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Five for Friday: Facebook case dismissed; Sony changes TOS; Blogger Acquitted; File Sharing

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Good news-we have opened up comments without moderation.  I will still check comments, but they should post immediately.

October is looking to be really busy with a conference, a trial, and an IP course.  Don’t worry – nothing will stop us from posting fresh news and analysis all of the time.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we will also be one of two law firms exhibiting at ad:tech in New York.

With that, here is this week’s edition of the Five for Friday:

First, another silly lawsuit was thankfully dismissed.  This one is compliments of a Washington lawyer who sued Facebook for leaving a page up for too long that advocated violence against Jews.  Notwithstanding the fact that the content of the page was obviously disgusting, the Plaintiff’s complaint was that the page was left up for too long (it was taken down).  I do understand where this Plaintiff is coming from.  Often times, large internet companies are not responsive when the technology they unleash onto the public is utilized by those with less than pure purposes.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem like a lawsuit would help anyone here….especially not one in which a Plaintiff was claiming 1 BILLION dollars in damages.

You can read more about the case over at the BLT.

Second, if you want to sue Sony, yesterday was a bad day for you, as they have changed their Terms of Service to effectively prevent PlayStation Network users from doing so.  This is a tact that companies are increasingly utilizing to avoid scrutiny in class action cases.  While many deride the fees some class action lawyers get, such cases can level the playing field between large corporations and singular people who do not have the time, means, or know-how to bring a suit for $50.  Sony did this, of course, because the SPN was hacked and a class action was filed due to users’ private information being leaked.

Head over to Venture Beat for more information on this story.

Third, here is some Breaking News via the Hartford Courant: a blogger has been acquitted of trying to incite violence against elected officials in Connecticut.  Based on the story, the words he used were strong.  Do you think they were enough.

Fourth, a tough year for RIM (the maker of Blackberry) is laid out in this article.  Shipments of their products were lower than expectations.  Naturally, lower earnings followed as well.  The money quote from the article is this:

“RIM is on a path to becoming a niche player,” said Ted Schadler, an analyst for Forrester Research Inc. “RIM has to essentially retrench its strategy. It has to focus on what about its products make them different or better than Apple or Google products.”

Ouch.

Fifth, interesting decision from the First Circuit in a file sharing case.  We’ll review and have more comment on this next week.  H/T to Ben Sheffner for finding this.

We have a lot of great content that I have not gotten to post yet.  More to come shortly.

Enjoy your weekend.



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