “candy” trademark was approved on January 15, 2014. One intellectual property commentator told the San Jose Mercury News that King’s move was “blatantly anti-competitive and not what trademark law is about”. Forbes contributor Eric Kain wrote “No corporation should have legal rights to any word I can use in Scrabble—words like ‘candy’ or ‘saga’ for instance.”

ICYMI: Privacy Laws Effective Jan 1, 2014

Posted March 11, 2014 by Britnie Morris 0

In case you missed it: We recently wrote here that over two dozen state privacy laws were passed in 2013. While little to nothing is happening in Congress – at least in terms of actual privacy legislation – state legislatures continue to fervently address the issue of privacy. Many new state laws became effective January 1st of this year. Here is just a sampling of those directly impacting both individuals’ privacy and technology.

GitHub and Developers: The perils of licensing after code release.

Posted March 3, 2014 by Rob Ellis 0

The licensing practices of open source software developers have often centered around copyleft or permissive licenses that provide free public access to a project’s source code with only a few restrictions on how the code may be used. These licenses often require that any derivative work created from the source code must also be licensed under similar terms. Websites, GitHub being a prominent example, allow developers to post their code so that others can download the master code, make changes to it and push those changes back up to the master copy. Sites like these are described as “distributed reversion control repositories” (DRCRs). With advancements in DRCRs, some trends show that today’s open source developers do not take into account licensing considerations until well after a project has been created and made available to the public. Labeled the POSS (Post Open Source Software) approach in a 2012 tweet by James Governor of RedMonk, many open-source developers are now skipping past licensing and governance considerations regarding code, and simply posting their work to sites like GitHub. This trend may offer more risks than opportunities regarding the ability of the code to be adopted into the OS community, and may expose code developers to greater liability regarding non-disclaimer of warranties.

Employee Noncompetes: Enforceable if Employee Quits After 3 Months? Maybe Not.

Posted February 24, 2014 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Seems that in Illinois a noncompete covenant in an employment offer letter is unenforceable if the only consideration given the employee is the promise of continued employment.

A case in Illinois involving an individual who sued his former employer seeking a ruling that his noncompete was unenforceable illustrates a potential pitfall for employers trying to prevent employees from leaving to work for competitors. Employers in many states routinely make offers of employment through offer letters, containing compensation terms, job duties and, sometimes, noncompete restrictions that apply during and after employment. Sometimes – but not always – the noncompete is coupled with a pre-agreed severance payment negotiated at the start of employment that would kick in upon any employment termination.

The case, Fifield v. Premier Dealer Services, Inc., was issued in June 2013 and the report can be found here. The question raised in the Illinois case was whether the absence of such a pre-agreed severance payment made the noncompete unenforceable. The employer argued that the offer of employment itself was adequate consideration in exchange for the employee’s agreement to not work for a competitor. The First District of the Illinois Appellate Court said not so, and the Illinois Supreme Court declined to review the appeal.

Threading the needle: Apple Fined for allowing in-app purchase transactions without obtaining account-holder consent.

Posted February 10, 2014 by Rob Ellis 0

While Apple Inc. has been at the leading edge of the app revolution, it is also out front in setting the guidelines for app purchases. According to the FTC last week, it crossed that line to the tune of $32.5M. That’s the amount that Apple agreed to refund to settle an FTC complaint that the company charged for children’s in-app purchases without parental consent. At issue was the practice by which Apple allowed iPhone users unlimited in-app purchases for 15 minutes after providing initial consent for a single purchase.

Apple Inc. has been instrumental in solidifying the ubiquity and prominence of applications or “apps” in everyday life. With the release of the groundbreaking iPhone in 2007 and its corresponding App Store in 2008, users became familiar with the idea of using and purchasing apps for specific uses. From news feeds and video players, to single and multi-player games, apps came to represent a download that, with the simple tap of the thumb, would add another tool, resource or game to a device.

Republishing Defamatory Content: Hyperlinking is OK?

Posted February 6, 2014 by Andrew Mirsky 0

If someone publishes something defamatory on the internet, and I later re-publish that statement, generally I can be held liable for defamation equally as the original publisher of the defamatory statement. (See for example, http://www.wassom.com/publication-republication-and-defamation-online-guest-post.html.)

So, for example, if I publish on my blog an unvarnished, clearly libelous statement – oh, I don’t know, say I write something like “Sheldon Adelson (the casino magnate and Republican party contributor) runs a prostitution ring in Macau” – and then my friend (let’s call him “Phil”) repeats that statement on his blog, then typically both Phil and I can be liable for defamation.

Got WI-FI?: How Brick and Mortar Retailers Track Their Shoppers

Posted January 21, 2014 by Britnie Morris 0

Euclid Analytics is one of several companies that recently began assisting brick and mortar retailers in tracking consumer behavior, via their smartphones, as they enter, exit, and move around stores. It may be easy to label this technology, mobile location analysis, as “creepy”, but it is by no means illegal (at least not yet). Some may even find having a coupon for jelly pop up on your iPhone just a moment after you’ve tossed peanut butter into your cart very convenient- MIT Technology Review proposed this hypothetical scenario.

Just a few weeks ago we wrote about how online retailers monitor consumer behavior in order to customize their offerings to better fit both the consumers’ and the business’ needs. Brick and mortar retailers argue that they’re simply catching up with online retailers’ use of cookies and target marketing.

Mobile App Privacy Policies Should Not Keep Users in the Dark

Posted January 9, 2014 by Rob Ellis 0

Privacy policies have long been the domain of the desktop web experience. For anyone motivated enough to seek them out, they are commonly found in a utility bar at the top of a web page, or buried somewhere in the site’s footer. The policy typically governs what the site owner does with users’ information – from personal information actively submitted through a form, to broader information passively attained such as browser type or device, and how the site uses cookies and similar technologies to track users’ online activity.

With the explosion of mobile devices, app developers face a much broader scope of information that privacy policies must address. With the treasure trove of information available via users’ mobile devices, developers must take great pains to detail what information is gathered and how that information is used. Privacy policies not only inform a user-base and foster good-will, but also ensure that the application does not abuse its access to information and run afoul of the law.

MediaTech Law

By MIRSKY & COMPANY, PLLC