Ch.15 - Internet Law, Social Media & Privacy

Licensing

-A company may permit another party to use a trademark (or other intellectual property) under a license.

**Internet Law

-A number of laws specifically address issues that arise only on the Internet. -Three such issues are unsolicited e-mail, domain names, and cybersquatting,

Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA)

-Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA): which amended the Lanham Act—the federal law protecting trademarks, discussed in Chapter 14. The ACPA makes cybersquatting illegal when both of the following are true: 1. The name is identical or confusingly similar to the trademark of another. 2. The one registering, trafficking in, or using the domain name has a "bad faith intent" to profit from that trademark.

Spam

-Bulk, unsolicited (junk) e-mail. -In 2003, Congress enacted the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act. The legislation applies to any "commercial electronic mail messages" that are sent to promote a commercial product or service. -Congress sought to rectify the situation by enacting the U.S. Safe Web Act: -The act allows the FTC to cooperate and share information with foreign agencies in investigating and prosecuting those involved in spamming, spyware, and various Internet frauds and deceptions.

Protection of Social Media Passwords

-By 2013, four states (California, Illinois, Maryland, and Michigan) had enacted legislation to protect individuals from having to disclose their social media passwords. Each state's law is slightly different.

Goodwill

-By using an identical or similar domain name, parties have attempted to profit from a competitor's goodwill (the nontangible value of a business).

Data collection and Cookies

-Cookies are invisible files that computers, smartphones, and other mobile devices create to track a user's Web browsing activities. -Cookies provide detailed information to marketers about an individual's behavior and preferences, which is then used to personalize online services.

Privacy

-Courts have held that the right to privacy is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and some state constitutions guarantee it as well. To maintain a suit for the invasion of privacy, though, a person must have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the particular situation

Cyber Tort

-Cyber torts are torts that arise from online conduct. One of the most prevalent cyber torts is online defamation.

Liability of Internet Service Provider

-ISP: A business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. -One who repeats or otherwise republishes a defamatory statement is subject to liability as if he or she had originally published it. Thus, newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations are subject to liability for defamatory content that they publish or broadcast, even though the content was prepared or created by others. -Communications Decency Act (CDA): states that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

-In 1998, Congress passed further legislation to protect copyright holders—the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): The DMCA gave significant protection to owners of copyrights in digital information. -Among other things, the act established civil and criminal penalties for anyone who circumvents (bypasses) encryption software or other technological antipiracy protection. Also prohibited are the manufacture, import, sale, and distribution of devices or services for circumvention.

Meta Tags

-Meta Tags: key words that are inserted into the HTML (hypertext markup language) code to tell Internet browsers specific information about a Web page. Meta tags increase the likelihood that a site will be included in search engine results, even though the site may have nothing to do with the key words.

Online Defamation

-Online Defamation: wrongfully hurting a person's reputation by communicating false statements about that person to others. -Because the Internet enables individuals to communicate with large numbers of people simultaneously (via a blog or tweet, for instance), online defamation has become a problem in today's legal environment. -Issue: identifying author of the defamation statement

Company-Wide Social Media Networks

-Posts on these internal networks are quite different from the typical posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. -Employees use these intranets to exchange messages about topics related to their work such as deals that are closing, new products, production flaws, how a team is solving a problem, and the details of customer orders. Thus, the tone is businesslike. -An important advantage to using an internal system for employee communications is that the company can better protect its trade secrets.

Legal Issues

-Social media posts now are routinely included in discovery in litigation because they can provide damaging information that establishes a person's intent or what she or he knew at a particular time. Like e-mail, posts on social networks can be the smoking gun that leads to liability. -Tweets and other social media posts can also be used to reduce damages awards. -Law enforcement uses social media to detect and prosecute criminals. -Federal regulators also use social media posts in their investigations into illegal activities. -Employees who use social media in a way that violates their employer's stated policies may be disciplined or fired from their jobs.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act

-The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) amended federal wiretapping law to cover electronic forms of communications. -The ECPA prohibits the intentional interception of any wire, oral, or electronic communication. It also prohibits the intentional disclosure or use of the information obtained by the interception.

Internet companies privacy policies

-The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigates consumer complaints of privacy violations. -The FTC has forced many companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, to enter a consent decree that gives the FTC broad power to review their privacy and data practices. It can then sue companies that violate the terms of the decree.

Cybersquatting

-The act of registering a domain name that is the same as, or confusingly similar to, the trademark of another and then offering to sell that domain name back to the trademark owner.

Social Media

-The means by which people can create, share, and exchange ideas and comments via the Internet.

Domain Names

-The series of letters and symbols used to identify site operators on the Internet; Internet "addresses." -Generic top-level domain (TLD): which is the part of the name to the right of the period that often indicates the type of entity that operates the site. -The second-level domain (SLD): the part of the name to the left of the period—is chosen by the business entity or individual registering the domain name. -The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): a nonprofit corporation, oversees the distribution of domain names and operates an online arbitration system.

The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights

-To protect consumers' personal information, the Obama administration has proposed a consumer privacy bill of rights (see Exhibit 15-1 below). The goal is to ensure that personal information is safe online.

Trademark Dilution online

-Trademark dilution occurs when a trademark is used, without authorization, in a way that diminishes the distinctive quality of the mark.

Typosquatting

-Typosquatting: or registering a name that is a misspelling of a popular brand, such as googl.com or appple.com.

**Copyright in Digital Information

-Whenever a party downloads software or music into a computer's random access memory, or RAM, without authorization, a copyright is infringed. Technology has vastly increased the potential for copyright infringement.

MP3 and File-Sharing

1. Peer-to-peer: Personal computers connected to the internet 2. Distributed Network: indvs on the same network can access files stored on one another's PCs through distribution networks 3. Cloud Computing: Subscription based or pay per use service that extends a computers software or storage capabilities