Ken Chan

OnGuard Online, a website by the Federal Trade Commission, urges people to exercise discretion when using social networking sites. While their advice is targeted towards parents of young children, it applies equally to people of all ages.

In general, the FTC cautions people to only post information to social networking sites that they are comfortable with others seeing. While the FTC recommends the use of privacy settings to restrict access to your social networking profile, we would add that once you send an e-mail or post a message or photo on your social networking page, this information can easily be viewed by or forwarded to persons outside of your intended network, regardless of your privacy settings.

Credit: Original by Arnob Alam

Last week, Caitlin Sanchez, the voice of Dora the Explorer, sued MTV Networks and Nickelodeon/Viacom Consumer Products, Inc. In her complaint filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York in the County of New York, Sanchez alleged that she was swindled out of millions in “promised compensation for merchandi[s]ing, re-runs (also known as ‘residuals’), promotional work and recordings.”

Sanchez accused Nickelodeon and Nickelodeon Consumer Products of colluding with her talent agency Cunningham-Escott-Slevin-Doherty Talent Agency, Inc. and her agent Jason Bercy to induce her to sign an allegedly unconscionable contract “with convoluted, vague, incomplete, and misrepresented terms.”

Credit: Westboro Baptist Church

The first Monday in October marks the opening of the 2010 term for the United States Supreme Court. During this week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a number of cases, including one that examines the boundaries of the First Amendment.

In Snyder v. Phelps, Albert Snyder, the father of a deceased Marine had sued Pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr., the Westboro Baptist Church and some of its members for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Plaintiff Snyder had lost his son, Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, on March 3, 2006, while his son was serving in the line of duty in Iraq.

Last week, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California unsealed the indictment in the United States of America v. Paul Shin Devine and Andrew Ang. The indictment alleged that defendants violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 1346 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (wire fraud conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) (money laundering), 18 U.S.C. § 1957 (monetary transactions in criminally derived property), 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), and 18 U.S.C. § 981(a)(1)(C) (criminal forfeiture).

The indictment alleged that defendant Paul Shin Devine, a Global Supply Manager at Apple, used his position to obtain confidential Apple information, which he then transmitted to suppliers and manufacturers of Apple parts, including defendant Andrew Ang. In return, the suppliers and manufacturers allegedly agreed to pay Devine kickbacks, including payments determined as a percenage of the business they did with Apple. Devine then shared a portion of the kickbacks with Ang.

US v. Paul Devine and Andrew Ang

Last November, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served a national security letter (NSL) on the Internet Archive, seeking records pertaining to a patron of the Internet Archive. Specifically, the FBI requested that person’s name, address, length of service, and electronic communication transactional records from the Internet Archive. This National Security Letter (NSL) certified that the information sought was relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities and advised that the Internet Archive was prohibited from disclosing the letter, “other than to those … whom disclosure is necessary to comply with the letter or to an attorney to obtain legal advice or legal assistance with respect to this letter.”

The Internet Archive, American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and Electronic Frontier Foundation then filed a complaint under seal which challenged the constitutionality of the NSL and the NSL statute.

Last week, Judge Claudia Wilken granted a motion to unseal the case. The docket sheet, pleadings, proceedings and orders in Internet Archive v. Mukasey are now publicly accessible from Justia.

I found this photo of the U.S. Supreme Court on flickr, the photo-sharing website owned by Yahoo!. Sure, there are a lot of photos on flickr. However, this photo was uploaded by the Library of Congress. Is this the federal government’s entrée into social networking? What next? Barack, Hillary, John, Mitt and Mike “friending” us on Facebook? 😉 In all seriousness, this is a great step towards increasing the accessibility of our government resources. I find it so much easier to find photos on flickr than using the boolean search on the Library of Congress website. And, if you look very closely, you’ll only see 48 stars on the U.S. flag.

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In H.P. Tries to Create Printers That Love the Web, the New York Times reported on this comment by Vyomesh I. Joshi, the Executive Vice President of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group:

“Reluctantly, I am doing blogs,” he told the employees at the companywide coffee talk. He said he needed to understand how they work. “Otherwise, we will be irrelevant.”

So, how might blogs make HP irrelevant?

If you’ve never heard of ConnectU, you are not alone. In a case of Ivy League intringue, ConnectU filed suit against Facebook for copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other charges. The story goes that ConnectU, formerly known as the Harvard Connection, had engaged Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg to complete computer programming and database definitions for the Harvard Connection website. Instead, Zuckerberg allegedly takes the code and trade secrets from the Harvard Connection to launch Facebook, a competing website.

Here’s my favorite line from the Complaint: “With respect to Internet websites, the first to enter a market has a substantial advantage.” So, how much of a lead in launch time did Facebook have over ConnectU? Facebook launched on February 4, 2004 and the ConnectU website launched on May 21, 2004. So, it only takes 107 days to build such a substantial advantage that your competitors are sent packing their bags and closing shop. Right.

Read the ConnectU Inc. v. Facebook Inc. et al. Complaint

Federal regulations affect the practices of a broad spectrum of lawyers. For corporate counsel, federal regulations may directly touch on their company’s core business, or they may impose additional general compliance requirements, such as in human resources, as an example. Attorneys in both private practice and public interest law face a similar impact whether they practice labor and employment, immigration, criminal law or in a completely different area.

Here are some federal regulations that attorneys in the corresponding practice areas or industries may find of interest: