WEB 2.0 LEGAL NEWS

Joining at least six other states, a state court judge in Nashville has ruled that anonymous bloggers are entitled to legal protections before being unmasked.

A Tennessee judge ruled that people who seek to learn the identities of anonymous bloggers must first make a showing that they would be able to prove a libel case. With the ruling, the judge joined courts in Arizona, California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Texas and the District of Columbia, which have held that plaintiffs in a lawsuit can’t simply demand to know a blogger’s identity without first establishing that they stand a chance of prevailing in a libel lawsuit. http://xrl.in/1s78

Internet Lawyer

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google Inc. has built adequate privacy protections into its software services, such as Gmail and the company’s word-processing and spreadsheet offering, Google Docs. What do they want to gain? A better or clearer privacy policy. SInce very few people actually read those policies, is this “any real” solution? http://xrl.in/1t0z

In an interesting twist, a judge in New Zeland authorized the serving of legal papers using Facebook.

A Los Angeles computer security consultant has been sentenced to four years in federal prison for using malicious software (botnets) to infect thousands of computers, turn the computers into “zombies” and steal individuals’ identities by extracting information from their personal computers. http://xrl.in/1t0o

A local Sheriff decided to sue Craigslist as a classified forum for prostitution rings. This is sure to end up in a settlement. The protection afforded to Publishers who do not edit or contribute to content is fairly settled in case law nationwide.