HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

A highly classified house ethics committee report outlining inquiries involving dozens of members of Congress was recently leaked over the Internet after a junior committee staff member saved it on the hard drive of his home computer, on which he happened to have peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software installed.  There is no evidence the staffer intended the report, which detailed investigations that included financial dealings, travel and campaign donations, to be shared with other P2P software users around the world.  But in an official attempt to combat such leaks, US Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), an avid critic of self-regulation of P2P software use, recently introduced a new bill titled The Secure Federal File Sharing Act.  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 »

Transparency into how websites use, protect and disclose the personally identifiable information of its end users has been an especially hot topic over the past few years as the use of social networking and social utility sites have grown exponentially in popularity.  So it’s no surprise that end users’ control (or lack thereof) over how their personally identifiable information is used, and the extent of that control, has been giving many in our industry “heart burn” and raising the eyebrows of legislators and governments globally.

  Continue Reading »

If you are designing or developing a video game that depicts this planet or any other fictional world, then you need a pair of trained legal eyes to review the people, places, products and things that will be featured in the game. Go it alone, and you are traveling down a windy road that intersects with copyright, trademark, privacy law and the First Amendment, where the case law is complex, the rulings are inconsistent, and the outcome may ultimately depend on the jurisdiction. Make one mistake and you will find yourself staring down a lawsuit before your game title moves a thousand copies. Whether the lawsuit is filed by the owner of a popular destination who thinks you stole the “look and feel” of his establishment (see E.S.S. Entertainment 2000, Inc. v. Rock Star Videos, Inc., 2008 WL 4791705 (9th Cir. 2008)) or the lead singer of a retro-funk dance group who claims a character in your game wears the same clothing and resembles her (see Kirby v. Sega of America, Inc., 144 Cal.App.4th 47 (2006)), video game profits have caught the world’s attention, and, as in all things, success leads to lawsuits. Continue Reading »

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• As online, targeted advertising becomes more and more common, the question of balancing privacy concerns and commercial demands is becoming increasingly more complex.  While website privacy policies can disclose how information provided to the site’s publisher may be used, they can’t explain how and why you are being shown a specific advertisement when you visit the site.  Joseph Turow, a marketing professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, has developed an approach to provide consumers with more information and control over how they view ads.  Mr. Turow’s plan:  place an icon on Continue Reading »