ExpertPreneurLaw℠ Blog

The Money has to Come from Somewhere

C-Net's News.com reports on proposed legislation that would be the proverbial shot across the bow for Internet marketing and distribution, a body blow to most, if not all ExpertPreneurs.

If implemented as its being discussed, not only could there be a tax on high speed Internet access, a sine qua non for Web 2.0 applications, including popular audio and video marketing, so popular with expertpreneurs of late, but also on email.

Read about how......

Net taxes could arrive by this fall | CNET News.com

 

Blogger by the Dozen

On my firm's website, one of the most frequently accessed articles is one that I wrote entitled "The Legal Risks of Blogs".

Over at the web and blog directory site, Akiva directory, there is a concise presentation of legal concepts applicable to blogging. Check it out at Blog Law » 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know .

Rubbing Salt in Utah Legislators' Wounds

Further to my earlier post on the uproar created by the Utah legislature's enactment of a state law that created a new electronic trademark registry and made it a violation for other companies to use such a registered trademark as a keyword trigger in search engine advertising accessed by viewers in Utah.

Linda Fantin, of the Salt Lake Tribune recently wrote about the Pow Wow held with major online media representatives, after which an apparently chastened group of legislators apparently recognized a need for a second look at the law.

According to some reports, the legislators were, like the magistrate in Casablanca, shocked to learn that Utah based companies like Overstock.com and 1-800 Contacts used these same keyword trigger methods to drive traffic to their companies.

While no public concessions on the future of the law were made as a result of the meeting, the rising litigation temperature has appeared to recede a few degrees --- for now.

Permission to Speak Denied

A recent article in law.com deals with an unusual appellate case in California regarding the law of defamation.  While defamation, false statements about another that harm their reputation, is not protected under the first amendment, at least with regard to private citizens, typically, the remedy for defamation is a lawsuit seeking money compensation for the damage suffered because the First Amendment, protecting free speech, is uniformly interpreted by courts to resist efforts at prior restraint until the speech is proven not to be protected or unless it poses an imminent danger.

But, in Balboa Island Village Inn v. Lemen, the trial court issued an injunction against the defendant, who had been found liable for making defamatory statements, from repeating them after losing at trial.

The Defendant's attorneys appealed and, on appeal, the injunction was vacated on the grounds that even repeating previously determined defamatory comments was protected free speech that could not be restrained in advance, a conclusion that would've forced the plaintiff back into court on a new action every time the Defendant continued the pattern.

On further appeal to the California Supreme Court, the original lower court ruling and injunction was reinstated in a 5-2 decision, noting that preventing the repetition of defamatory remarks  is not the same as prior restraint of speech not yet found to be unprotected by the First Amendment.

This case, while reasonable on its surface, does raise some troubling issues that all expertpreneurs should be mindful of in their writing and speaking careers.

Chief among them is that, while truth is always a defense to a defamation claim, the Balboa court's finding would force a defendant-speaker to take the risk  of being in violation of an ongoing injunction even if speech that may have been found to be defamatory at one time, turns out to be true later on.

Still, cases on defamation vary from state to state and expertpreneurs would be well advised to have their writings and prepared speeches reviewed carefully in advance to steer clear of potential costly claims.