Announcing a New Resource: the “Wassom on Social Media Law” e-Treatise

The word “treatise” is defined as “a written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject.”  For many legal professionals, however, it is more commonly used to mean “those fat, outdated books that look pretty but gather dust on the bookshelf while I do my research online.”  In today’s world, most printed resources just can’t[...]

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Staying Out of Trouble While Playing Augmented Reality Games

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to sit down for coffee with two high-ranked players of the popular AR game “Ingress.”   If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s a massively multi-player experience  shared by people across the globe.  Players organize themselves into thousands of cells aligned with one of two factions–the “Enlightenment”[...]

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How Lawyers Get Their Hands on “Private” Facebook Posts

This article is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise, Wassom on Social Media Law. It happens every day.  First, someone gets sued (or starts a lawsuit).  Then the “discovery” process of gathering information starts.  Today, one of the first places lawyers look in many types of litigation is their opponent’s Facebook page.  But that page is[...]

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Can a Court Force Me to Disclose My Facebook Password?

This post is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise “Wassom on Social Media Law.” We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about forced disclosure of Facebook passwords.  Almost all of the discussion has focused on new laws that states across the country have passed to prevent employers and schools from forcing employees and students to[...]

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Fair Use, Copyright, and Social Media

This post is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise “Wassom on Social Media Law.” Copyright exists in order “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” It accomplishes this by giving authors an economic incentive to create new works and share them with the public.  But private control over the use of expressive works doesn’t[...]

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[Video] Panel Discussion on AR Civil & Criminal Legal Issues from ARE2012

In the buildup to the 2013 Augmented World Expo in June, AugmentedReality.Org has posted on YouTube dozens of videos from last year’s event.  They are all fascinating and worth watching, including the fireside chat with best-selling novelist Daniel Suarez; the panel on AR eyewear;  ”7 Emerging Trends” from daqri CEO Brian Mullins; and many, many more.[...]

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Trademarks, Likelihood of Confusion, and Social Media

Trademark law in the United States has one overarching goal: to prevent consumers from being confused over the source of a product or service.  The function of a trademark is to communicate to the marketplace who is offering the good or service.  So, for example, when I’m driving down the road and spy the Golden[...]

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Can Facebook Spam Be Canned?

Maria Martinez co-authored this post. She is a law student at the University of Michigan and served as an intern to the Hon. Mark A. Goldsmith, U.S. Dist Ct., E.D. Mich. Congress was about as close as that body comes to the cutting edge when it passed a law to combat email spam in 2003.[...]

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Employees Lie, Get Busted on Facebook – But It’s Their Boss That Gets Fired

This case is noteworthy for the same reason that “Man Bites Dog” stories make news.  Examples of employees, insurance claimants, cheating spouses, and the like being busted by their Facebook posts are so common nowadays as to be cliche.  The case of Rodriguez v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (N.D. Tex., Jan. 9, 2013) begins with the[...]

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Consumer Protection in Social Media

At this week’s New Media Expo / BusinessNext (formerly BlogWorld) conference in Las Vegas, I spoke on a panel called “Social Media and the Law: Emerging Legal Issues and Obligations.” My portion of the talk  was dedicated to consumer protection issues.  For those who couldn’t be there, here’s a summary of what I discussed. Consumer[...]

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