Socially Aware

July 25, 2013 - Financial Institutions
Bitcoin Receives Cease and Desist Order Evidencing Increased Regulatory Scrutiny of Virtual Currency
By: Rick Fischer
Article courtesy of Morrison & Foerster’s Mobile Payments Practice On May 30, 2013, the California Department of Financial Institutions (CADFI) issued a cease and desist letter to Bitcoin Foundation, a not-for-profit organization established to standardize, protect and promote the use and adoption of Bitcoin.
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July 24, 2013 - Privacy
Is Your Account Tweeting Without You Knowing It? Twitter Upgrades to Two-Factor Authentication
On April 15, 2013, the Associated Press’s Twitter account reported that President Obama had been injured in an explosion at the White House. Within seconds of the announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 150 points. Fortunately, the President’s Press Secretary quickly
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July 23, 2013 - Section 230 Safe Harbor, Litigation
TheDirty.com Goes to Trial
In 2012, we reported on a pair of district court decisions that, based on similar facts, split on whether defendant TheDirty.com , a gossip website, qualified for immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), the 1996 law that states “[n]o provider
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July 14, 2013 - Securities Law, SEC, JOBS Act
Private Funds on Social Media—Proceed with Caution
When the Securities and Exchange Commission lifted the ban on general solicitation and general advertising for private offerings of securities, can marketing blitzes on Twitter and other social media sites be far behind? It is not likely that we will see hedge funds aggressively
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July 01, 2013 - Privacy
Youthful Indiscretions: California Bills Poised to Regulate Use of Minors’ Data on Social Networks
Two bills designed to facilitate the removal of minors’ personal information from social networking sites are currently under consideration in the California State Assembly, after being approved in the upper house of the state’s legislature, the Senate, in early 2013. The first of the
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June 21, 2013 - Trademark
Protecting Your Trademarks as ICANN Launches New Generic Top Level Domains
By: Jennifer Lee Taylor
Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received over 1,900 applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), including multiple applications for popular domains like .app, .inc, .art, .shop and .music. More than seven hundred applications have now passed an initial
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June 20, 2013 - Securities Law, Financial Institutions
FINRA Issues Sweep Letter Regarding Use of Social Media
FINRA, having enacted new communications rules that specifically reference electronic communications, having issued two Regulatory Notices (linked here and here ) providing guidance to the securities industry on social media, and having made social media and electronic communications exam priorities in two of the
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June 16, 2013 - Litigation
German Court Holds Google Responsible for Its Search Suggestions
By: Alja Poler De Zwart
On May 15, 2013, in a case filed against Google by an entrepreneur selling dietary supplements and cosmetics (the “Plaintiff”), the German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe ( Bundesgerichtshof , the “Federal Court”) ruled that Google must remove any defamatory suggestions generated by
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June 12, 2013 - Asia
The Diet Has Spoken: Japanese Lawmakers Approve Internet-Enabled Campaigning
By: Tomoki Kodama
In February 2013, we reported on legislative momentum in the Japanese Diet to bring Japan’s sixty-year-old election laws into the brave new world of Web 2.0. On April 19, 2013, that reform effort came to fruition, when a bill permitting the use of the
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June 11, 2013 - Securities Law, SEC, Financial Institutions
Stop Insider Tweeting!—Feds Eye Social Media for Securities Shenanigans
Article courtesy of Morrison & Foerster’s MoFo Tech As financial institutions and investors turn to social media to instantly share snippets of news and potential clues about market trends, the FBI and SEC are monitoring such postings for evidence of insider trading and improper
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