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Mobile phones — and particularly smartphones, with their web browsers and GPS, photo-sharing apps and so on — have become such a crucial part of many of our lives that they are difficult to live without . The fear of losing a phone stems in part from the wealth of information we keep on our mobile devices, from photos to passwords and banking data. Imagine what the police could find out about you if they had the ability to search your phone and all it contains — something that is now more than just a hypothetical situation, at least if you live in California .
What Would the Police Find if They Searched Your Phone?: Tech News and Analysis «
Singularity Law » Should Victims of Online Defamation Have a “Right of Reply”?
Increasingly, courts and commentators are expressing frustration over the immunity that websites have for defamatory statements made by anonymous third parties. The victim cannot sue the website owner due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and often cannot identify the third party that defamed them. To add insult to injury, a court recently held that Section 230 prohibits a court from ordering the website to take down the defamatory statement even after the poster has been found guilty of defamation: The court is sympathetic to the Blockowiczs’ plight; they find themselves the subject of defamatory attacks on the internet yet seemingly have no recourse to have those statements removed from the public view. Nevertheless, Congress has narrowly defined the boundaries for courts to enjoin third parties, and the court does not find that Xcentric falls within those limited conscriptions based on the facts presented here.(Editor’s note: Curtis Smolar is a partner at Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) A reader asks : A former employee is going on FaceBook, threatening to sue us, making negative and untrue statements about things she claimed happened at our company while she was there—what can we do? Answer : This is one of those situations where an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. By fashioning a strong separation agreement, you can prevent bad-mouthing former employees from posting negative comments about your company, spreading trade secrets, suing you and/or doing other things to hurt your company.
5 things to include in a separation agreement | VentureBeat