Blog Food Fight Leaves Egg On School’s Face

The Internet yields all sorts of disputes. Take the nine-year-old Scottish girl who was banned from posting photographs of school meals on her blog, which caused a firestorm of criticism.

Martha Payne, who by now has had in excess of three million hits on her blog at NeverSeconds.blogspot.com, started posting photos of her Scottish primary school lunches at the end of April. BBC News report that her “food-o-meter” rated each meal in terms of healthiness and how many mouthfuls it takes to consume the meal.

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Trouble In Password Paradise

Many people use the same password for all of their accounts. Why? Because it is easy to remember just one password across all accounts.

But is that a good idea? Nope. If that password were to fall into the wrong hands, it potentially could be used more pervasively to the disadvantage of the true password holder.

And this is not a hypothetical concern. Indeed, recent press reports are rife with disclosures of major password hacks/leaks.

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Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Reject Federal Case Law on E-Discovery and Adopts A Proportionality Test for E-Discovery in Amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently amended the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure to officially include the discovery of electronically stored information. The amended rules become effective August 1, 2012.

Changes to Rules

Amended Rule 4009.1 includes “electronically stored information” among the list of items a party may request. The person requesting electronically stored information may specify the format in which it is to be produced and the responding party may thereafter object. If no format has been requested, the responding party may produce electronically stored information in the form in which it is ordinary maintained or in a reasonably usable form.

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Where To Store Digital Music?

Once upon a time, collecting music was a clunky experience, to say the least. Vinyl albums (while you might like the sound they provide) are large and take up a lot of space. And though tapes and CDs are smaller, they can add up in terms of storage needs, and none of the above are easy to navigate in terms of finding genres, artists, or songs. Moreover, of course, they cannot really be “shuffled” in a meaningful way.

Nowadays, music can be stored with hardly any storage concerns and can be searched and retrieved almost by magic. I must confess, I am a music junkie. When I open iTunes, I have tens of thousands of my songs at my fingertips. I store my songs on a 750-gigabyte external hard drive, and I can transfer and load up to 15,000 songs on my 160-gigabyte iPod. Not bad, eh?

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E-Discovery Is More Costly, Burdensome Than You Think

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that electronic discovery would streamline litigation, making it faster, easier, less burdensome, and less expensive. So, now that we are some years into the e-discovery experience, has the prediction come true? Sadly, not necessarily.

While it is true that it can be easier to retrieve information electronically by using search terms, rather than sending teams of associates into warehouses to rummage through boxes of documents, that is just the tip of the iceberg when considering the overall e-discovery effort. And even if vast quantities of electronic information can be brought up based on a simple search, that information had to be harvested at the front-end, and ultimately will need to be reviewed at the back-end.

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When Should An Attorney Dump His BlackBerry For An iPhone?

I have a confession to make: I am addicted to my BlackBerry. Indeed, the term “CrackBerry” certainly applies in my case. Ever since my wireless signal was established years ago, I have been mainlining my BlackBerry on a relatively constant basis.

There was a time that BlackBerry really was the only real PDA game in town at my firm. However, more recently, we have opened up the iPhone option, and as time passes, more and more of my colleagues have been weaning themselves off the BlackBerry and migrating to the iPhone. What’s more, some of my colleagues have been encouraging me (rather strenuously) to change my PDA drug of choice, turn my back on my beloved BlackBerry, and go the iPhone route myself.

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Second Circuit Addresses DMCA Safeharbor in Landmark Case

A new Second Circuit decision could change the way some service providers conduct business on the internet, imposing a greater burden to assess specific infringing activity.

In Viacom v. YouTube, Viacom sought $1 billion in damages for direct and secondary copyright infringement based on claims that its users improperly uploaded thousands of Viacom’s videos. The district previously held that YouTube was protected against claims of copyright infringement under the DMCA safe harbor primarily because it had insufficient notice of the particular infringement at issue. Essentially, it held that under the DMCA, service providers did not have a responsibility to identify which of its users’ postings infringed a copyright.

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Nationwide Electronic Surveillance Plan Revived In UK

The UK is working on proposals for national electronic surveillance that could monitor every electronic message sent and received by its citizens.

This follows the 2008 abandonment of a gigantic government database that would have tracked UK phone and email communications, the AP reports. It appears that the UK government is back at it now, but perhaps with a somewhat different approach.

Recent plans were reportedly disclosed to the Internet Service Providers’ Association by Britain’s Home Office. The Home Office has not said much other than to say that an announcement would initially need to come from Parliament — and perhaps relatively soon. There have not been disclosures about how a new government surveillance service would function, or whether it would be subject to judicial oversight.

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Online Dating Sites Vow To Protect Users From Sex Predators

According to press reports, online dating websites eHarmony, Match.com and Sparks Networks have entered into a joint statement of business principles to protect users from sexual predators and to help prevent identity theft and other scams. California Attorney General Kamala Harris followed up on this development by stating that “consumers should be able to use websites without fear of being scammed or targeted,” in apparent recognition that a woman was assaulted on a date that came about through an online dating site.

The companies reportedly have agreed to use national sex-offender registries to check on subscribers, to quickly respond to reported abuses, and to give Internet safety guidance to members. The dating sites will also provide reports of suspected criminal activity to the Attorney General’s office.

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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