HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

On September 21, the DigitalHHR team will be presenting “Whose Data Is It Anyway: Privacy and Data Security in a De-centralized Digital World”, the next in its on-going series of live, CLE-accredited webinars.  As individuals increasingly rely on mobile, cloud computing and social networking applications, they reveal more and more of their personal information which is in turn used to create more and more “personalized” services and applications. While the benefits of many of these services and applications is sometimes obvious, this environment has also revealed tensions between individuals’ rights to control their personal information and businesses’ need to use such information to enhance commercial opportunities.  In this CLE-accredited Webinar, we will focus on the critical legal and business issues and questions raised by the need to protect personally identifiable information (PII) of end users in a digital environment, both in the U.S. and abroad, and how businesses can balance compliance with applicable laws and regulations while exploiting advancements in technology that enable the use of personal information to improve their products and services. Our DigitalHHR team will be joined by a London-based colleague from the international law firm of Norton Rose to address topics including:

• Stakeholders’ responsibilities: does every entity with access to PII have the same obligations to consumers?
• Privacy policies and disclosure requirements
• EU privacy regulations and the impact on cross-border initiative

The Webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EDT. To register, click here.

Matt Syrkin will be speaking at the New York City Bar Center for Continuing Legal Education on the topic of Internet rights and technology, along with attorneys from Hunton & Williams LLP, Holland & Knight LLP, and Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C. One of the most popular New York City Bar events, the conference, titled “Internet Rights and Technology: a Practical Legal Guide to Doing Business on the Internet”, will be held on September 28 and will focus on the ongoing challenges for lawyers in addressing the evolving legal landscape of the internet and new media.

As one of the featured speakers, Syrkin will be addressing the hot topic of interactive entertainment and will tackle structuring development and publishing agreements, intellectual property ownership and licensing, distribution and syndication models and content monetization.

To register for this seminar, please click here.

Since its launch this past Spring, Apple’s new iAd interface has promised to change the landscape of mobile advertising and how consumers and advertisers interact.  But the multiple, interlocking terms of use, developer agreements and privacy policies that govern various aspects of the iAd system also raise some interesting issues surrounding the collection and sharing of information regarding users viewing ads served through the iAd platform.  And these issues are not limited to Apple’s iAd environment and should be of interest and concern to all stakeholders in the mobile space. Continue Reading »

Tags: Apple, mobile advertising, privacy

The Entertainment Consumers Association (“ECA”) has retained Hughes Hubbard and the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic to assist it in submission of an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court in a case with potentially wide-ranging impact on the video game industry.  The case, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, involves a California law that regulates the sale of  video games by imposing a labeling requirement based on content and prohibiting the rental or sale of certain games to minors.  The ECA opposes the Act on the ground that video games are free speech protected by the First Amendment.  Continue Reading »

Tags: minors, us supreme court, video games

In a recent, high-profile transaction, the Digital HHR team represented BN Media LLC in its acquisition of Beliefnet.com, the multi-faith and spirituality website, from News Corp.  BN Media’s investors are also backers of Cross Bridge Media, a multimedia distributor of religious and charitable videos, and Affinity4, a marketing services firm focused on assisting non-profits in their fundraising efforts.

The transaction received prominent media coverage, including pieces in The Deal, American Lawyer and The New York Times.