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Learn copyright law from the company that help change it.  The video is a little long, but it does a nice job of explaining how the law works.

FACEBOOK – A Mississippi student is suing her high school after a teacher demanded access to the student’s Facebook account.  Apparently, the cheerleading coach required the entire squad to hand over passwords to the popular social network site and subsequently disseminated the student’s personal content. The suit alleges that school officials violated the students constitutional rights to free speech and privacy, among others.  Click here for the full story.

TWITTER – A story in the Chicago Sun Times reveals that a management company is suing a former tenant for a Twitter post she made. In the post the tenant said:

“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

The management claims that the statements are “malicious and wrongful”.  I understand that a business must work tirelessly to protect its good name, but I was surprised by the statements of the company representative (and family member):

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,” he said, noting that the company manages 1,500 apartments in Chicago and has a good reputation it wants to preserve.

The law suit is seeking $50,000 in damages. This law suit may do more damage to the company’s reputation than the Twitter post ever could.

Click here for more information from Mashable

As the 60th anniversary of Chinese communist rules approaches on October 1st, the Chinese government has said that it will ban web sites from linking to or advertising sites that glorify violence.

A notice posted on the Culture Ministry Web site on Monday said games that promote drug use, obscenities, gambling, or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft are “against public morality and the nation’s fine cultural traditions.”

Some speculate that the new round on censorship is really a cover for the government to further suppress anti-government political content on the Internet. China has the most users on the Web and the most extensive system of monitoring and censorship.

Click here to read the full article.

Well its official, “Hotel” is a generic word. It only took six years, two appeals and who knows how many billable attorney hours to determine that.While most people would have easily agreed to the generic nature of the word, Hotels.com felt that the word lost that aspect what “.com” was added. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Court disagreed.

… Hotels.com’s argument was that the word hotel somehow lost its generic nature when it became attached to the “.com” suffix. At that point, it contended, it became identified with a particular company that served as an information source and travel agency. The Federal Circuit didn’t buy it. “The generic term ‘hotels’ did not lose its generic character by placement in the domain name Hotels.com,” the court said.

Click here for the full article.

Is it possible that the glowing recommendation you just gave to a co-worker or employee could come back and bite you where it hurts?  According to an article in The National Law Journal, such reviews could provide employees with the ammunition needed for a wrongful termination, harassment or discrimination law suit.

“If they say something negative, there could be a lawsuit. If they say something positive, there could be a lawsuit.”

Click here for the full article.

According to an article in the New York Times, computers cause a significant number of injuries.  One 13 year study reported over 78,000 acute computer related emergency room injuries. Injuries aren’t limited to young gamers or office workers.  The report recorded injuries to individuals from 1 month to 89 years old.  Children under the age of 5 have the highest injury rate.  Researchers believe that this is due to the weight of the equipment, sharp edges, large chairs and the tangle of wires often associated with work stations.

Sprint and BestBuy have teamed up to sell the Compaq Mini Netbook for 99¢ if you sign a two year service contract.  BestBuy plans to sell the same computer for $199.99 if you purchase a two year contract from AT&T or Verizon.

Netbooks are becoming a hot business for carriers that are looking to get consumers using their wireless data services. The wireless operators are taking a page out of their old playbooks by subsidizing the devices to spur adoption.

But it’s unclear so far if the plan will work. Already consumers are being asked to pay more per month for regular cell phone service. And the expensive data plans could deter some consumers who do the math and realize they don’t actually need to be spending over a $1,000 for one of these mini-laptops when these devices and laptops can be used for a very low cost or even free when using Wi-Fi hot spots.

Click here for the story from c|net news.

Michael Liedtke gave The Twitter Book a nice review. Click here for the full article.

The Twitter Book” is well timed, given that most of the service’s users hopped on this year and probably are still trying to learn the do’s and don’ts. Twitter’s worldwide audience has soared from nearly 4.4 million in December to more than 37 million in May, according to the Internet research firm comScore Inc.

Click here to visit the publisher’s site.

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