When Legal Spam Isn't Spam
Demands for consumer 'extra effort' from Web merchants or service providers could become very common after a mid-2007 federal court ruling ' <i>Douglas v. Talk America, Inc.</i> In that case, a federal appeals court considered what it labeled an 'issue ' of some significance, (which) potentially affects the relationship of numerous service providers with millions of customers: ' whether to enforce a modified contract with a customer where the customer claims that the only notice of the changed terms consisted of posting the revised contract on the provider's Web site.'
Is Anyone Out There?
The recent flurry of activity in behavioral targeting has privacy advocates sharpening their proverbial claws and ready to enter the fray. Indeed, between Google's merger with DoubleClick, AOL's acquisition of Tacoda, and Facebook's announcement that it may leverage user information to generate advertising revenue, there's plenty to talk about. For e-commerce counsel, the primary issue emerging is whether our jurisprudence can balance privacy interests against the advertisers' business interests, or whether such things are better left to those most vested in the issue. This article delves into the relationship between the quality of the online experience and the extent to which personal information should be shared with commercially interested parties.
Features
Turbo-Charge Your Table of Authorities
Does anyone in your firm still use ledger sheets and a calculator for computations rather than set up a spreadsheet? Absolutely not! Does anyone in your firm create footnotes manually instead of using the 'Insert Footnote' feature in your word processing program or, worse, hand redline a document? Never! Using these old methods despite software that is taken for granted today seems, well, inconceivable. However, if your litigation attorneys and secretaries are not using productivity-enhancing software to prepare their tables of authorities ('TOAs'), they are missing out on a major opportunity to streamline their production of briefs.
Redlining and PDF Utilities Extraordinaire
Lit'ra's Change-Pro Suite is a collection of utilities for Word, Excel, PDF and image files. The suite includes applications to redline both Word and Excel files, to create and edit PDF files, to remove metadata from Microsoft Office files and to capture Windows screens.
A Primer on Foreign Language e-Discovery
While e-discovery may be Greek to many, it is those documents written in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian that cause much of the trouble. These 'multi-byte' languages have exponentially more characters than the 26 letters and few other punctuation marks that Latin languages like English, Spanish, French and German need. In fact, the number of Chinese characters included in the Kangxi dictionary is over 47,000 (though only 3,000-4,000 are reportedly necessary for full literacy). The impact on e-discovery is significant considering the increased sophistication necessary for case evaluation.
Features
Maximizing the Power of Virtual Data Rooms
Virtual data rooms ('VDRs') offer legal and financial professionals an array of advantages. Overall, VDRs make it possible for lawyers and other deal advisers to focus more on the substantive work to be done and less on procedural aspects of deal management.
Net News
Antitrust Subcommittee Members Call for 'Serious Scrutiny' of Google/DoubleClick Deal<br>U.S. Fights WTO Over Internet Gambling <br>Popular Web Site Craigslist.org Haven for Cyber-Criminals?
Apple Pops Some of Burst's Patent Claims
A little bruised, Burst.com will live to fight another day in its dispute with Apple over patents it claims the company infringes on in its popular iPod and iTunes music store. Apple tried to invalidate parts of four of the tiny Santa Rosa, CA, company's patents related to compression; high-speed transmission; and sharing, editing and playing audio and video on computers in a summary judgment motion. In a ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel invalidated 14 claims, leaving 22 claims remaining.
Online Sweepstakes and Contests As Promotional Devices
Online sweepstakes and contests are frequent devices used to promote companies and their products and services. While these tools of the online promotions and marketing trade offer the promise of a cost-efficient way to target interested consumers and create a great deal of buzz, they are hardly trouble-free and myriad traps await the unwary. The Attorney Generals of several states closely regulate and monitor sweepstakes and contests and failure to conduct the campaign properly can result in regulatory enforcement actions and consumer lawsuits.
Features
e-Telephone Privacy
At low cost and widening availability, VoIP is common in business, and might be used at a greater volume and frequency among tech and e-commerce companies, thus making it a technology and a commodity to watch. Unfortunately, for consumer and businessperson alike, a concealed cost of VoIP service might be a user's privacy. That's because traditional telephone privacy is strictly sheltered by existing case law and statute, while VoIP, it could be argued, is unprotected in many instances.
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