LEGAL INSIGHTS AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNET LAW & ONLINE BUSINESS

Hear that? It’s the sound of thousands of teenagers sighing because the FTC crushed their faith in a popular acne-fighting smartphone app. Last week, much to the dismay of 14,900 pimple-plagued people, Jon Lebowitz and his merry band of trade commissioners announced a consent agreement reached with the operators of “Acne Pwner” and “Acne App.”
Sheesh, first it was Justin Beiber’s Free-Scooter battle and now this!
All jokes aside, dealing with acne is emotional. Sufferers should be safeguarded against marketers pushing scientifically unsubstantiated blemish-busting products. So the FTC hopped on the case.
The Great Red-Blue Hope
We live in a world where Marty [...]

A primer for online and mobile business owners on the current state of payment fraud
It’s time to get serious about payment fraud and data protection. 007 serious.
Look, digital advancements have changed our world for the better, but they’ve also created more problems – like cyber-crime. Hacking and electronic fraud are now so widespread that large corporations are staffing multi-member electronic-security departments, whose sole job it is to secure and monitor digital data – especially payment details; governments and multinational corporations are actively recruiting hackers to tackle the problem.
So the question becomes: what can you, as a small to medium-sized business [...]

What would you do if you came across pornographic pictures of your 12-year-old child on Facebook? A father in Northern Ireland faced said trouble recently – and he’s chosen to go after the social media giant in court. To protect the identity of the naughty daughter, the father’s name was not released.
The plaintiff’s counsel, Hilary Carmichael, explained that her client felt that the pictures his daughter posted on Facebook attracted pedophiles; he blames Facebook for “negligence” since the company does not have stringent enough procedures in place to protect against underage children creating accounts.
In an interview with the BBC, Carmichael [...]

Online defamation is becoming an international epidemic!
Politicians over in England and Wales are now looking to inject safeguards into their countries’ defamation legislation, as a means to protect website operators from being intimidation-sued by large corporations with deep pockets. Moreover, parliamentarians hope to provide a more structured way for citizens to get defamatory content removed from the Internet.
Recent statistics made public by Sweet and Maxwell reveal that the number of online defamation lawsuits doubled between 2010 and 2011. Analysts surmise the rise in cyberlibel is directly correlated to the rise in online social networking sites, like Facebook and Google+.
Barrister Karieh [...]

Eighteen people in California started this week with a new set of problems. Late last week, on Thursday, August 18, the State’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris, held a press conference and announced plans to move forward with a civil litigation against several law firms, call centers and individuals in the state suspected of allegedly bilking thousands of dollars out of financially strapped homeowners.
According to documents and Harris’ announcement, all of the named defendants allegedly worked together in developing a system where call center employees (and various individuals) cold-called homeowners on the verge of foreclosure, in an attempt to get them [...]