The Social Media Privacy Protection Act is coming. No such Act has yet been proposed but I predict this will be the name of the Act that regulates social media. The FTC is currently seeking comments on revising the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to include social media. The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing today examining how social media affects COPPA. Congress is first determining how it can best protect children's privacy in the social media age. The next logical step is to create legislation that will include the rest of their constituents.
On April 27, 2010, 4 U.S. Senators: Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Al Franken (D-MN) publicly released a letter that they had sent to Facebook's CEO Mark Zukerberg regarding their concerns about Facebook's recent user changes. The letter urged Facebook to allow its users to have more personal control over the site's privacy settings, to change its third party data storage policy, and to simplify the instant personalization options.
I recommend that my clients set their Facebook privacy settings so that only their Facebook Friends are able to view their personal information. It is best to limit the amount of information you post and share because if your account is ever compromised by a hacker the information can easily be used to steal your identity. If you thought that the Internet Age was scary after watching Sandra Bullock's 1995 movie "The Net" the Social Media Age should terrify you.
The recent MIT Project Gaydar study proved that just by inserting data from a person's social media profile it is possible to determine a person's sexuality. I was surprised that so many people appeared shocked by this finding. If a researcher or marketer knows a Facebook user's personal habits and hobbies, friendships, employer/job, socio-economic status, marital/family status they have the ability to make a lot of predictions about a person. Profiling or forecasting is used by law enforcement, wall street, and meteorologists. The more data points you have the more accurate the model or prediction.
In the "old days," your mail carrier knew more about your business than even your neighbors. Then it was the credit card companies and credit bureaus who knew everything financially about you. However, nobody or entity, including the U.S. Government has the treasure trove of data that Facebook accumulates about its users. Most of these other entities spend a tremendous amount of time and resources collecting your data. What is amazing is that Facebook is able to obtain its data for free directly from its users. Not a bad concept, eh?
It appears that Facebook does not yet understand that its recent actions have angered enough people to prompt Congress to become extremely interested in the manner in which it utilizes and protects its users' personal information. Facebook's failure to acknowledge this is evident by the response that Facebook's spokesman Andrew Noyes and vice president of global communications and public policy Elliot Schrage have so far provided.
Social media users must be careful about what personal information they post on social media. In addition, social media users must be proactive in protecting their social media personal profile and companies must be aware of the legal liabilities that they may incur for mishandling their customer's personal information. To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Oprah's and Dove Soap's Internet Monetization and Branding Strategy
Oprah is one of the smartest entrepreneurs in the world and has one of the most recognizable brands and her team works hard to protect and grow her brand. As a Baltimore native, I would like to think that it was the water that Oprah imbibed during her long stint working in Baltimore Baltimore for Chicago Baltimore Babe Ruth , Barry Levinson, John Waters, and Nancy Pelosi so I hope my water theory is true because it gives hope to all former Baltimoreans (myself included).
My two year old son is very musically inclined and enjoys watching and singing and dancing to various music videos that we watch together on Youtube. A couple of weeks ago, my wife started watching with our son a clip from a recent Oprah show that included the cast from Glee singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin". For about a week they went to Youtube to watch the clip.
All of sudden the clip they were watching disappeared and a message appeared stating that the clip was removed due to copyright infringement. My wife then went to Oprah.com and found the clip. However, on Oprah.com, there was a 30 second Dove commercial that had to be watched before the cast of Glee's rendition of Don't Stop Believin was played. The web page that contained the Glee clip was fully branded by Dove. In addition, Dove was a sponsor of the actual episode that aired the performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and is a sponsor on Fox.com's Glee home page.
Even though it appears that Oprah and Dove fully branded the entire user experience they both missed out on creating a Social Media 360 Deal. This was an internet brand campaign and not a social media brand campaign. To learn how to fully monetize your social media assets you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
My two year old son is very musically inclined and enjoys watching and singing and dancing to various music videos that we watch together on Youtube. A couple of weeks ago, my wife started watching with our son a clip from a recent Oprah show that included the cast from Glee singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin". For about a week they went to Youtube to watch the clip.
All of sudden the clip they were watching disappeared and a message appeared stating that the clip was removed due to copyright infringement. My wife then went to Oprah.com and found the clip. However, on Oprah.com, there was a 30 second Dove commercial that had to be watched before the cast of Glee's rendition of Don't Stop Believin was played. The web page that contained the Glee clip was fully branded by Dove. In addition, Dove was a sponsor of the actual episode that aired the performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and is a sponsor on Fox.com's Glee home page.
