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. * * *

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

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.

Provided by MIRLN.

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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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

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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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

Court Comes Down On Phone Tracking

June 30, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment All

In major privacy ruling, court says police need warrant to track phone users’ location (GigaOM, 11 June 2014) – In a victory for privacy advocates, a federal appeals court in Florida ruled that law enforcement agents cannot force mobile carriers to turn over the location history of their customers without a search warrant. The case involved an appeal by Quartavius Davis, who was convicted by a jury for his role in a violent armed robbery spree targeting restaurants and gas stations. The evidence included location data gleaned from cellphone towers that showed Davis had been in proximity of the various businesses. In finding that the police should had obtained a warrant to obtain the location data, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the government violated Davis’ Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. The case is groundbreaking because higher courts have yet to rule definitively on whether people have a privacy right in the location disclosed by their cell phones. Citing a recent Supreme Court case that suggested police in some cases need a warrant to track a suspect’s automobile, the appeals court noted that a cell phone carries deeper privacy implications. The court also drew a firm line between what police must do to obtain call records from a phone company, which can share records without a warrant under the so-called “third-party doctrine,” versus what is required to obtain a person’s location. Declaring that a person’s location is more analogous to the content of a phone call (for which police do need a warrant), the court stated that people can reasonable expect that their mobile carrier will not hand over a historic record of the places they have been. Finally, the case also highlights the ability of cellphone towers to observe and record a phone user’s location. While the court acknowledged that the tower’s do not disclose a person’s precise location, it ruled that they reveal enough information to trigger the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protection.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/jannoon028.

ODR 2014 Forum

June 26, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Online Dispute Resolution

An International Conference on Online Dispute Resolution | ODR2014 will bring together the technology and dispute resolution communities, legal practitioners, mediators and other ADR professionals, academic researchers, financial institutions, ecommerce companies and social media companies, members of judiciaries worldwide, and social justice advocates using innovative technologies to leverage change. ODR2014 is the thirteenth ODR Forum and the first to be held in the United States. The ODR Forum has previously been held in:

Geneva (2002 and 2003); Melbourne (2004); Cairo (2006); Liverpool (2007); Hong Kong (2007); Victoria (2008); Haifa (Israel) (2009); Buenos Aires (2010); Chennai (India) (2011); Prague (2012); Montreal (2013)

For more information, visit odr2014.org.