HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

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• E-commerce sites, especially Amazon, the biggest of them all, got some bad news as the New York Supreme Court upheld the validity of a law requiring e-tailers to collect state sales tax. Amazon and Overstock.com sued based on a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that a company had to have a physical presence in the state to collect taxes.  Appeals are likely but for now, it looks likely that sales tax on e-commerce is inevitable.  More information is here.
• A task force has been formed by four Madison Avenue trade groups, with the support of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, to develop industry guidelines for new forms of online behavioral advertising and to lobby the government regulators and policymakers on the benefits to consumers.  The initiative is in response to potential government regulations that would limit new forms of online user targeting.  More details here.
• Reports out of Washington say that Julius Genachowski is being considered to take the chair of the Federal Communications Commission.  Although he was a former general counsel at the FCC and knows the agency well, he is better known as a digital media veteran, a longtime executive at InterActiveCorp and founder of a D.C.-based VC firm which has invested in numerous Web companies.  Here’s a piece from all things digital.com discussing the proposed appointment and industry reaction.
• Two consumer groups are set to appear before the FCC to seek an investigation into mobile ads.  The Center for Digital Democracy and US Public Interest Research Group claim that mobile ad firms don’t fully disclose the extent of the information they collect from consumers.  Here’s an article from the San Francisco Chronicle detailing the debate.

The Mobile Marketing Association (“MMA”), a non-profit industry trade group, recently announced the publication of a set of revised Global Mobile Measurement Ad Currency Definitions for the measurement of mobile media advertising currency, including: Ad Impression, Streaming Video Advertising, Rich Media Ad Impression and Click Measurement. The MMA does not intend for these “definitions”, which read more as contextual recommendations for how to assess mobile ad currency, to serve as a set of guidelines for mobile ad counting, but expects them to serve as the foundation and basis for discussion for subsequent mobile ad guideline development. The definitions were developed in close collaboration with the Media Rating Counsel (a non-profit association made up of leading television, radio, print and Internet companies), as well as ADObjects Inc., Amobee Media Systems, AOL LLC, DoubleClick, iO global limited, Isobar, Microsoft, The Coca-Cola Company and Yahoo! Continue Reading »

     Text Message Contest Not Gambling under Georgia Law 

On April 21, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected an argument that a promotional contest sponsored by NBC in connection with its hit show, “Deal or No Deal” violated Georgia’s anti-gambling laws. Because of the proliferation of text message-based promotional contests, this decision will likely have wide-reaching impact on the digital entertainment space.

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  Pending Class Action Points to Potential Pitfalls

While not directly involving mobile digital content provides, a class action lawsuit pending in Federal court in Massachusetts has brought into focus a practice that such providers must be aware of and protect themselves against. At issue in Knox and Esparza v. m-Qube, Inc. is “cramming” pursuant to which a cellular subscriber is automatically billed for mobile content services that were not purchased.

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