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Civil Rights – Social networking website was not “place of public accommodation” within meaning of Title III of Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).

Plaintiff Karen Beth Young brings this action against Defendant Facebook, Inc., alleging violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq., the Unruh Civil Rights Act, Ca. Civ. Code § 51, et seq., the California Disabled Persons Act, Cal Civ. Code § 54, et seq., and state-law contract and negligence claims. Although Young’s amended complaint describes vividly her personal experience of losing access to her online social community and the challenges she faced attempting to obtain redress through Facebook’s automated customer care systems, it does not state a legal claim upon which relief may be granted. Accordingly, Facebook’s motion to dismiss will be granted.

Young opened a personal account with Facebook in February 2010.[1] She subsequently created additional Facebook pages for the “Cancer Forum,” “Cartesian Plane For The Cure,” “Karen Beth Young ,— Public Figure,” and “Join Karen Petition Facebook Say No to 5000 Friends.” Young sent “friendvites” to others she believed were interested in cancer-related issues and developed “genuine and heartfelt” relationships with those she met online. Young’s personal page grew to include approximately 4,300 “friends.”

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Internet miners voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system’s biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.

Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to “.com” and “.net” with suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.

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California Senate Does Not Pass Social Networking Privacy Bill.

On June 2, 2011 the California State Senate for the second time did not pass a Senate Bill that would require social media networks to adopt default settings restricting the display of their users’ personally identifiable information.

The bill, S.B. 242, known as the ,”Social Networking Privacy Act” was introduced by Senator Ellen Corbett earlier this year. The bill required social media networks to adopt default settings prohibiting the display of “personal identifying information”, such as address, telephone number, driver’s license, social security number, and credit card numbers. It also required the networks to advise users of their ability to change the settings for display of personal information in “plain language.” Finally, it required networks to remove personal identifying information “in a timely manner” upon request.

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A former San Francisco computer engineer convicted of locking other city officials out of the city’s network has been ordered to pay nearly $1.5 million in restitution.

A judge also ordered 45-year-old Terry Childs on Tuesday to forfeit the $11,000 he had on him when he was arrested as a down payment toward the money he owes his former employer, San Francisco’s Department of Technology. A jury convicted Terry Childs last year of changing the passwords to the city government’s computer network in July 2008. Following a 12-day stalemate, Mr. Childs finally surrendered the new passwords to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom during a jailhouse visit.

To read more go to http://www.ap.org/

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The federal government is suing Deutsche Bank, accusing the bank of committing fraud by repeatedly lying to the government and for reckless lending practices in underwriting thousands of federally insured mortgages that ultimately cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the bank “repeatedly and brazenly” took part in shoddy lending practices for mortgages “that were really ticking time bombs.” Bharara says sometimes the bank even failed to verify that a mortgage applicant even was employed. “In fact, they often seemed to treat red flags as if they were green lights. … While the homes the defendants issued loans for may have been built on solid ground, the defendants’ lending practices were built on quicksand.”

To read more go to http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2011050402?OpenDocument

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WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals court has dismissed two legal challenges to new Federal Communications Commission regulations that prohibit phone and cable companies from interfering with Internet traffic on their broadband networks.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Monday dismissed lawsuits filed by Verizon Communications Inc. and Metro PCS Communications Inc. on technical grounds. The court said the companies filed their challenges prematurely since the rules have not yet been published in the federal register.

Read more at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_FCC_INTERNET_RULES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-04-18-07-26

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GENEVA (AP) – A Swiss court has ruled that Google Inc. must guarantee anonymity before publishing faces and license plates in its Street View service in Switzerland.

A ruling published Monday by the Swiss Federal Administrative Court affects any new ground-level pictures that the popular Internet search engine publishes.

Read more at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_SWITZERLAND_GOOGLE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-04-13-30-55

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The campaign to persuade the judiciary to apply personal privacy principles to corporations has suffered two recent body blows.

On March 1st, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Federal Communications Comm. v. AT&T, Inc., 2011 U.S. LEXIS 1899 (2011) that the exemption in the Freedom of Information Act for matter within one’s personal privacy was not available to business entities.

A trade association of AT&T competitors requested documents relating to an F.C.C. investigation of AT&T. The F.C.C. refused to apply on behalf of the corporation an exemption for “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes” that “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The Third Circuit reversed, and the U.S. Supreme Court in turn unanimously reversed the Third Circuit.

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California Supreme Court Holds that ZIP Codes are “Personal Identification Information”

In a broadly-worded unanimous ruling, the California Supreme Court recently overruled lower court decisions to hold that businesses cannot request and record ZIP codes as a condition to credit card transactions, because ZIP codes are “personal identification information” under the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971 (the “Credit Card Act”). Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc., S178241 (Cal. Supreme Court, Feb. 10, 2011). More generally, the Court implicitly recognized the impact on consumers of aggregating and matching their personal data from vast databases.

To read more go to: http://twitter.com/calbarsections

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Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over 3 billion applications downloaded since the App program began. Bernstein analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, estimated that between 13% and 21% of those downloads are from paid applications. According to this analysis, the average price of an application purchased at the App Store is $3. Sacconaghi estimated that Apple’s revenue from the App Store is between $60 million and $110 million per quarter. That amount has certainly increased since this research report was published because of the rapid growth of the number of applications.

However, behind all this success lies an insidious force that has plagued the music, software, and movie industry for decades. Developers of iPhone applications have reported alarming piracy rates for their software, and the ease with which users may obtain pirated versions of paid applications for free is only increasing. The total number of applications available at the store, including those which are free and those which require payment, is in excess of 100,000.

Anyone who is familiar with the iPhone is likely to know that these phones can be “jailbroken” or, to use the more common term “unlocked”. Jailbreaking an iPhone modifies the OEM Apple iPhone OS. This allows the user to circumvent the limitations put on the phone by Apple. Apart from the ability to modify the OS itself to allow for customizing of icons, backgrounds, functionality and processes, a jailbroken iPhone permits the installation of applications from sources other than the iTunes store. It is even possible to use an unlocked phone for access to carrier services other than AT&T (NYSE:T) and the Apple-assigned retailers outside the US. The great majority of iPhones sold in China are unlocked and Apple partner, China Unicom (NYSE:CHU), have only begun to sell locked phones in the last three months.

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