2014 - Page 12 of 25 - JusticeHub Innovation Lab

FCC Rules On Video Clips

July 16, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment News

FCC sets new rules for online video clips (The Hill, 11 July 2014) – Regulators are establishing new rules requiring closed captions for online video clips. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously Friday to approve the rules from Chairman Tom Wheeler. Wheeler – signing along in American Sign Language – repeated a pledge he made at another closed captioning vote earlier this year. “This is just the beginning in dealing with our responsibility to make sure that individuals with special needs are in the front of the technology train, not the back of the technology train,” he said. Friday’s vote sets requirements for online video clips that have aired on television with closed captions, mimicking current requirements for full-length online videos that originally were broadcast with captions on television. The new requirements apply to video distributors like broadcasters and cable and satellite companies. Under the 2010 Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the FCC has the authority to require closed captions for online videos. In 2012, the agency created rules under that law that requires closed captions on full-length online videos that aired with captions on television. The rules approved Friday set staggered deadlines between 2016 and 2017 for clips taken straight from television, montages containing multiple clips and clips of live and near-live programming, like sports and news.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

Can Google Scholar Save You Money?

July 11, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Legal News

Reduce legal research costs with Google Scholar (Lawyerist, 3 July 2014) – Clients have been increasingly reluctant to pay for legal research. In this age of bundled services, they think that research costs should be included with an attorney’s hourly or flat-rate fee. If you are seeking ways to reduce research costs, here is one good option: Google Scholar . It is an online research service that you should use to find cases and secondary sources-for free. This article first explains the primary benefits of Google Scholar. But before you cancel your subscription to LexisNexis or Westlaw, read the second part of this article on its limitations. * * *

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Does Legal Protection Of Emails Have National Boundaries?

July 9, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Privacy

What legal protections apply to e-mail stored outside the US? (Orin Kerr on Volokh Conspiracy, 7 July 2014) – A federal magistrate judge in New York recently handed down an opinion on an important and novel question: If the government serves a warrant for a customer’s e-mails on a U.S.-based Internet provider, but the e-mails happen to be located on a server outside the U.S., does the provider have to comply with the warrant? The magistrate judge held that the answer is “yes.” The provider, Microsoft, recently filed objections to the magistrate’s decision in the District Court. A slew of major Internet providers filed amicus briefs in support of Microsoft: Apple/Cisco’s is here , AT&T’s is here , and Verizon’s is here . EFF filed a brief in support of Microsoft, too. The case is now pending before Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York. In this post, I wanted to run through the complicated legal issues raised by the challenges. As I emphasized in a recent article, the Stored Communications Act just wasn’t drafted with the problem of territoriality in mind. It assumed a U.S. Internet with U.S. servers and U.S. users. However the Microsoft challenges goes, Congress needs to amend the statute to deal expressly with the complex problems raised by the global Internet. In this post, though, I’ll take the current statute as a given, and I’ll run through the constitutional and statutory issues raised by access to e-mail located abroad under current law. My bottom line: I don’t think Microsoft can challenge the warrant on Fourth Amendment grounds, and I think it’s a close call on whether the warrant is valid on statutory grounds. If Microsoft wins, though, I think the DOJ may be able to get foreign e-mails with a U.S. subpoena, which wouldn’t be much of a victory for privacy or sovereignty.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

Nondisclosure Becoming A Thing Of The Past For Startups

July 7, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment News

Why more start-ups are sharing ideas without legal protection (NYT, 2 July 2014) – In 2011, Andy Moeck was looking for investors for Moeo, a Los Angeles start-up he was building that makes mobile gaming apps based on real-time sporting events. A friend introduced Mr. Moeck to a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, and at their first meeting, Mr. Moeck asked the partner to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Such agreements, known as N.D.A.s, are intended to prevent an idea or technology from being stolen and copied. Mr. Moeck was especially concerned because the venture capital firm was already backing Zynga, another gaming company. “We knew they didn’t have a mobile or sports strategy,” he said of Zynga. “I didn’t want to pitch Kleiner about what we were doing and have them go back and say to Zynga, ‘This is how Moeo does it.’” But the Kleiner Perkins investor refused to sign an N.D.A., leaving Mr. Moeck to decide whether to proceed with his pitch. It is a common quandary, and not just in Silicon Valley. Ten years ago, it was not unusual for entrepreneurs to request and potential investors to sign nondisclosure agreements. But today the agreements are largely considered a thing of the past. In fact, some investors say they walk away from a founder who even suggests signing one. This cultural shift, which began in the late 1990s and accelerated during the early 2000s, began in Silicon Valley, said Victor W. Hwang, chief executive of T2 Venture Creation, an investment firm in Portola Valley, Calif. “One of the most advantageous things an entrepreneur can do is talk about their company to anyone who will listen,” Mr. Hwang said. * * * Below are some guidelines to consider. They apply when engaging not just investors, but also manufacturers, partners and even customers. * * *

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Cyberinsurance Today

July 2, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Tech

The state of cyberinsurance (Bruce Schneier, 16 June 2014) – Good essay on the current state of cyberinsurance: So where does that leave the growing cyber insurance industry as it tries to figure out what losses it should cover and appropriate premiums and deductibles? One implication is that the industry faces much greater challenges than trying to quantify or cover intangible—and perhaps largely imaginary—losses to brands’ reputations. In light of the evidence that these losses may be fairly short-lived, that problem pales next to the challenges of determining what should be required of the insured under such policies. Insurers—just like the rest of us—don’t have a good handle on what security practices and controls are most effective, so they don’t know what to require of their customers. If I’m going to insure you against some type of risk, I want to know that you’re taking appropriate steps to prevent that risk yourself 00 installing smoke detectors or wearing your seat belt or locking your door. Insurers require these safety measures when they can because there’s a worry that you’ll be so reliant on the insurance coverage that you’ll stop taking those necessary precautions, a phenomenon known as moral hazard. Solving the moral hazard problem for cyberinsurance requires collecting better data than we currently have on what works –and what doesn’t—to prevent security breaches.

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