Even though it appears that Oprah and Dove fully branded the entire user experience they both missed out on creating a Social Media 360 Deal. This was an internet brand campaign and not a social media brand campaign. To learn how to fully monetize your social media assets you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Protecting Your Social Media Profile
The 2008 election cycle was the first social media election. President Obama is the first U.S. President to successfully harness the power of social media to get elected. According to a post on Read Write Web from November 2008, President Obama had a major social media advantage over Senator McCain. For example, a few days before the November 2008 election Obama had 844,927 MySpace friends while Mcain had only 219,404. This major disparity was a harbinger of the future.
Even though President Obama successfully utilized social media to become President of the United States, he is not the first social media President. The first social media President will be the first elected President who has years of tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries, podcasts, etc... that will need to be reviewed by campaign managers, public relation firms, lawyers, political strategists, etc...The legal and political ramifications are mind boggling.
As of this writing, the confirmation process of Professor Goodwin Liu, a nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is in motion and questions have been raised as to why Prof. Liu did not turn over all of the documents that the Senate Judiciary Committee initially requested. As far as I know, Professor Liu does not have years of tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries, podcasts, etc...to review. However, what if he does? How would this affect his nomination?
Earlier this week, the Library of Congress announced that all public tweets will be saved for posterity. First, Google decided to archive all tweets. Now the Library of Congress will be saving all your tweets for posterity. Therefore, it is more important than ever to protect your social media profile. To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
Even though President Obama successfully utilized social media to become President of the United States, he is not the first social media President. The first social media President will be the first elected President who has years of tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries, podcasts, etc... that will need to be reviewed by campaign managers, public relation firms, lawyers, political strategists, etc...The legal and political ramifications are mind boggling.
As of this writing, the confirmation process of Professor Goodwin Liu, a nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is in motion and questions have been raised as to why Prof. Liu did not turn over all of the documents that the Senate Judiciary Committee initially requested. As far as I know, Professor Liu does not have years of tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries, podcasts, etc...to review. However, what if he does? How would this affect his nomination?
Earlier this week, the Library of Congress announced that all public tweets will be saved for posterity. First, Google decided to archive all tweets. Now the Library of Congress will be saving all your tweets for posterity. Therefore, it is more important than ever to protect your social media profile. To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Entertainment Social Media Branding Contracts
Branding products and services and how the law protects your brand is extremely important in the social media age. Recording artists, writers, and film makers are utilizing social media to create their brand and to include other brands in their work to attract the attention of corporate sponsors.
Recently, a New York Times article discussed how some entertainment contracts include specific branding clauses and that some talent feel pressured to include certain brands in their work to attract sponsors. Television product placement is not new. During most live television programs the announcers usually state throughout the program that the show or event is sponsored by xyz company. One of the most famous movie product placements was Reese's Pieces in the movie E.T. in 1982. When I watched the movie as a child I had no idea that this was a product placement. However, as an adult I would expect that most adults who watch the movie know or should know that including Reese's Pieces prominently in the movie was a big advertising coup for Hershey.
Under the recently revised FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising "material connections" between advertisers and endorsers must be disclosed. However, I am wondering when is this threshold actually met? For example, if an artist includes a brand in his work in the hopes that the brand will end up sponsoring his work, and then the brand eventually sponsors the artist's work does this connection need to be disclosed since the original work was not created with a "material connection" between the artist and the brand? If an artist posts his original work on Youtube or another social media website before there is a "material connection" but later a corporate sponsor is attracted to the project does the artist now need to disclose this sponsorship?
These are some of the many legal issues that the social media age has created. Constantly changing technology will only make these issues more difficult to analyze. To learn more about these issues you may contact me at http://www.shearlaw.com/.
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
Recently, a New York Times article discussed how some entertainment contracts include specific branding clauses and that some talent feel pressured to include certain brands in their work to attract sponsors. Television product placement is not new. During most live television programs the announcers usually state throughout the program that the show or event is sponsored by xyz company. One of the most famous movie product placements was Reese's Pieces in the movie E.T. in 1982. When I watched the movie as a child I had no idea that this was a product placement. However, as an adult I would expect that most adults who watch the movie know or should know that including Reese's Pieces prominently in the movie was a big advertising coup for Hershey.
Under the recently revised FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising "material connections" between advertisers and endorsers must be disclosed. However, I am wondering when is this threshold actually met? For example, if an artist includes a brand in his work in the hopes that the brand will end up sponsoring his work, and then the brand eventually sponsors the artist's work does this connection need to be disclosed since the original work was not created with a "material connection" between the artist and the brand? If an artist posts his original work on Youtube or another social media website before there is a "material connection" but later a corporate sponsor is attracted to the project does the artist now need to disclose this sponsorship?
These are some of the many legal issues that the social media age has created. Constantly changing technology will only make these issues more difficult to analyze. To learn more about these issues you may contact me at http://www.shearlaw.com/.
Copyright 2010 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.
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