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Entertainment Law & Finance
Evolving Court Views on Content Embedding
Shaleen J. Patel and Mike Hobbs
Recent legal and procedural developments associated with the ubiquitous Instagram social media site have created significant practical and legal risks for both copyright owners and account holders that entertainment industry professionals should note.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
To Embed, or Not to Embed, that is the Question
Shaleen J. Patel and Mike Hobbs
Would Shakespeare Post Hamlet on Instagram in 2020?
Recent legal and procedural developments associated with the ubiquitous Instagram social media site have created significant practical and legal risks for both copyright owners and account holders.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Create a Community to Connect and Empower
Ari Kaplan
I encourage you to cultivate your own community as a means of connecting and empowering your peers. These are a few ideas to help you launch and maintain a program.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Facebook and Instagram Developers Sued for Privacy Violations In U.S. and UK
Alaina Lancaster
Facebook filed two separate lawsuits in the UK and U.S. that the company says is part of an ongoing effort to hold developers that abuse its platform accountable.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How to Make Paid Digital Effective for Post-COVID-19 Law Firm Marketing
Josh Merkin
After spending the last six to eight weeks in COVID-crisis mode, most firms are now eyeing a move toward business recovery. This means that it is also now time for law firms to reevaluate their marketing strategies to ensure they are aligned to support business goals in this new climate. One overlooked area that law firms should consider adding to their marketing arsenal is digital paid media.
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Marketing The Law Firm
A 3-Step Formula to Maximize Your Social Media Effectiveness
Spencer Smith
The Ben Franklin Strategy
Benjamin Franklin will never know this, but he gave us the only social media strategy we need: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” In the middle of the COVID-19 health crisis, there’s never been a better time for a legal marketing professional to look for the good she or he can highlight within their communities, within their firms or companies, or for individual people.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
French Law on Removing Objectionable Online Content Rejected As Too Broad
Anne Bagamery
A new French law that would have required such social media platforms as Facebook to take down objectionable content within 24 hours has been rejected by France’s Constitutional Council as a disproportionate response to the proliferation of hate speech online.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Bit Parts
Stan Soocher
Right of Publicity Laws Don’t Pierce CDA Immunity Shield
Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Wolf of Wall Street Defamation Suit
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Marketing The Law Firm
Putting the “Social” Back into Social Media: Helping Attorneys Connect with Others
Jaimie B. Field
Most attorneys are expecting social media to be a panacea to bring in new clients during this incredibly unusual time in our history. As marketing and business development professionals and coaches, we know we have to teach our attorneys that, like any other marketing and business development tactic, there is no magic bullet. But that by using social media, it will help them create attention and assist in building relationships.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Judge Warns Facebook in Approving Record $5B Fine for Alleged Privacy Violations
Jacqueline Thomsen
The Judge Pointed Out that Some FTC Commissioners Wanted to Specifically Sanction Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg for the Company Sharing Private User Data With Outside Parties
A federal judge in Washington, DC, signed off on a record $5 billion fine imposed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Facebook for allegedly violating federal law and a previous order with its privacy practices.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, Even When It’s the Right One
Carlos Arcos
In this era of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, each day seems to bring a fresh story of PR missteps, whether it be a brand, organization or high-profile individual. Although you may feel you’ve read enough about these latest public relations nightmares, one area on which you might want to focus is the importance of an apology.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Photo Cases Test Copyright Law and Embedded Tweets
Raychel Lean
A New Yorker who settled a copyright lawsuit against several news outlets over a photo he took of star quarterback Tom Brady and Boston Celtics manager Danny Ainge has struck again. This time he’s suing a radio station owner in Florida federal courts in a case that could test the boundaries of an emerging area of copyright law, raising major questions about how media companies incorporate social media posts into online stories.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Podcasts Are the New Black for Law Firm Business Development
Gina Rubel
