E-Commerce Law

Federal Court Dismisses Defamation Suit Brought by Man Who Claimed to Have Used Drugs and Had Sex with President Obama

On February 10, 2009, the United States District for the District of Columbia dismissed the defamation complaint of the man who posted a YouTube video alleging that he used cocaine with, and performed a sex act on, then-state senator Barack Obama. The matter came before the court on the plaintiff's motion to compel information identifying the individuals who posted anonymous responses to the video in which they alleged that the plaintiff was lying about his allegations and was actually a patient in a mental hospital at the time that he claimed to have encountered now-President Obama.  The court rejected the plaintiff's attempt to compel disclosure of the identities of the three anonymous posters and dismissed his complaint.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of February 16, 2009

Surgeons recently live-tweeted the removal of a cancerous tumor from a man's kidney.  We use Twitter (follow E-Commerce Law on Twitter here) fairly regularly but don't expect us to be live-tweeting any of our trials or negotiations any time soon.

"Guidance Software Inc. bills itself as the leading provider of technology that helps companies dig up old e-mails and other electronic documents that might be evidence in a lawsuit. Yet when Guidance itself had to face a judge, it was accused of bumbling its internal digital search.  Whether Guidance intentionally hid documents or just couldn't find them is a matter of dispute."

"After three days of pressure from angry users and the threat of a formal legal complaint by a coalition of consumer advocacy groups, [popular social networking site Facebook] reversed changes to its contract with users that had appeared to give it perpetual ownership of their contributions to the service."  Perhaps we should update our Website Terms of Use post to include a section on intellectual property issues.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of February 9, 2009

"A statistical analysis of 28,000 passwords recently stolen from a popular US website and posted on the Internet reveals that people often" select weak or easily guessed passwords.  The study found that 16 percent "took a first name as a password, often their own or one of their children, according to the study published by Information Week.  Another 14 percent relied on the easiest keyboard combinations to remember such as '1234' or 12345678.' For those using English keyboards, "QWERTY", was popular. Likewise, "AZERTY" scored with people with European keyboards."  The word "password," or variations such as "password1," accounted for four percent of the stolen passwords.

Identity theft is up.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of February 2, 2009

Cybercrime is up.

MySpace has booted 90,000 sex offenders.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of January 26, 2009

"An appeal filed with the Virginia Supreme Court this week claims that a Montgomery County judge erred in dropping a civil case developer Roger Woody brought against several Christiansburg bloggers" that the lawsuit claimed were critical of Woody's business practices.

"Wikipedia is apparently considering instituting a new editorial process that would put better safeguards in place and require all updates to be approved by a "reliable" user. The so-called Flagged Revisions process would allow registered, trusted editors to publish changes to the site immediately. All other edits would be sent to a queue and would not be published until they get approved by one of Wikipedia's trusted team of editors."  Perhaps the changes will improve Wikipedia's reputation for reliability amongst colleges and courts.

Worldwide spam has grown by 150% in two months.  "According to data compiled by Google, computer users can expect to receive more unsolicited emails this year than ever before."

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.