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According to the official Pokémon website, “kids all over the world have been discovering the enchanting world of Pokémon [for over 15 years].” Not surprisingly, many of us who used to be kids in the 15+ years are playing Pokémon Go, but who would have expected nearly 4 of every 5 Pokémon Go players (almost 80%) to be adults. Put into perspective—at Pokémon Go’s peak of 25 million daily active users, close to 20 million adults may have been playing the location-based augmented reality mobile game every day! Still, that also means at least one out of every five players are children, which in turn represents millions of daily active users against whom one or more provisions of Pokémon Go’s Terms of Service (TOS) might be unenforceable.

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matrixOn Saturday, July 23, Facebook acknowledged its anti-spam systems had briefly and accidentally blocked links to WikiLeaks files containing internal Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. WikiLeaks had released 19,000 leaked documents from the DNC containing communication between Democratic Party officials on Friday, July 22. The following day, people tweeted screenshots of an error message they received when attempting to post links to the leaked documents: “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe.”

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Transformative technologies do not just change their own industries—they cause a ripple effect throughout adjacent, more mature sectors. Just as the sudden, mass embrace of augmented reality in Pokémon Go opens up a number of liability concerns, so, too, will the advent of autonomous vehicles (the embrace of which is markedly more measured, but just as inevitable) necessitate changes in the insurance industry and the products it provides. In their post, “Robot Take the Wheel: Insurance Implications of Autonomous Vehicles,” colleagues Peter Gillon and Bryan Coffey examine some of the likely paths these changes may take.

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NewsofNoteMain

Snapchat announces a seismic shift, Microsoft looks to DNA for your long-term storage needs, and authorities try to get out ahead of some of the predictable consequences of Pokémon Go’s arrival. (Please look where you’re walking as you try to catch them all.)

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As a general rule, a website is not held liable for the content its users post on its platform. The Communications Decency Act (CDA) immunizes websites from lawsuits by not treating the website as the publisher or speaker of content posted by its users. It also allows websites to edit and remove content that could be obscene, lewd and objectionable without the website incurring liability for failure to remove other similar content. Courts have even gone as far as not holding websites liable for defamatory, offensive or infringing posts by its users even when such websites invite visitors to post potentially defamatory statements, so long as the website did not materially contribute to the actual offensive content of the post. While courts have applied this protection broadly, a recent Ninth Circuit decision declined to do so.

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NewsofNoteMainTo the surprise of no one, Instagram is pretty popular; Samsung puts a billion dollars into the Internet of Things; the FCC’s trying to decide if radio noise is a problem; and there’s an approach to virtual reality that won’t make you want to throw up.

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Last week on the official LinkedIn blog, the company’s chief information security officer, Cory Scott, reported the company had become aware of an additional set of data that has just been released consisting of e-mail and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members. This recent release is related to a 2012 unauthorized access and disclosure of LinkedIn members’ passwords:

Yesterday, we became aware of an additional set of data that had just been released that claims to be email and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members from that same theft in 2012. We are taking immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of the accounts impacted, and we will contact those members to reset their passwords. We have no indication that this is as a result of a new security breach. –Linkedin Official Blog, May 18, 2016

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It’s no secret that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) views arbitration agreements in contracts between financial services providers and consumers rather unfavorably. This antipathy has been maintained even after a 2011 Supreme Court decision (ATT Mobility LLC v. Concepcion) affirming the practice. Back in October, the bureau announced its consideration of a proposed rule that would prohibit this practice in some cases, and in other cases, require companies that use arbitration clauses to report information regarding claims filed and awards issued to the CFPB. On May 5th, the CFPB released the proposed rule.

In their client alert, Arbitration Provisions Mauled by Consumer Watchdog, colleagues Christine Scheuneman, Amy Pierce and Andrew Caplan examine the rule in depth, pointing out some of its contradictions and areas in which the proposed rule may be susceptible to (the inevitable) legal challenges that will follow.

 

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Until recently, social media has been one of the only recourses for fashion designers and labels that have had their designs knocked off. Take the Acquazurra “Wild Thing” sandal, for example. Acquazzura is a high-end shoe brand that designed and released the $785 sandal, identifiable by its “wild” fringe on the toes. Shortly after, Ivanka Trump released the “Hettie” sandal, an almost identical shoe which, priced at $145, was almost $600 less expensive.

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In the Joint Commission Perspectives May 2016 edition, the Commission reversed its 2011 position prohibiting clinician texting of patient orders within accredited health care institutions, stating technological advancements now allow for secure transmission. The Joint Commission first issued its ban in 2011 by posting an often overlooked response to the frequently asked question  regarding the by then ubiquitous communication tool: “[I]t is not acceptable for physicians or licensed independent practitioners to text orders for patients to the hospital or other healthcare setting. This method provides no ability to verify the identity of the person sending the text and there is no way to keep the original message as validation of what is entered into the medical record.” iStock_000075033043_SmallWhile the Commission did not have a specific policy against electronic communications, its FAQ response highlighted concerns surrounding texting’s privacy, security, reliability and record retention shortcomings. Following FAQ response’s posting, institutions accredited by the Commission were expected to comply with the texting ban on clinical orders. However, recent studies have shown that permitting the texting of orders within health systems could significantly increase hospital efficiencies and reduce the length of patient stays.

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