June 13th, 2009

Six things to know if your Facebook username has been squatted

Posted by Denise Howell @ 8:34 am

Categories: Defamation, Identity, Live Web, Right of publicity, Social networking, Trademark

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Usernames, Squatting, Denise Howell

Here are some things to bear in mind about username squatting on Facebook.

1. I’m guessing Mike Arrington can get this fixed with a phone call or two. (via Dave Winer) If you’re not him…
2. You may have missed the fact there was, before username registration opened up, a form to complete for “preventing [your] trademarks from being registered as usernames.” That form is now closed, and links off instead to Facebook’s non-copyright IP Infringement Form. (Given its wording and stated purpose, I doubt it would have helped with non-trademark-registered individual names anyway.)
3. Facebook (like Twitter, etc.) is not ICANN, and the UDRP has no application to its vanity URLs. Facebook’s terms of service, however, mandate that users not “take any action on Facebook that infringes someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.”
4. Many jurisdictions, (including California where Facebook is headquartered), restrict or prohibit unauthorized use of a person’s “name, image, likeness or other unequivocal aspects of one’s identity.”
5. It’s not “squatting” if someone else happens to share an individual’s name and was able to register it or a variation.
6. All that said, it seems one’s first recourse as the victim of a username squatter is the aforementioned non-copyright IP Infringement Form.

I’d be interested in hearing about people’s experiences with this — whether it turns out to be streamlined and effective or frustrating and a pain. Let me know and I’ll update.

Previously: Chris Pirillo is socialsquatted; does the law care?

July 25th, 2008

Jennifer Leggio unpacks demand letter over "branded community"

Posted by Denise Howell @ 8:39 am

Categories: Blogging, Trademark

Tags: Trademark, Blogging, Cease And Desist, Jennifer Leggio, Denise Howell

Over at ZDNet’s Feeds, Jennifer Leggio walks us through a cease and desist email she recently received. The email suggested her blog’s use of the term “branded community” might constitute trademark infringement. It’s a good object lesson about paying attention to cease and desist letters but not always accepting them at face value. All too often, their legal weight is less than substantial.

(Image by Carolyn Coles, CC Attribution-2.0)

August 13th, 2007

Lawgarithms Links for 8/13/07

Posted by Denise Howell @ 11:24 am

Categories: Attention, Copyright, Identity, Lawsuits, Licenses, Links, Live Web, Social networking, Trademark, Video, Virtual worlds

Tags: Google Inc., BitTorrent, Google Reader, Blog, Lawgarithms, Denise Howell

Remember that between entries here you can keep up with the Live Web (and other) issues I’m spotting by subscribing to my Google Reader Starred Items. Among the links now playing:

Two-word license agreement: “F— YOU!”, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Fair Use for YouTube & MySpace Users, from Slashdot by Zonk

What bloggers should know about copyright protection for their writing and photographs, from IP Law Daily by mamarant

Trademarks FAQ, from Blawg IT-Internet Patent, Trademark and Copyright Issues with Attorney Brett Trout by Brett Trout

Catching Up: Derivative Works and Fair Use, from IPTAblog by Andrew Raff

Avatar Rights, from Wonderland by Alice Taylor

Proposal to Make Suing Anonymous Avatars Harder, from Virtually Blind - Virtual Law | Legal Issues That Impact Virtual Worlds by Benjamin Duranske

Lawsuit Filed Against Second Life Avatar, from Top Tech News by Phil Davis

Prophesies, from Doc Searls Weblog by Doc Searls

A Guide to Google’s APIs, from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

It All Comes Together: The getting good with BitTorrent roundup, from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk31), from TorrentFreak by Ernesto

Stop! Don’t click “I Agree” before you read the Terms of Service, from Yap 3.0 by Robin

YouTube, Google Street View: the copyright, trademark, AND privacy trolls are coming!!, from ZDNet Blogs by Russell Shaw

Getting data OUT of Facebook, from ZDNet Blogs by Dennis Howlett

Electronic Filing Of Copyright Applications Has Arrived (at least for beta testers), from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Aaron Silverstein

Internet Vote-Swapping Legal, Says 9th Circuit, from Threat Level - Wired Blogs by Sarah Lai Stirland

Facebook, Identity, and OpenID, from Ministry of Intrigue by daniel@andrlik.org (Daniel Andrlik)

Let’s kill all the lawyers: web-based negotiation platform seeks to revolutionize the creation of contracts, from Online Guide to Mediation by Diane Levin

Taking Intangible Electronic Files is Criminal Fraud–NM v. Kirby, from Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman

Video Site Veoh Sues To Stop Universal, from Top Tech News by Richard Koman

Surfing your clickstream, from ZDNet Blogs by Ed Gottsman

Hyperlinking & the law: IMPACT guide to the essentials, from IMPACT® by Alex (note the focus of this piece is UK/EU)

July 28th, 2007

Chris Pirillo is socialsquatted; does the law care?

