Features

Recent developments of note in the Internet industry.This month:<br>First Convictions in U.S. Peer-To-Peer Piracy Fight <br>Music Industry Boss Defends File-Sharing Lawsuits <br> 8th Circuit: No ISP Subpoenas

Google and its general counsel, David Drummond, reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the company's failure to register more than $80 million in employee stock options in the 2 years prior to its IPO.

Law firms use Internet technology to communicate in ways that were simply not possible 10 years ago. This has allowed lawyers to share information as never before. More importantly, the technology associated with the Internet allows law firms direct control over Internet communications because they own the individual networks that allow information to be shared. This direct control brings increased liability for copyright infringement, unless firms comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Compliance requires little investment of time or money. Similarly, e-mail protection is readily available at little or no additional cost.

Features

Could the right to search copyrighted images on the Internet be in jeopardy? That would be outcome if Perfect 10, Inc. (P10), a purveyor of adult entertainment, has its way.

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The 19-year-old publisher of a Web site facing a recent lawsuit over an article about a top-secret $499 Apple computer originally had to plead for legal assistance. Not only did Terry Gross, a partner in the San Francisco-based Gross &amp; Belsky LLP, step up to the plate, but he appears to be willing to play hardball.

Written by our new Board of Editors member, Ed Wesemann, and published in 2004 ' with profits donated to the ALA ' this collection of skillfully crafted essays provides illuminating observations and pithy advice on a wide range of challenges facing law firms and lawyers. The book's first chapter, on profitability problems larger firms have with small clients, was the springboard for this month's roundtable discussion

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<i>Accounting and Financial Planning for Law Firms</i> is pleased to announce that H. Edward Wesemann has joined our Board of Editors.

Touted as one of the most substantial overhauls of the Internal Revenue Code in years, the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 was signed by the President on Oct. 22, 2004. Like any number of omnibus Congressional tax bills, the "Jobs Act" is a broad-reaching collection of miscellaneous tax provisions. <br>Title VIII of the Act, in Subtitle B ' "Provisions Relating to Tax Shelters," contains new provisions that limit the benefits of tax shelters. Among these new provisions are requirements that govern how certain transactions must be reported to the IRS. While reporting rules existed prior to the Jobs Act, these new requirements carry substantial penalties to encourage compliance and curb participation in abusive tax shelters.