Technology Media and Telecom

Possessing child pornography is such a potentially serious crime that institutions take pains to keep it off their premises. e-Commerce firms, whether they have significant physical premises or not, are no different.

An appeals court ruled last month that a state law requiring most online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases by New Yorkers is constitutional on its face, though the panel ordered the reinstatement of claims that the tax law may violate the Commerce and Due Process clauses as applied to Amazon.com and Overstock.com.

Customarily, franchise agreements delineate an owner's exclusive right to sell to a particular locality. But, as is the case when the Internet is involved, the ubiquitous tool's communications capabilities have blurred franchise-location boundaries through novel low-cost marketing opportunities for commercial enterprises. While Internet-based franchise encroachment is rampant, courts are reluctant to interfere with the contracts that gave rise to the franchise relationship.

Entrepreneurs once able to cash out on their own terms, to eager buyers unwilling to risk negotiating lest a competitor get the deal, now must accept markedly less favorable terms.

Read on for the 21 Web tools that are not only useful and cutting-edge, but easy to use.

One of most quickly evolving areas of eDiscovery is centered around the relationship of in-house counsel and law firms. The best way to understand where things are going is to first look at where we've been.

e-Commerce spending in the second quarter was up an estimated full $1 billion from the first quarter, or $39.7 billion, the Census Bureau notes in preliminary figures ' a 2.6% rise for April through June, a gain of 1.5% from the first quarter and a healthy increase of 14% from the second quarter of last year.

One of the virtues of e-commerce has always been its low barrier to entry. For little investment of time or money, anyone can set up shop online, whether selling advice or widgets. But can something so easily accomplished really be a business? Will an entrepreneur run something out of her spare bedroom the same way as if she had venture capitalists peering over her shoulders, demanding a business plan, financial statements, budgets, marketing plans and everything that a bricks-and-mortar retailer has (except the expense of leasing space)? If not, she may treat it as just another hobby, something to handle in her free time.