Articles Posted in Technology

Michelle Obama is officially live on Twitter. The first lady’s Twitter feed went live on Thursday and her link is being managed by the president’s re-election campaign. The first two tweets came from the campaign staff and described the account as “a new way for you to connect with First Lady Michelle Obama and the President’s campaign.” The traffic was high within the first hour with more than 20,000 followers. President Barack Obama also has a Twitter account managed by the campaign. Its first tweet of the day: “It’s not every day we get to welcome the First Lady of the United States to Twitter – happy to have you, Michelle Obama!”
This acknowledges that technology plays a key role in our lives and allows us to communicate with each other through different means and methods. Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. It has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.” Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City.

In California, a new Facebook feature which permits an advertiser to publish or broadcast a user’s “like” of its product to others in that individual’s circle is under scrutiny.

The United States District Court in San Jose, California refused to grant a motion to dismiss which states that Facebook ads violate its user’s right of publicity by utilizing their names and photographs without authorization. However, the court dismissed an unjust enrichment claim. In the lawsuit, Facebook’s position is that user permission is not required to promote its user’s likes to those in that user’s circle, in a category it terms “sponsored stories.” Facebook contends that such information is newsworthy and exempted under California’s right-of-publicity statute. The company’s position is that its users constitute public figures.

California’s right-of-publicity statute is codified under Civil Code section 3344 which states as follows:

In the recent years, online harassment or cyberharassment has become an important issue. This is because the Internet has changed our lives on so many levels. Generally, the law prohibits harassment and our readers should consider taking certain precautions when being harassed.

Cyberharassment is different from cyberstalking because it does not involve a credible threat. Cyberharassment occurs when someone sends harassing email messages, instant messages, or posts entries simply to torment another person. Different jurisdictions have different approaches in addressing cyberharassment in codifying their laws. For example, some include language addressing electronic communications in general harassment statutes. However, some states have created stand-alone cyberharassment statutes.

California Penal Code section 653.2(a) states that, “[e]very person who, with intent to place another person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of the other person’s immediate family, by means of an electronic communication device, and without consent of the other person, and for the purpose of imminently causing that other person unwanted physical contact, injury, or harassment, by a third party, electronically distributes, publishes, e-mails, hyperlinks, or makes available for downloading, personal identifying information, including, but not limited to, a digital image of another person, or an electronic message of a harassing nature about another person, which would be likely to incite or produce that unlawful action, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail, by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.

If you use email in your day-to-day business operations the CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email. It also establishes the requirements for commercial messages, provides recipients the right to have the sender stop emailing them, and mentions the penalties for related violations.

The CAN-SPAM Act applies to bulk email and all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email which means all email. As an example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line is required to comply with the law.

Each violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000. Here are the CAN-SPAM Act’s main requirements:

Samsung Electronics, the second largest maker of mobile phones, claims that Apple Inc. has infringed upon its patents since entering the mobile-phone market with the iPhone 3G, a lawyer for Samsung told a Dutch court as the Korean company seeks a ban on some Apple products in the Netherlands.

“Apple just entered the market in 2008 without taking care of the licenses,” Bas Berghuis van Woortman, a lawyer for Simmons & Simmons LLP who represents Samsung, said in The Hague court. “Apple is consciously, structurally infringing the 3G patents.”

The parties will be discussing settlement soon as this is yet another legal battle between two technology giants over intellectual property rights.

In the recent years, politically-motivated hackers have made sensitive information available to bloggers and mainstream media at unprecedented rates. For example, Wikileaks released leaked Afghan war logs and government diplomatic cables. Anonymous individual hacked and released emails from the computer security firm HBGary. A college student gained access to and released emails from Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account. LulzSec hacked into and publicly released confidential data belonging to Sony and others. Most recently, the Antisec movement hacked into over 70 police departments and released confidential emails and other files.

A this time, some important questions to ask ourselves would be as follows:

1. What are some applicable legal issues when publishing information obtained by hackers?

Facebook Inc., which is currently considered the world’s largest social network, plans more acquisitions so to improve its site design, keep services more reliable and advance its mobile features to compete with Twitter and Google which are active in the same arenas.

Facebook’s director of corporate development, Vaughan Smith stated that, the company aims to make approximately 20 purchases in year 2011 which is up from 10 last year and one in 2009.

It is important for our blog readers to know that Facebook obtains income from advertising and takes certain commission when software developers sell virtual goods on its website. As we know, Facebook is a closely-held company and it does not disclose its financials. Based on my research, the company is seeking to generate $2 billion or more in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2011.

In April 2010, David Kernell faced trial for “hacking” into then-Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s personal email account.

In November 12, 2010, David Kernell was indicted (i.e., a grand jury believed there was sufficient evidence to place him on trial on federal charges). Thereafter, a jury convicted him of two charges. First, computer fraud. Second, obstruction of justice. David Kernell’s defense was that his conduct was a prank. However, the jury was not pursuaded and he was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison with a recommendation to spend his time in a halfway house.

This case is illustrative of the types of crimes an email hacker may face including: (1) Wire Fraud; (2) Computer Fraud; (3) Identity Theft; and (4) Obstruction of Justice.