Traverse Internet Law: Internet Lawyers

Traverse Internet Law: MySpace Postings Net Criminal Conviction

Traverse Internet Law protects the reputations of professionals and businesses online, so we do our best to keep up with the latest developments about social media comments. This case was handed down this summer. In US v. Voneida the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a jury conviction for postings by the defendant on his MySpace page.

There is a federal law that prohibits the transmission in interstate commerce of any communications containing any threat to injure another person. In this case, the Defendant made generalized threats that the Virginia Tech students got what they deserved and stated his support for the shooter in various ways. The appellate court held that the statements, taken as a whole, could have constituted a serious intention to inflict bodily harm, and that a communication is a threat when in its context it would have a reasonable tendency to create apprehension that its originator will act according to its tenor. The court reasoned that the comments were reasonably perceived as threatening bodily injury. 

At Traverse Internet Law, we continue to see greater efforts by prosecutors to clean up the web by pursuing criminal charges in the most egregious situations. This is one of them. 

Traverse Internet Law: Six Get Prison For Website Harassment

Each will get from one to three years in prison for violation of the AETA and cyberstalking.

Traverse Internet Law has commented on the recent Federal appellate court decision rejecting free speech and constitutional challenges to convictions of six animal rights activists. You can read about the convictions on the www.google-bombs.com website. This is a significant victory for those fighting online personal terrorism and could be the map for legislators to follow as laws are drafted trying to address the mobosphere attacks that have become so prevalent online.

Expect an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and then an opportunity for the Supremes to send a message to the scofflaws of the online world that this type of coordinated online attack can get you in serious trouble. Like one to six years in prison.  

Google Embraces Reputation Management Techniques

John W Dozier Jr, author of Google Bomb with Sue Scheff, highlighted extensive reputation management tactics to counteract Google's biased search results. Now, for the first time, Google has officially approved and is now encouraging the use of reputation management as a defense to false and defamatory search results. The Dozier Internet Law advice in Google Bomb goes much further than the Google guidance and advice and there are some problems with their suggestions since merely asking a webhost or website owner to pull down content, as Google suggests, can itself create more problems in search results. Rather naive advice. But Google does, for the first time, expressly encourage reputation management by the publication of complimentary information to offset the defamatory information. That's a big step. Now if the powers to be at Google can fix the logic they use in generating search results we'll really be making some headway. 

Webhost Hit With $32.4M Judgment For Hosting Site

At Traverse Internet Law, we counsel web hosts on how to handle trademark and copyright claims. That's become an even hotter topic in recent weeks as a jury in California returned a $32.4 Million Judgment on behalf of Louis Vuitton against a web hosting company for hosting a website that was allegedly selling knock-offs. The judgment is not surprising and the principles of law nothing new. But you would have thought the sky was falling.

The consumer rights groups and their fanatical followers are all over the web expressing outrage. It's as if they do not understand the laws of copyright and trademark infringement. So I will reiterate what I have been telling clients for many years: if you receive notice of a trademark infringement you had better act decisively and make a decision about whether you want to defend yourself in court or drop the customer. 

It really is that simple. Now, if you want to make it complicated and confusing, start reading the free speech and anti-intellectual property lawyers online. They'll encourage you to do otherwise. But I guarantee you if they were representing you they would mirrror my advice. If these public interest lawyers and professional professors had to stand behind the absurd "advice" they spew in their blogs and answer to their malpractice insurance carrier their advice would change overnight. 

And that wrong-headed advice...that's truly the big fraud that victimizes the typical netizen and can trigger cataclysmic events. And I can think of 32 Million of them right now.

Dec. 1 Effective Date of New FTC Regulations on Online Advertising

At Traverse  Internet Law, we have seen a gradual, and now more pronounced, shift towards creating liability on the advertiser when an affiliate acts up and breaks the law. There has always been liability if the affiliate marketer is acting as an agent. But that is hard to prove. In the CANSPAM act an affiliate's misconduct can be imputed through to the business for whom he is marketing if the business "consciously avoided" acquiring knowledge of the spammer's misconduct. Now with the new FTC Guidelines coming into effect December 1 the Federal Trade Commission expects businesses (advertisers) using third parties (affiliates or publishers) to "monitor" blogger compliance with new advertising disclosure laws...or else.

We have been recommending for years a three pronged approach to managing the risk that arises with third party marketer misconduct:

1) Conduct Due Diligence on the affiliate in advance of acceptance.

2) Establish clear guidelines and performance standards in your affiliate contract.

3) Implement a compliance/audit program to assure compliance.

That's really what the FTC is talking about when it uses the term "monitor". 

Be careful out there.

Internet Law: Harvard Prof. Backs Section 230 Changes

Google Bomb calls for specific changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The book is available on Amazon and receiving great reviews.

It looks like someone at Harvard may have been reading John W Dozier Jr.'s "E-Bill of Rights" in the book. The recommendations relating to how to amend Section 230 to deal with the overly broad immunity for websites was adopted by a Harvard law professor in Congressional testimony last week. More details to come on the Google Bomb community blog later this evening.

This is the first time the issue of Section 230 amendments have been raised by the legal community in any meaningful way. And in a Congressional hearing, no less.