Socially Aware

May 20, 2015 - Status Updates, Disappearing Content, E-Discovery, Discovery, Litigation
Status Updates: Facebook Posts—Reliable Evidence?; Quora Post Costs Applicant a Job; a New Ephemeral Messaging App
Facebook: Fact or fiction? These days, courts are more and more frequently faced with disputes over whether, as part of the discovery process, a litigant should be entitled to view the opposing party’s social media posts. As we’ve discussed , some courts deciding physical
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May 18, 2015 - E-Discovery, Discovery, Litigation
Effort to Hide Facebook Evidence by Deactivating Account Ends Badly for Louisiana Man
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
As social media has become ubiquitous, courts are wrestling with more discovery disputes involving social media accounts. In a recent case, Crowe v. Marquette Transportation Co. Gulf-Inland, LLC , the plaintiff deactivated his Facebook account in an effort to be able to claim that
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May 15, 2015 - First Amendment, Internet of Things, DMCA, FTC, Terms of Use, Privacy, Copyright, Infographic, IP
Hot Off the Press: The May Issue of Our Socially Aware Newsletter Is Now Available
By: Aaron P. Rubin
The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware , our Burton Award -winning guide to the law and business of social media, we discuss a recent decision in Virginia protecting the anonymity of Yelp
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May 13, 2015 - Trademark, Litigation
#Trademarks?: Hashtags as Trademarks
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Hashtags have become ubiquitous in social media, but their status as intellectual property—particularly as trademarks—is still developing. First adopted by Twitter users to link user posts, hashtags are character strings preceded by the “#” symbol that generate a link to all other posts containing
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May 12, 2015 - FTC, Marketing
Are You Socially Aware? Take Our Millennial Influencers Quiz
OK, Socially Aware readers, we’ve got a pop-culture quiz for you today. How many of the following names are familiar to you? Smosh The Fine Brothers PewDiePie KSI Ryan Higa If any of those monikers rings a bell, we’re guessing you’re a millennial, the
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May 11, 2015 - Copyright, IP, Litigation
Rolling With the Punches: The Fight Over Livestreaming
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Boxing fans eagerly awaited the May 2, 2015, championship match between boxers Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. But the fight also drew the interest of those following online video apps Meerkat and Periscope. Launched at the end of February 2015, Meerkat is a
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May 06, 2015 - Bankruptcy
Social Media Assets in Bankruptcy: Facebook and Twitter Accounts Subject to Reach of Creditors
Social media accounts can be “property of the estate” in a bankruptcy case of a business, and thus belong to the business, even when the contents of the accounts are intermingled with personal content of managers and owners. This principle was recently confirmed by
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May 01, 2015 - Status Updates
Status Updates
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Social discovery. Are the photos and status updates that you post to your social media accounts discoverable regardless of the privacy settings you choose? If they contain information that is especially relevant to the case, they probably are. Take, for example, two recent cases
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April 28, 2015 - First Amendment, Privacy, Defamation, Litigation
Court Protects Anonymity of Yelp Users
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Virginia’s highest court recently held that Yelp could not be forced to turn over the identities of anonymous online reviewers that a Virginia carpet-cleaning owner claimed tarnished his business. In the summer of 2012, Joseph Hadeed, owner of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, sued seven anonymous Yelp
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April 03, 2015 - Employment Law
Big Data and Human Resources—Letting the Computer Decide?
Employees are a company’s greatest asset, but if the company gets hiring decisions wrong, employees could also be the company’s greatest expense. Accordingly, recruiting the right people and retaining and promoting the best, while identifying and addressing under-achievers, is critical. Many organizations spend a
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