Internet Law

This article discusses disputes involving the use of copyrighted works or intellectual property underlying that work, under a license, or in one case, under an implied license. The parties thereto are not nearly as well-known, but the legal conclusions reached may have farther reaching implications.

As more Americans establish personal email accounts, social media accounts, and other electronic accounts, these “digital assets” are becoming an increasingly vital estate-planning consideration. The failure to consider how to dispose of digital assets in an individual's estate plan could result in later complexities following the individual's death.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature approved the new Cybersecurity Law on November 7, which was created for reasons of national security and to curb internet fraud. It will take effect in June 2017.

The company was hit with the latest in a string of lawsuits alleging that the social media company misled investors about the growth of its user base, and that senior executives raked in hundreds of millions of dollars by selling their stock before the market learned about it.

Facebook has been hit with a lawsuit claiming that it violates federal anti-discrimination laws for housing and employment by allowing advertisers to exclude certain groups on the basis of race, gender or religion in social media ads.

Data breaches such as the one Yahoo recently revealed (500 million accounts!) get the big headlines. In response, large companies double down on their efforts to protect the security of their data. But small to midsize businesses often fail to appreciate the risk of a data breach to their own business.

Record companies and music publishers will get more damages and a second shot at holding the founder of MP3tunes liable for additional copyright infringement following a federal appeals court decision on Oct. 25.

As companies across the country rush to embrace the Internet and other electronic technologies, they must be mindful of this very real exposure to liability — website inaccessibility. Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, it means that people with disabilities cannot only perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Web, but can also contribute to it.