Before jumping into the podcast foray, law firm leaders must think strategically about podcasting as a tool for marketing and business development. Resources, bandwidth and buy-in are needed to produce a successful podcast — along with patience as podcasting success is determined by long-term results.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: 9 Best Practices for Blogging that Gets You New Business
Larry Bodine
Becoming a renowned expert in your field will bring you the best files from the most profitable clients — and the shortest path to becoming a thought leader is to write a blog.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Security Worries for Online Video Game Companies
Victoria Hudgins
Fortnite video game developer Epic Games Inc. isn’t just dodging digital adversaries — now it’s been slammed with a class action lawsuit over a data breach.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Demystifying Social Media Discovery
Todd Heffner
Social Media Escapes an Easy Definition, But You Know It When You See It
While it would be helpful to understand the technical details of collecting data from various social media platforms, what’s more important is what parts of social media might be relevant to a dispute and what that means for both the requesting and producing parties.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Maximize the Impact of Firm Sponsorships with Social Media
Spencer X Smith
Pro bono work on an individual level is often not publicized, but the work you do in the community as a firm should be. Here’s how to ensure both you and the charities, nonprofits, etc. you’re supporting gain the maximum amount of exposure and awareness for their causes.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Basic Tax Issues for Social Media Influencers
Robert M. Jason
This article provides a general introduction to social media influencers and discusses common tax issues arising on the income side of the equation. What is taxable income? What happens if the influencer’s compensation is paid in equity?
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Social Media Influencers: Basic Tax Issues
Robert M. Jason
This article discusses the basic tax issues facing social media influencers, who have become an important element in the entertainment industry.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Are Online Reviews Threatening Your Online Reputation?
Melanie Trudeau
An attorney’s reputation may be one of the most important factors that clients consider before hiring counsel. In today’s world of online reviews, managing your reputation can be challenging. How should you manage online reviews to ensure your reputation and trustworthiness are intact?
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Podcast: Cognitive Security
Jason Thomas
We live in information environment that is unique to this point in time (social media, information overload). How do we know what’s true and what’s not?
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
Best Practices for Social Media Advertising
Amanda H. Wilcox
Social media is growing up, and this means that brands of all sizes and across all industries are using social media as part of their marketing strategy. However, courts have confirmed that the basic tenets of intellectual property law and advertising law still apply. The following guidelines stem from common questions that clients often have in the area of social media marketing.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: How to Create (at least) Nine Pieces of Content in One Hour
Spencer X. Smith
In just one hour, would it be valuable to have at least nine pieces of content that your lawyer clients may use on your website and on social media?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Social Media Scene: The Easy Path to Success on Social Media — The 1% Rule of the Internet
Spencer X. Smith
You may have read a dozen “How To” articles about cracking the algorithms — which sound very mathematical — of any social media platform, but at the end of the day, you’re communicating with people.
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Marketing The Law Firm
‘Cause We Are Living in a Digital World …
David McCann
As with traditional branding, a digital brand is simply the perception individuals have of a business or organization online. Digital branding is a brand management technique that uses a combination of Internet branding and digital marketing to develop a brand over a range of digital venues, including Internet-based relationships, device-based applications and media. The objective is to establish and build trust with potential clients, especially while they are in the decision phase of the selection process.
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Marketing The Law Firm
'Digital Dive:' How to Use Reverse SEO to Suppress Negative Content in Search Engines
Marguerita Cheng
Reverse SEO is part of a firm’s online reputation management strategy that suppresses negative content such as bad service reviews in search engines so that potential clients and partner companies will have difficulty finding it.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Social Media Scene: How to Compel Your Staff to Share Your Firm's Social Media Posts
Spencer X. Smith
Consider advocating for your employees first before you ask them to advocate for you. Give your employees a reason to care.
