August 2012

A court in Texas recently dismissed a lawsuit it described as “an aspiring class action against a veritable who’s-who of social media companies.”  The Plaintiffs in Opperman v. Path claimed that the Defendants improperly used their smartphone apps to copy, upload, and store Plaintiffs’ address book information without their consent. According to the court, the…

A copyright-infringement lawsuit challenging the Google Books service will proceed in a New York federal district court, even while an appeals court considers whether the suit can proceed as a class action.

In an order filed Wednesday, Judge Denny Chin declined Google’s request to stay the district-court proceedings. Judge Chin granted class-action status to the…

Earlier this week, Twitter appealed a New York state judge’s ruling that required the company to produce an Occupy Wall Street protestor’s tweets, email address, and certain subscriber information.  The trial court judge had reasoned that the public nature of Twitter meant that the defendant lacked privacy interests in his tweets and that the government’s…

A federal appeals court this week upheld a preliminary injunction against an online service that streamed live broadcast television programming to subscribers.

ivi, Inc. launched its television-streaming service in September 2010, and by early 2011 it was retransmitting the signals of dozens of TV stations from New York, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles.  Broadcasters and…

With hurricane season already in progress, including Hurricane Isaac’s arrival on the Gulf Coast, the FCC has issued a reminder of the obligation to make emergency information accessible to persons with hearing and visual disabilities.  The FCC’s public notice provides additional guidance with respect to what video programming distributors must do to meet the accessibility…

The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has requested comments on a Petition for Reconsideration concerning the FCC’s commercial volume rules.  These rules, which implement the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (“CALM”) Act, require television broadcasters, digital cable operators, and other digital multichannel video programming distributors to follow a technical standard that is designed to prevent television advertisements from being transmitted at louder…

Last week, the California legislature passed one of the nation’s most restrictive bills governing law enforcement’s ability to access location information.  Under the California Location Privacy Act, state and local government agencies would be required to secure search warrants before obtaining historical or current location information for any electronic device.  The California bill would…