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 . . . »

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 . . . »

Amber M. Burroff

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The first time I saw Dakota Fanning’s now-infamous ad for Marc Jacobs’ new Oh Lola! fragrance was on the back of a Cosmopolitan resting in the hands of my 19-year old baby sister. My immediate reaction was “OMG…is that Dakota Fanning?! No way she’s grown up that fast!” Then my gaze shifted to the circus-caliber trait that Dakota and I happen to have in common (no, it’s not our shocking good looks) — double-jointed elbows. (God, I love it when celebrities are weird like me.)

At no point in my perusal of the ad did it even cross my mind that it was too provocative, or, as the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (or ASA) deemed it — right before they decided to ban it altogether — “likely to cause serious offense.” Clearly, like most Americans, my virgin eyes were long ago deflowered by the ubiquitous sextravagent media, and my tolerance for the “sexually provocative” has been fully developed since adolescence. Even taking a closer gander, I’m still unsure what all the fuss is about: pretty in pink lies the acclaimed child star who grew up right before my very eyes, seductively poised with a perfume bottle sculpted in the shape of a flower perched precariously (and euphemistically) between her upper thighs. (No rhyme intended. It’s not my fault Dakota’s soothing quasi-innocence makes me wax poetic. Blame Marc Jacobs.)

Whether the Brits’ better-developed campaign for a cleaner consciousness is a product of American overexposure to a steady stream of underage girls prancing around in mini-skirts and flaunting what their mommas (very recently) gave them, or a function of their more tightly-regulated media environment, I couldn’t help but think: what would the law say if Americans decided to summon the same outrage over Dakota’s Oh Lola! pose as the British censors apparently had? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Rachel Wilkes Barchie

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While I most often write on Law Law Land about copyrights, Internet issues, and various things Hollywood, the bread and butter of my practice is employment litigation: more specifically, representing employers who are sued for wrongful termination, discrimination, sexual harassment, and/or wage and hour claims. In California, employment laws tend to favor employees, and like any employer, Hollywood employers are vulnerable to employment lawsuits when they don’t cross their T’s and dot their I’s (and sometimes even when they do).

The Hollywood employment lawsuit du jour was brought against MTV by a former employee on the show The Hills. Do you remember that trip to Costa Rica the cast took for the 100th episode of the show? Yeah, me neither — as much as I love me some Justin Bobby/Audrina drama (almost as much as I love James Franco and Mila Kunis’ spoof of them during the writers’ strike), I just couldn’t stomach K-Cav as leading lady. [Ed. Note: Did any of the last sentence mean anything to you, dear readers? No, me neither.] But this Costa Rica trip will now live on in infamy, not only as the trip where Justin Bobby apparently wore a Confederate flag hat, but also as the trip that fueled this lawsuit.

According to the complaint, Eliza Sproul was a Field Clearance Coordinator/Production Coordinator on The Hills and accompanied Kristin and crew to Costa Rica. There, her employment “took a turn for the worse” when she was allegedly pressured with drugs, sexually harassed, and forced to work long hours until she “essentially broke down” from exhaustion. The complaint was just filed on October 18, so MTV has not yet filed any responsive papers. But I’m going to put on my employment litigator hat for a moment to analyze Ms. Sproul’s claims. 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 . . . »

Lisa Y. Wang

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Sometimes mistakes are made by accident. Sometimes mistakes are made on purpose (which, I guess, makes them not really mistakes). And sometimes, mistakes are made by, um, stupidity. File this one under stupid.

The Attorney General of the Navajo Nation recently sent Urban Outfitters a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that the corporation stop using the Navajo Nation’s trademarks to sell clothing and accessories that are completely unrelated to the Navajo people. Urban Outfitters’ (extremely tasteful) line of 24 “Navajo”-themed items included such surefire crowd-pleasers (pictured below) as the “Navajo Hipster Panty” and the Navajo flask — especially charming, I’m sure, to a Native American community that has long struggled with alcoholism and whose alcohol-related mortality rate is nearly 12%. Or maybe the style-makers at UO just hadn’t heard.

Just a few items from Urban Outfitters’ site described as “Navajo."

But Urban Outfitters’ “Navajo” product line wasn’t just culturally insensitive (not to mention egregiously ugly). It was also probably a violation of both trademark law and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. Continue reading the full story . . . »