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Marketing The Law Firm
'Marketing Tech:' How Law Firms May Ensure Social Media Compliance
Marguerita Cheng
How can law firms ensure social media compliance? What are the rules and restrictions to creating profiles, publishing content and communicating with prospects and clients? This article answers these questions and provides tips to help firms create a sound social media policy.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Topography of a Strong Attorney Biography
John Buchanan
Part Two of a Two-Part Article
In addition to ensuring that a bio focuses on “the right stuff,” it is essential that the bio be both search engine and social media friendly.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Lessons Learned from the Business Development Coach’s Playbook
Peter A. Johnson
What does it take to be a successful attorney in today’s legal environment? For one thing, it takes a little help, which more and more often comes in the form of a business development coach.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Online Extra: Facebook’s Blockchain Bet Could Place It in the Data Decentralization Debate
Ian Lopez
Oft-Considered an Avenue for Individuals to Attain Greater Control over Their Digital Information, Blockchain Could Be Leveraged By Facebook to Change Its Status As “Gatekeeper” for User Data
Facebook Inc. recently announced that it will begin exploring different ways to incorporate blockchain into its infrastructure. Yet, questions remain over how the social media company will implement the technology and what sort of legal challenges doing so could portend.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
Trademark ‘Theft’ With AdWords Keyword Bidding
Aaron Cohn
Many Courts Have Determined that AdWords Bidding Alone Does Not Create Sufficient Consumer Confusion to Support Trademark Infringement Claims
As Internet searching continues its rapid migration to mobile and inadvertent infringement becomes inevitable, the courts are likely to see an increase of litigation in this area.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
Copyright Law in the Age of Twitter
Shari Claire Lewis
A Recent Decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Involving Twitter May Have Significant Implications for Online Publications
The exponential growth of social media, and the inevitable conflicts that result, is leading to more and more litigation. In many instances, courts are being asked to apply laws crafted before the Internet era to these modern disputes.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
A Roundtable Discussion: How Evolving Media Types and Cybersecurity Concerns Are Impacting e-Discovery
In this roundtable discussion, two law firm partners and two GCs share their experience and insight on the evolving nature of e-discovery and its intersection with AI, cybersecurity and privacy.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Iglesias’s Music Streaming Suit Confronts Big Industry Issue
Samantha Joseph
Music superstar Enrique Iglesias wasn’t dancing around the point when he recently filed a lawsuit in Miami federal court against Universal International Music.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: Finding a Few More Minutes for Marketing and Business Development
Ari Kaplan
Years ago, when trying to improve some of my snacking habits, I stopped buying cookies, candy and savory chips. Magically (and perhaps obviously), I quickly found that I ate less junk food. In effort to find a few more minutes a day for marketing, I recently applied this same basic, but effective, technique to my time management and the results have been just as immediate.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: SEO: Will It Actually Work for Your Firm?
Spencer X. Smith
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to help drive traffic to your website, but is also a very misunderstood term. This article helps clarify what SEO really is, and if it will help with your business development activities.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Influencing the Influencers
Alan Friel and Stephanie Lucas
The importance of promoting brands and products on digital platforms has continued to grow as advertisers are learning how to use social media to reach out to specific populations by harnessing the power and goodwill of the people on these platforms that are popular with and influence particular niche groups of interest. These so-called “influencers” can have thousands, or even millions and tens of millions of followers. But when is the influencer an objective critic, and when is she a paid spokesperson?
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Internet Law & Strategy
Artificially Intelligent Blockchain of Things: Examining Legal Tech’s Biggest Buzzwords
Ian Lopez
Panelists at ALM Cybersecure 2017 Delved Into the Year’s Biggest Legal Technology Buzzwords and the Hype Fueling Their Popularity
Legal technology has no shortage of buzzwords. The latest slew to take the industry by storm were the topic conversation in a Dec. 5 panel at ALM’s CyberSecure event in New York.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Online Extra:
Social Media: Questions of Admissibility And Ethics
Khizar A. Sheikh, Lynne Strober and Jennifer Presti
Social media evidence can be acquired both informally — through an attorney’s own investigation or from the client — or more formally through the use of discovery and the rules of discovery. While each gives rise to practical and ethical issues, this section will focus on informal methods of acquisition.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Zeran v. AOL and Its Inconsistent Legacy
Ian C. Ballon
How the Seminal Fourth Circuit's Ruling Is Applied in Different Circuits
The rule of Zeran has been uniformly applied by every federal circuit court to consider it and by numerous state courts. And it has never been rejected in any precedential opinion. Indeed, it is perhaps a fitting tribute to the viability of Zeran that 20 year later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in its 12th opinion construing the CDA, barely spent even a sentence affirming dismissal of a defamation claim brought against Facebook over user content, pursuant to the CDA and the rule first developed in Zeran.
