Month: January 2014

Who owns your tattoo?

January 21, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Copyright

Tattoo artists are asserting their copyright claims (ABA Journal, 1 Jan 2014) – One day you’re feeling bold, or perhaps temporarily insane, and you walk into a tattoo parlor to get inked up. Congratulations, you’re the proud owner of the art now displayed on your skin and you can flaunt it however you wish. Not so fast. A growing body of case law derived from a series of high-profile lawsuits suggests that ultimately it’s the tattoo artist-not the person who bears the tattoo-who owns the rights to that tattoo. Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, including anything from paint on a canvas to sculpted clay to a piece of music. And now it’s increasingly clear that the law also applies to ink on skin. In 2012, a tattoo artist who inked mixed-martial-arts fighter Carlos Condit sued video game maker THQ Inc. for depicting Condit’s lion tattoo on a game character resembling the fighter. Also, the National Football League Players Association has warned players to seek copyright waivers from their tattoo artists to guard against lawsuits in the event images of the tattoos are used-intentionally or not-in advertisements, video games and other media. Lawyers foresee copyright waivers becoming a fixture in tattoo parlors. “I don’t doubt that in many larger tattoo parlors it will become standard that some type of document is presented to those who are going to have tattoos put on them stating that those tattoos have been created by the tattoo artist or the parlor,” says entertainment lawyer Jerry Glover of Leavens, Strand, Glover & Adler in Chicago.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/mapichai.

“Border Exemption” In The Digital Age

January 17, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Security

Court upholds willy-nilly gadget searches along US border (Wired, 31 Dec 2013) – A federal judge today upheld a President Barack Obama administration policy allowing U.S. officials along the U.S. border to seize and search laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices for any reason. The decision (.pdf) by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York comes as laptops, and now smartphones, have become virtual extensions of ourselves, housing everything from email to instant-message chats to our papers and effects. The American Civil Liberties Union brought the challenge nearly three years ago, claiming U.S. border officials should have reasonable suspicion to search gadgets along the border because of the data they store. But Judge Korman said the so-called “border exemption,” in which people can be searched for no reason at all along the border, continues to apply in the digital age. Alarmingly, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation’s actual border . The judge said it “would be foolish, if not irresponsible” to store sensitive information on electronic devices while traveling internationally. [ Polley : ABA members might read my article on international travel with e-devices here .]

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/renjith nattavut.

FinCEN Ruling Bodes Well For Bitcoin Mining

January 16, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Finance

FinCEN issues Bitcoin-friendly ruling for miners (CoinText, 27 Dec 2013) – The US Department of Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ( FinCEN ) has issues ruling that clears up an issue for Bitcoin mining. The issue involves whether someone who mines Bitcoins for themselves can trade them for cash at an exchange or spend them directly without being classified as a Money Services Business (MSB) and register with FinCEN. Many miners were concerned that the rules would require compliance with extensive regulations (see Jerry Brito, FinCEN explicitly stated in a personal letter that bitcoin miners need to register with FinCEN ). The rules could require miners to have things like an auditor on staff making it impossible for individuals to mine Bitcoins and stay within the regulations. Atlantic City Bitcoin operates several ASICs miners at its facility in New Jersey and asked FinCEN to clarify the rules. The owner of AC Bitcoin is a former federal employee who worked on anti-terrorism and security programs and took early retirement to work on Bitcoin. According to the formal Administrative Ruling miners do not have to register with FinCEN as previously thought as long as they mine for themselves. AC Bitcoin had frequent contact with FinCEN staff and pointed out that if FinCEN had required miners to register they would need to comply with the “Administrative Procedures Act” which would require them to consider public comments before making the requirement.

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Image courtesy of techinasia.com/bitcoin-illegal-thailand/cdn.btcpedia.com.

Lawyer Creates Platform To Track U.S. Government

January 15, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Tech

Voxgov aggregates and analyzes government news and media (Robert Ambrogi, 27 Dec 2013) – Keeping track of an issue within the U.S. government can be daunting. The government is gargantuan, with thousands of entities publishing a constant flow of news and information across many thousands of websites and social media platforms. Say you have a client who has an interest in food labeling law. To track everything concerning food labeling that the government is putting out through press releases and policy statements and speeches and through Twitter and Facebook and YouTube would be a full-time job, if even that would get it done. A new web platform developed by a lawyer, Voxgov , aims to make it easy for users to track and analyze this constant flow of U.S. government news and media. It describes its mission as becoming “the established site of record for unedited media, news and information from all official government sources.” What that means is that it aggregates in real time all the information flowing out of the federal government and delivers it to you in a single platform. If the Federal Trade Commission posts a press release, it shows up in Voxgov within three minutes, they say. Voxgov came out in beta six months ago. It will formally launch out of beta on Jan. 6. And while it currently collects only federal government information, it plans to add all 50 states by the end of March.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/renjith krishnan.

