Balough
December 15, 2013
Using multiple nonsensical domain names for commercial email advertisements to by-pass spam filters does not violate California’s anti-spam statute as long as the domain names actually exist.The California Supreme Court found because the domain names “actually exist and are technically accurate, literally correct, and fully traceable to Vonage’s marketing agents,” their use does not violate the state’s […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
Google’s YouTube is not liable for direct or indirect copyright infringement unless it fails to take down the offending video after proper notice, a New York District Court found. The court found that YouTube is protected from copyright infringement claims under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) because Google has […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
A police officer who used a city-issued pager to send private, sometimes sexually explicit, text messages has no right of privacy in the messages’ content, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the Court’s opinion stopped short of making a general pronouncement as to what privacy rights may exist before the role of electronic communications […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
Your Facebook and MySpace emails and comments are private and cannot be subpoenaed, a U.S. District Court in California found. The court reasoned that the messages, once read by the recipient, are “stored” for backup purposes under the Stored Communications Act and cannot be divulged except by consent of the recipient. “With respect to webmail […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
Email messages are like postcards that anyone can easily read, so there is no expectation of privacy when you send an email using the office computer—at least in New York. “It is today’s reality that a reasonable expectation of internet privacy is lost, upon your affirmative keystroke,” a Criminal Court of the City of New York […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
An Ohio state judge and her daughter have sued various entities for breach of contract for revealing confidential registration information provided when an account was set up on Cleveland.com to comment on legal issues. Cuyahoga Court of Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold alleges in her complaint that the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and Cleveland.com violated the […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
It’s not error for a federal judge to use Google to confirm his hunch that there are different types of yellow rain hats when conducting a revocation of supervised release hearing. A judge said he did a Google search and found yellow rain hats like the defendant wore. “But there are also lots of different […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
The federal government infringed on the copyright of the person who designed the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., when the postal service issued a stamp showing the memorial’s soldiers on a snowy day. Frank Gaylord, who designed and sculpted the 19 soldiers in the memorial called “The Column,” sued the United States over the stamp, […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
A federal lawsuit accuses a Pennsylvania school district of using school-issued laptops to spy on students and their families using an embedded webcam. The lawsuit contends that that Lower Merion School District gave each high school student a laptop to use in school and at home but did not tell the students that the laptop […]
Balough
December 15, 2013
A former Bimbo Bakeries executive’s plan to go to work for a competitor turned into a recipe for an injunction. Chris Botticella, a former vice president of operations for California for Bimbo, decided to take a similar position with Interstate Brands Corporation, a predecessor company to Hostess Brands, Inc. His actions following the decision to […]