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Internet Law & Strategy
What Lies Beneath the Surface: The Dark Web
Elizabeth Vandesteeg and Jeffrey Goldberg
Nearly all of us access the World Wide Web on at least a daily basis. Yet for many of us, there is a fundamental lack of knowledge about the basic structure of the Internet and the way its different levels interact. This article provides a basic outline of the structure of the Web and some insight as to the purpose for and content housed on each level, as well as give some practical tips to avoid your company's data from ending up on the Dark Web.
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Internet Law & Strategy
When Terms of Use Put 'Reasonably Prudent User' on Notice
Richard Raysman and Peter Brown
On Aug. 17, 2017, the Second Circuit issued its decision in Meyer v. Uber Technologies, Inc.. The appeals court vacated and remanded the trial court ruling by holding that the registration process for Uber Technologies, Inc.'s mobile application formed a legal contract, Less than a month later, the Southern District relied on the Meyer decision in granting the defendant's motion to compel arbitration based on the fact that the design and functionality of defendant's amended terms of use placed plaintiffs' on "reasonably conspicuous notice" of the mandatory arbitration and jury trial waiver provisions.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Trump's Tweets Are 'Official Statements'
Cogan Schneier
President Donald Trump's tweets are official government statements, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month.
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Internet Law & Strategy
All Digital Assets Are Not Legally Equal
Jonathan Bick
The Internet has generated a new set of assets known as "digital assets." Broadly defined, a digital asset is an electronic record in which an individual has a right or interest. This definition erroneously implies that digital assets should be treated as a legally equivalent set of assets when, in fact, failure to differentiate digital assets into one of three distinct classes will result in legal difficulties.
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The Matrimonial Strategist
Social Media: Questions of Admissibility and Ethics
Khizar A. Sheikh, Lynne Strober and Jennifer Presti
Part One of a Two-Part Article
This two-part article is divided into three sections: 1) Social media, defined; 2) Examples of how social media has been used in family law cases; and 3) Ethical considerations for attorneys who gather social media evidence.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Procedures for Protecting Entertainment Domain Names Against Cybersquatters
Karen Levin, Ariel Ronneburger and Damias Wilson
Because there are so many new digital channels for possible intellectual property infringement, knowledge of the various mechanisms available to combat the issue is vital to enabling entertainment industry owners to protect their brand.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Big Data, Web 'Scraping' and Competition Law
Shepard Goldfein and James Keyte
The Debate Continues
Web "scraping" is one method of accumulating data that has sparked recent legal debate, both antitrust and otherwise. Legal challenges to Web scraping have involved privacy claims and claims under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in addition to antitrust claims about the need to collect public data to be able to compete freely.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
FTC Moves Directly Against Social Media Influencers
C. Ryan Barber
The FTC has faulted social media influencers for failing to disclose the payments behind their seemingly organic endorsements. But the FTC only reached settlements with the companies, raising a question of when — if ever — the agency would directly go after the influencers.
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Internet Law & Strategy
Website Accessibility: The Law and Your Business Priorities
Matthias L. Niska
The first step to solving a problem is knowing it exists. But many businesses have never thought to ask whether their customer-facing websites are accessible to people with disabilities, and only become aware of the issue when they are sent a demand letter or served with a lawsuit alleging that their site violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
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