Law School Takes A Step Into The Future

January 13, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Education

Law school’s online-hybrid degree program gets first-ever approval from ABA (ABA Journal, 19 Dec 2013) – In September, the American Bar Association Task Force on the Future of Legal Education called on law schools (PDF) to innovate and embrace technology as a means for educating future attorneys. William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., has answered the call. The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has approved the school’s plan to offer a hybrid curriculum, scheduled to begin in 2015, that includes both online and in-person classes. School officials met with the council two weeks ago to request a variance from ABA accreditation standards (PDF) which state that no more than one-third of an accredited law school’s curriculum can take place outside of the traditional classroom setting. The council announced yesterday(PDF) that it had granted the variance to William Mitchell’s proposed program, which provides for a 50-50 split between online and in-person class work. The program, which has a four-year duration, will be offered alongside the traditional full-time and part-time J.D. programs. In addition to web-based lectures, discussion boards and chat rooms for students and faculty, the program will emphasize skills training over lectures. Classroom sessions will include simulations as to what law students can expect when they’re practicing attorneys. The program will also include externships. Under the terms of the ABA’s variance, the school will be allowed to admit four entering classes of students under this program, and must limit individual class sizes to 96 students. The school must also provide detailed reports to the council, providing information such as applications and admissions, attrition, course evaluations and skills training. Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, says they considered several factors before granting the variance, including the school’s 113-year history and experience with part-time law students. Currier said that the school’s application for a variance was highly detailed and very well-thought-out, and it was clear to him that the school was extremely dedicated to making the program work.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/hyena reality.

The Ethics of Online Marketing

January 8, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Ethics

Florida allows competitive keyword advertising by lawyers (Eric Goldman on Forbes, 18 Dec 2013) – In March, the Florida State Bar’s Standing Committee on Advertising proposed an ethics opinion (Proposed Advisory Opinion A-12-1). The opinion was designed to help Florida lawyers understand what they could ethically do with online marketing. It targeted a melange of now-outdated search engine optimization (SEO) practices, such as hidden text and keyword metatags. It also restricted competitive keyword advertising-“[l]awyers may not purchase the name of another lawyer or law firm as a key word in search engines”-even though it’s becoming increasingly clear over the years that such competitive keyword advertising purchases are legal and legitimate (see, e.g., Habush v. Cannon ). Rather than enlighten attorneys about their ethical obligations, this proposal was both hopelessly antiquated and potentially detrimental to legitimate competition. Normally, a proposal like this get rubber-stamped through a state bar’s review process, so its approval seemed inevitable. Nevertheless, working with two law professors in Florida, Faye Jones and Lyrissa Lidsky , and my student research assistant, Jake McGowan, we submitted comments opposing the proposal . My prior blog post . I also made two telephonic appearances before one of the reviewing bodies, the Board Review Committee on Professional Ethics (the BRC), and Google submitted comments as well. Last week, in a surprising development, the BRC rejected the proposal (voting 6-2), and the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors-the ultimate decision-maker-accepted that conclusion (voting 23-18). As a result, the Standing Committee on Advertising’s proposed opinion is dead. The Florida Bar’s Ethics Counsel explained that the BRC: is of the opinion that the purchase of ad words is permissible as long as the resulting sponsored links clearly are advertising, and because meta tags and hidden text are outdated forms of web optimization that can be dealt with via existing rules prohibiting misleading forms of advertising. Still, much work remains. North Carolina has a similar ban on lawyers’ competitive keyword advertising that was quietly enacted last year ( 2010 Formal Ethics Opinion 14 ). I’ll be tackling that next. And Florida has plenty of other ill-advised restrictions on Internet marketing by lawyers, such as restrictions on lawyers making “garden-variety” descriptions of their practices on blogs and websites (see the complaint ) and letting LinkedIn members endorse the lawyer for “skills and expertise” (although at the same Board of Governors’ meeting, that position was reversed and sent for further study).

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.