TWoTW for July 12, 2009
This Week on The Web. Interesting articles, stories and thoughts from around the web this past week that are related to contracts, licensing, negotiation or law: AdamsDrafting Wal-Mart Case Raises Issues of Categories of Contract Language Another Instance of Semantic Ambiguity: “Buys” My Response to Someone Seeking Advice on Contract Drafting Contract Interpretation and Contract [...]
Clear to Sell User Data
When Clear announced their intent to terminate operations, the big question was: “What’s going to happen to each users’ private data (things like, um, fingerprints and background checks)?” Now we know. They intend to SELL IT! This is why I harp on making sure that you have the proper provisions in your contract(s) for confidentiality, [...]
Web TOS Amendments
Eric Goldman on “Amending this Agreement whenever we want” (the Harris v. Blockbuster case from earlier this year). Dead on, as usual, so I’ll repeat his mantra here: “STOP PUTTING CLAUSES INTO YOUR CONTRACTS THAT SAY YOU CAN AMEND THE CONTRACT AT ANY TIME IN YOUR SOLE DISCRETION BY POSTING THE REIVSED TERMS TO THE [...]
EFF Announces the Terms of Service Tracker
This is perfect and absolutely wonderful. Too bad they’re not tracking more. The Licensing Handbook Blog is the companion site to the Software Licensing Handbook. Covering licensing topics on a regular basis, Jeffrey Gordon attempts to offer advice, add humor and sometimes even a bit of wit to a practice that most people find abhorrent [...]
Salesforce.com calls for End of Maintenance
Below is the contents of an internal salesforce.com memo CEO Marc Benioff shared with Vinnie Mirchandani (and posted on his blog: deal architect). I’m pasting it here for simplicity’s sake and because of the power of the message itself. “For ten years, we’ve been driven by a simple vision: The End of Software. Now it’s [...]
More interesting copyright issues
According to this article from Wired, Apple is involved in some very interesting copyright violation cases related to their fairplay copy protection scheme and DMCA takedown notices they provided to folks discussing how to circumvent Apple technologies. I would pay attention to what the US Copyright Office decides based on their review – and on [...]
Economic Renegotiations
In an interview with Inc magazine the other day, I was discussing the effects of the current economic situation on contract negotiation potential. More specifically, everyone seems to believe that the current downswing is cause for not only some great deals, but also for the potential to create some re-negotiation possibilities. In other words, the [...]
Facebook’s Voting on ToS
[Disclaimer: While I'm a Facebook user, I do not know all of the ins and outs of this particular issue, as I've not paid too much attention since they rolled back to the old ToS.] Facebook has announced that they plan to have members vote on the new Terms of Service they’ve been working on. [...]
Weighing in on AIG
Everyone’s buzzing about bailout money being used to pay for AIG executive bonuses – to the same folks’ whose division was the one that caused AIG to fail. Even President Obama was on camera, promising to do something about it. The House of Representatives released copies of the contracts that are supposedly preventing the government [...]
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