Posted by Denise Howell @ 9:04 pm

Categories: Defamation, Free speech, Identity, Live Web, Social networking, Tags, Trademark

Tags: Defamation, Law, Chris Pirillo, Denise Howell

Chris Pirillo is on Pownce at pownce.com/chrispirillo, and has 69 friends. Or wait, that’s not Chris. I can scarcely catalog the related legal considerations, which include:

Can Chris stop someone from using his name and likeness without his consent? Possibly, under right of publicity laws, but the ones I’m most familiar with preclude unauthorized commercial uses, and the jurisdictional variations are a nightmare.

Can’t Chris sue for defamation if someone is falsifying things he supposedly said and did? Perhaps, but parody is a First Amendment defense to defamation.

Is this parody? No one here has identified themselves as the "fake" Chris Pirillo. Under trademark law apparently, “A parody must convey two simultaneous–and contradictory messages; that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody. To the extent that it does only the former but not the latter, it is not only a poor parody but also vulnerable under trademark law, since the consumer will be confused.” From Cliffs Notes, Inc. v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 886 F. 2d 490 (2d Cir. 1989). (Via Chilling Effects) (I’m not sure if the same requirement extends to parody in general, and haven’t quickly found anything on point.)

Does Chris have trademark rights in “Chris Pirillo?” Let’s assume yes. And let’s assume he wanted to put a stop to someone else’s use of pownce.com/chrispirillo. Do anti-cybersquatting laws extend to other level domains? Is something to the right of .com, etc. even an other level domain? Would Chris have recourse against Pownce, the faux Chris Pirillo Pownce user, or both?

How about tags?

(My head hurts.)

June 6th, 2007

If reputation is money in the bank, who owns the PIN?

Posted by Denise Howell @ 10:17 am

Categories: Attention, Copyright, Defamation, Identity, Lawsuits, Patent, Privacy, Trademark, Trust

Tags: Attention, Reputation, Denise Howell, Michael O'Connor Clarke

As evidenced by the many lawsuits against Google concerning PageRank or other search result (read reputational) slippage, the notion that you own your digital reputation — even if it is at bottom a collaborative work that begins with your actions, but thereafter depends on the reactions of others — has legs. Michael O’Connor Clarke wrote an interesting post along these lines at Uninstalled called Web 3.0 and Personal Reputation Management:

I’m still not quite sure where I’m going with this, but I feel the need for some secure, personal repository that would hold all of my connections and “whuffie” together. I want to keep my whuffie in my wallet - but not in a Microsoft Passport/Hailstorm kind of way. Ack, no.

It should include most elements of OpenID, a lot of FOAF, and maybe some of the stuff being worked on by the Attention Trust people.

I want it in XML, of course, and I want it to be incredibly easy to implement and use, as secure as it possibly can be, and extensible without being completely unmanageable.

Naturally, I’d want everyone to adopt it – from eBay to Amazon, Facebook to Flickr, Google to Microsoft to Yahoo.

Critically: no vendor (or government) can own it.

My reputation and relationships are mine. They’re the sum of the gifts of friendship and respect people grant to one another over the years; the currency we earn through our life and work. And like the other, folding kind of currency, I should be able to carry my stock of links, linkages and laurels with me from one Web experience to the next.

In law, the intrinsic value of one’s reputation crops up in the mishmash of defamation, intentional interference, and right of publicity principles. Privacy too, since reputation depends as well on what one does not reveal. (You should, or wait you shouldn’t, see the dishevelled snarl that is my hair right now.) And let’s not forget intellectual property (there’s the “P” word), since copyright, patent, and particularly trademark exist in part to protect the reputational identity that accompanies the acts of creating and doing business.

The Attention Trust says that attention is property, that you own it and can store it where you wish, and that such ownership and the right of control go hand in hand. Michael suggests the same is true of reputation. It’s more difficult for me to get my arms around what the sum total of one’s reputation might be, and whatever it is, whether it matters that it’s a joint and not a solo creation (e.g., Tom Williams‘ act of Facebook-friending Michael and vice versa). However, these seem like mere speed bumps to recognizing rights of ownership and control comparable to those posited for attention.

More from Joe Andrieu.

[Disclosure: I'm on the Board of the Attention Trust.]

May 30th, 2007

IP and the intangibles of access and use

Posted by Denise Howell @ 10:50 am

Categories: Copyright, Patent, Trademark

Tags: IP, Denise Howell

Hank Barry asked me recently to consider why humans think differently (e.g., we’re likely to have less patience for restrictions and controls) about intangible property than we do about things like physical goods and real estate. My response was that in a world of scarce and valued commodities, there are only two possible dynamics. Either the bully in the playground takes over the slide and demands everyone’s lunch money before they can go down (or keeps them from going down at any price), or everyone gets to use it and take turns. There’s no question about which scenario garners more social approval.

