Jesse Saivar

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If you read the paper, watch TV, listen to the radio or use the Internet, it’s been tough to avoid SOPA recently.  (If you don’t, well, you’re probably hand-writing angry missives in a cabin and not reading this.)  What we’ve seen thus far are two widely-popular, well-funded industries passionately going toe-to-toe with one another, with one widely-unpopular but well funded group of politicians playing referee.  After some low blows, eye gouging and hair pulling, the anti-SOPA team has prevailed, at least temporarily.

Unfortunately, after listening to both sides of the debate, I’m convinced the vast majority of the debaters and their audience lacked a strong understanding of exactly what SOPA says and what its true implications would be.  Because we’re dealing with powerful industries with enormous soap boxes, the majority of the “discussions” presented to the public have been severely slanted by the presenter’s personal stake in the contest.  As with most heated political topics, this is great for sound-bites and overbroad, black-and-white ways of looking at things, but not so great if you actually want to understand the proposed legislation.  So as any good humanitarian should do, I’m going to attempt to sum it up from a relatively-neutral legal perspective.  Even if SOPA itself is no longer on the table (for now), the fight it started can give us insight into the sides’ respective concerns and the future skirmishes we’re likely to see. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Rachel Wilkes Barchie

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If our dear readers look at my past blog posts, you might think I’m vying for a Bloggie Award* for “Most Posts Related to Social Media.”  As someone who personally spends a fair amount of time keeping up with my friends/news outlets/favorite restaurants through social media, many of the legal disputes that catch my eye examine the intersection of free speech and social media — after all, it’s good to know where the line between lawful and actionable is drawn, even though I don’t think I’m likely to step over it.  (Plus, I think I’m now allowed to bill my workplace Facebook/Twitter time as “researching blog post.”)

Usually, when something goes legally haywire with social media, it’s because Courtney Love defamed someone on Twitter again.  Last month, though, a Maryland federal court has shined a (27-page) light on the criminal law of cyberstalking.  Under a semi-obscure provision of the Violence Against Women Act — codified at 18 U.S.C. § 2261A for you legal eagles out there — federal law makes it a crime when an individual “uses the mail, any interactive computer service, or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that causes substantial emotional distress” to someone “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person in another State.”

This law may have come as some surprise to defendant William Lawrence Cassidy, who was charged with cyberstalking based on his more than 8,000 posts on blogs and Twitter about Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader (and quite the avid Tweeter herself).  The court’s recitation of facts describes Alyce Zeoli, or “A.Z.” as a “reincarnate llama,” but I’m pretty sure the court really meant lama (as in Tibetan teacher of the Dharma) rather than llama (as in South American camelid).  In any event (actually, probably especially if she is, indeed, an alpaca), Ms. Zeoli — the so-called “Buddha from Brooklyn” — is already quite the controversial figure.

Cassidy’s posts and Tweets ranged from threatening comments (“ya like haiku?  Here’s one for ya: ‘Long, Limb, Sharp Saw, Hard Drop’ ROFLMAO”**) to criticism of Zeoli as a religious figure (“[A.Z.] is a demonic force who tries to destroy Buddhism”) to just vague creepiness (“owl and raven feathers separate….tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock”).  Cassidy moved to dismiss the charges against him, and on December 15, the court granted his motion, holding that Cassidy’s speech was protected by the First Amendment and that the restriction didn’t pass scrutiny and dismissed the charges against him.

So what lessons can you take from Cassidy’s case the next time you’re ready to dive into the Twitterverse? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Amber M. Burroff

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It appears I’ve found a blogging niche:  the seedy, salacious, saucy legal topics everyone is too scared (or maybe smart) to write about.  (And this topic doubles as a nice relief from the usual “holiday shopper gets mauled in battle over the last available Let’s Rock Elmo“ headlines.)  Colleges, universities and businesses spent this holiday season shopping for a special kind of XXXmas gift — the gift of a good name.

On December 6, 2011, the new domain extension .xxx was gobbled up by the most unusual suspects, with more than 55,000 new names registered within the first 24 hours.  The .xxx top level domain (TLD) was designed — prepare to be shocked here — exclusively for adult entertainment content.  But ICM Registry, which is operating the new TLD, also opened up registrations to other organizations looking to protect their trademarks from scandalous misuse — or from those nefarious “cybersquatters” who might be looking for a buck NOT to put the domains to no good (like the brilliant entrepreneur who, in the wonder years of the Internet, operated WhiteHouse.com as a porn site (the real website is WhiteHouse.gov).

