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From the “Thank God Congress Has Nothing Better to Do” Desk: Four U.S. Senators Write Stern Letter to Facebook

Plenty of whiny types are up in arms over Facebook’s recent “personalization” improvements, which automatically link fan pages for companies, bands, television shows, etc. to users’ profiles, based on their self-proclaimed favorites.  Also, when a user specifies their favorite music, movies, books, and the like, that information may now be accessed more readily by parties [...]

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IP Holding Companies – Why You Need One

If you’re running your own small business, and you don’t have a holding company for your intellectual property, you should make an appointment to have your head examined.  Creating a separate entity, solely for the purpose of owning your IP, is the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to insure the goodwill associated with your business.

I [...]

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IOC Uses DMCA to Suppress Luge Accident Video

The opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics was marked with tragedy when 21-year-old Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was involved in a fatal crash during a training run. The horrific event dampened the spirit of the international competition and colored the mood at the opening ceremonies later that night. As anyone would expect, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sprung into action, responding to the accident with a multi-point [...]

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Class Settlement Notice Sent as Facebook Message?

File under “can they do that?”  Facebook notified me of a class settlement agreement, by sending me an in-network message:

click to enlarge

Facebook is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a Facebook member who may have used the Beacon program.  This summary notice is [...]

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Pope says "God hates new domain names!"

enjoying the holy sacrament of mobile internet

Okay; so maybe I’m misquoting. But the fact remains that the Vatican issued a statement denouncing ICANN’s new top level domain name scheme, which allows the highest bidder to purchase whatever extension they want (source). Under the new naming system, anyone could purchase the right to [...]

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Remember: If you don’t have anything nice to say, you should just say it on teh Internets

Google was in court this week over allegedly defamatory comments made on an anonymous blog that the search giant hosts. Chris Thompson’s post describes the gory details, including references to two of our favorite cases: Hot Chicks With Douchebags and AutoAdmit.

Update: If you want to start an anonymous blog, here are some [...]

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Facebook Caves to User Pressure

A few days ago, Facebook announced that it would be changing its terms of service. The updated terms made changes with regard to intellectual property ownership of content that users posted to the site. The changes were denounced as oppressive by many blog commentators. Apparently in response to the negative “press,” Facebook [...]

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James Madison – 18th Century Spammer?

Virginia’s Attorney General is trying to override a ruling of that state’s highest court, which struck down an anti-spam law as violating the First Amendment. The law, as written, did not limit potential violations to the sending of purely commercial spam emails. Since the legislation made it possible to prosecute senders of, for [...]

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