(Photo by Tub Gurnard under Creative Commons)

March 16th, 2007

Terrific podcast about IP economics

Posted by Denise Howell @ 1:15 pm

Categories: Copyright, DMCA, Lawsuits, Licenses, Patent, Trademark

Tags:

Some of the best discussion I've heard to date (and certainly recently) about the economics of intellectual property in the technological era can be found in Episode #31 of Dave Levine's Hearsay Culture.  The guest is University of Chicago law professor and Hoover Institution fellow Richard A. Epstein.  Professor Epstein brings a wealth of historical perspective and insight to our most critical intellectual property issues, and examines the policy considerations likely to figure prominently in determining our most high profile intellectual property disputes.

March 9th, 2007

Podcast on the law of business communities

Posted by Denise Howell @ 1:48 pm

Categories: Attention, Blogging, Collaboration, Compliance, Conferences, Copyright, DMCA, Defamation, Free speech, Identity, Licenses, MGM v. Grokster, Social networking, Social news, Trademark, User generated content, Virtual worlds, Voice

Tags:

The conference call Mike Madison and I recorded earlier this week in anticipation of our session at Community 2.0 (more here and here) is now available as part of the Bag and Baggage Podcast or from the Future of Communities blog.  We talked about:

• Defining community and loosely-joined individuals and interest groups
• Community goals and governance (or lack thereof)
• External innovation communities such as Procter & Gamble's and ownership issues
• Intellectual and liability concerns for company-owned or associated communities
• Whether an initiative similar to the Creative Commons movement has or is in the process of emerging
• Ownership issues and risk-minimization around products or services that emerge from external ideas
• Variations on open source licenses
• Individual rights and protections for community contributors and participants
• Anonymity and accountability
• Nefarious community exploitation: gaming, hacking, spamming
• Trust and reputation management
• The use of trademark law to use and manage community involvement; selective enforcement, the expansion of certification marks
• Insurance industry mechanisms and models
• Defamation
• Company-sponsored (and owned) communities, and the actions taken by participants who find the terms and conditions of such initiatives too draconian
• "Innovator's dilemma" management and patent strategy and the tension between old, successful products and those developed with help from outsourced customer communities
• Personal data ownership and the Attention Trust

February 2nd, 2007

Breast defense

Posted by Denise Howell @ 11:24 am

Categories: Attention, Blogging, Live Web, Trademark

Tags:

It's no secret that publicly posting demand letters on a blog, in addition to submitting to Chilling Effects, is an excellent responsive strategy.  The Lactivist is currently plying these waters.  The unsurprising result?  A wealth of resulting attention and empathy, and a PR nightmare for The National Pork Board.  As Marty Schwimmer sums up:  "Don't send a demand letter to a blogger if the subject matter is breasts, as they make for good copy."

January 10th, 2007

iPhone misses Live Web integration opportunities

Posted by Denise Howell @ 11:30 am

Categories: Blogging, Collaboration, Podcasting, Trademark, User generated content, Vlogging, Wireless

Tags:

Don't get me wrong:  I want an iPhone, and will own one just as soon as is humanly possible.  But the thing that most surprises me about the device as I've followed along with the coverage is the extent to which Apple appears to be leaving Live Web opportunities on the table with its "breakthrough Internet communications device."  Where was the Live Web in yesterday's product introduction?  Largely absent, except for the fact the device can sync other people's podcasts and videocasts.  I kept wanting to see:

• A video camera to accompany the still camera, and
• Integration with .Mac, iWeb, GarageBand and potentially other companies' Web services — e.g., integrated tools for text blogging, photo blogging and/or sharing, video blogging and/or sharing, and podcasting.

Hopefully you can at least call up the iPhone's keypad for text entry while using Safari?  Unlike say Helio, Apple seems to see the iPhone as a device primarily of consumption, not production.  Which is a bit off, if this Internet communications device is to be truly "breakthrough."  It's further inconsistent with Apple's iLife approach, which is all about easy alternatives for publishing one's words, photos, audio, and video. 

It's interesting that while the iPhone will affirmatively incorporate Google Maps, it apparently will treat Gmail as just another POP3 service, and relegate Blogger and Google Docs and Spreadsheets to the status of just other Web pages (though depending on the Safari functionality, that may work just fine).

For more iPhone critiques, see Dan Warne, Top 10 things to hate about the iPhone, and DKS Weblog's Jared, Oh Magnificent iPhone.

Updated, 1/10/07 6:20 p.m.:  Wow, so it seems those negotiations about Cisco's iPhone trademark have broken down.  In the most litigatory possible manner.  (Thanks, WGC.)

Updated, 1/12/07, 9:01 p.m.:  More from Marty Schwimmer (My Annotation of 'How Apple could Fight Cisco') and the Wired GC (iTalk, iPhone, iSue) on the trademark issue. 

Also, if the iPhone isn't for the hard core webophile, and if it isn't for the hard core company (wo)man, then who is it for?  "Everyone else" is a fully sufficient answer, and it'll probably lure plenty of the others to boot.  I like this line from David Pogue:  

Predictably, the torrent — and I do mean torrent — of iPhone commentary from the citizens of the Web is practically outflooding spam this week. Most of it comes from people whose shirt fronts are practically drenched in drool. …