In other words, the Internet’s new red light district is open for business to those who were naughty OR nice this Christmas.  But are the nice kids who come to the new .xxx marketplace late going to be at the mercy of the fast movers on the naughty list? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Ken Basin

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‘Tis the season.

‘Tis the season to be jolly.  ‘Tis the season to go shopping.  ‘Tis the season for political gaffes.  ‘Tis for hilarious gifting of intentionally awful presents.  Yes, ‘tis the season for lots of things, but most of all, ‘tis the season for top-ten lists.

Ten best movies.  Ten best dressed.  Ten best pet gifts.  Ten best of everything.  Ten best top-ten lists.

It seems only fitting, then, to embrace the spirit of the season, and look ahead to 2012 in obligatory list form.  But let’s mix it up a little by breaking up our list into two parts.  Today, we bring you five important cases you should watch in 2012.  On Friday, we’ll follow up with five totally unimportant trainwrecks of cases you might not be able to pry your eyes away from. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Rachel Wilkes Barchie

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Our Law Law Land readers have been well-educated on the law of defamation as it relates to Twitter, and on the opinion of one of our bloggers that “Twitter sucks.” (I used to agree, and even though I’m coming around to Twitter slowly, I must say I still prefer Facebook as my time-vacuum, overshare medium of choice.) So when you all read about Kansas high schooler Emma Sullivan tweeting about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot,” you knew she wouldn’t be liable for defamation because she was expressing an opinion, not making a statement of fact.

Maybe Governor Brownback’s staff should read our site a little more often too. The fact that Sullivan’s tweet didn’t meet the test for defamation didn’t stop them from notifying Emma Sullivan’s school principal about her tweet (sent to her legion of 60 followers!). In turn, the principal notified Sullivan that she needed to write an apology to the governor by Monday, November 28. On Monday, the Shawnee Mission School District issued a statement that Emma Sullivan did not need to write an apology to the governor but saying this issue presented “many teachable moments” about the use of social media. Sullivan, for her part, came forward — with, what else, a tweet — to state for the record that she would not apologize to the governor (“I’ve decided not to write the letter but I hope this opens the door for average citizens to voice their opinion & to be heard! #goingstrong”). Then an apology on Facebook ended up coming from the governor himself, who evidently decided not to run for reelection on his staff’s “silence the teenagers” platform when he declared, “My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”

Meanwhile, in the court of public opinion, people’s reactions have ranged from celebration of Emma Sullivan’s exercise of her free speech rights, to criticism of the Big Brother-esque nature of Brownback’s staff’s vigilance of his name in social media, to the sentiment that Sullivan was being rude, to agreement that Brownback “does suck.” (Oh, to go back to those innocent days where you believed your online postings were “private!”) So, given that she is a student, what limits are there on Sullivan’s speech? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Dan Nabel

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Yelp.com describes itself as “the fun and easy way to find and talk about great (and not so great) local businesses.” It proclaims that “[a]s of August 2011, more than 63 million people visited Yelp within the past 30 days.” Its tagline: “Real people. Real reviews.®”

I view Yelp.com as one of the many unnecessary, “Web 2.0” websites I will never use that litters the information superhighway like marine snow in the deep ocean. My wife views it as a source of idle entertainment, where she can enjoy reviews that palaver about Jersey Shore-like drama, before even getting to whether a particular restaurant had good food or not. But some businesses have complained, and even filed lawsuits against Yelp, alleging that Yelp salespeople represent to businesses that Yelp has the power to manipulate Yelp.com business listing pages, and that Yelp will wield that power in favor of the business if it becomes a “Yelp Sponsor” and against the business if it declines to do so.

In other words, some businesses claim that Yelp is the like the internet mafia, asking business owners for protection money to make those bad reviews sleep with the fishes. Is it true?

When I first heard about these allegations, I immediately felt the urge to investigate, particularly given my attitude of “do whatever it takes, ruin as many people’s lives, so long as I can make a name for myself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends I lose or people I leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so I can make a name for myself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends I lose or people I leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way.” But then I realized that the East Bay Express already did the whole investigatory journalism thing in a thorough article that Yelp already replied to here. So I decided to stick to what I know best.

Continue reading the full story . . . »