HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

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 »

Apple recently posted an “App Store Tip” on its iPhone Dev Center putting developers on notice that location-based applications, whose primary purpose is to deliver geo-targeted ads, will no longer be permitted in the Apple Apps Store.  Apple permits developers to use Apple’s “Core Location” framework included in the iPhone OS software to build location-based apps to determine the current location of users and deliver geographically targeted information (e.g., local weather, nearby ATMs, restaurants, etc.).  However, Apple requires developers to solely distribute apps which provide “beneficial information” rather than apps that “primarily enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location”.  Apple has stated that it will return any apps that fall into the latter category to the developer for modification. Continue Reading »

In a move applauded by a wide coalition of companies doing business online, Maine’s attorney general recently decided that she will not enforce a law banning the use of personal information about minors for marketing purposes that went into effect on September 12. 

The ”Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices against Minors“, prohibits companies from collecting personal information–such as name and e-mail address–from minors without receiving verifiable parental consent.  The restrictions are considerably broader than the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), applying to information related to everyone under 18 (COPPA is limited to children under 13) and extending to such information collected offline as well as on.   Continue Reading »

Click hereto subscribe to digitalhhr.

• Late last week,  Judge Louis Stanton of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that plaintiffs in the high-profile copyright class action case against YouTube could not seek statutory damages for videos that are not registered under US copyright law.   Judge Stanton also dismissed plaintiffs’ punitive damages claim, but did permit claims based on live broadcast footage, which were brought by the English Premier Football League, the lead plaintiff in the case, to proceed.  Continue Reading »