At least two New Jersey law firms that were victimized by phony check scams have gone to court seeking to get the money back from the banks that handled the checks.
Freedman & Gersten in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., claims it wired $236,659 to a company in South Korea based on a check that turned out to be fake, while Levitan & Frieland of Florham Park, N.J., has lodged similar allegations.
Freedman & Gersten is suing Bank of America, on whose assurances it says it relied when it deposited a $274,705 client check in its attorney trust account and wired most of the money overseas.
The bogus check, received last Feb. 6, was made out to the firm, was labeled "Official Check" and appeared to be drawn on the Citibank account of Weltronics Component Ltd. in Hong Kong and according to the complaint in Freedman & Gersten v. Bank of America, 09-cv-5351, filed in Bergen County Superior Court on Sept. 10 and removed to federal court in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 20.
The client's instructions, two days later, to wire $128,600 to Nassco Korea Co., raised a red flag because a new client in a foreign country was asking the firm to pay money to a third-party foreign entity. So before depositing the check into its trust account at the Glen Rock, N.J., branch, "in an abundance of caution," it sent a copy to Bank of America asking it to contact Citibank to make sure the check was good, the firm alleges.
Scribd - the website that publishs written works in an easy to absorb format is facing the challenge of whether it can fall under the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the DMCA (discused in a previous post) The same issue that came up on Universal v. Veoh is in question here,albiet this time with written works. The first lines in the complaint addresses the past jurisprudence in "the west coast" and argues to take a different approach than the California courts to the DMCA and enveloping "Safe Harbor" for service providers
Below is the complaint filed in TX Federal court filed by the Author's Attorney. I'm surprised at it's informality and 'speech like' prose.
In previous posts we discussed methods to best retain complete rights to your creative works with an emphasis on works for monetary gain. This post I'll go through a licensing scheme that's been embraced by many artists. Creative Commons licenses are draft licenses for people who don't wish to profit from their works and share their works in the manner they prefer. Lets start with what a license is.
A license is transfers rights of copyright to other individuals to use in certain ways. In the same way that an apartment lease or sublease transfers the right for individuals to live in a dwelling a license allows certain uses of a creative work as if they were the owners themselves, limited to how the original licensor bargains for them to use it.
In order for an individual to give a license, she must first have effective ownership of the copyright work. Now we'll go into the different Creative Commons scheme.
The Creative Commons does a great job of explaining complex licenses in terms that everyone can understand.
John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corp. stands in a vacant lot in New London, Conn., on Monday, Sept. 21, 2009. The lot, along with 90 nearby acres sits at the heart of an ongoing controversy about the rights of cities to use eminent domain to take property from one private owner for private development. (AP Photo/Fred Beckham).
A recent article in the AP cited the 2005 Supreme Court eminent domain decision in Kelo where the court gave cities across the country the right to use eminent domain to take property for private development. The 5-4 Supreme Court decision was sharply criticized and forty three states quickly passed new rules and regulations to protect the rights of property owners.
Four years after the landmark decision the New London property is still vacant and the promised building boom that was supposed to bring in 31,69 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues proved to be a failure as the city's prized economic development plan has falled apart. Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff in the landmark property rights case said "they are getting what they deserve. They are going to get nothing." For opponents of intrusive policies of the government it's poetic justice.
SEE BELOW FOR A 2007 CNN VIDEO ON THE KELO DECISION
The WSJ reported that Homeowners claimed a victory in New Jersey where a nationwide grassroots effort to stop government abuse of eminent domain power since the misguided decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
"Under that standard, as Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her dissent in Kelo v. City of New London, any Motel 6 can be knocked down for a Ritz-Carlton. In the Long Branch case, the contracts even ceded the city's power of eminent domain to the developers, giving private businesses the ability to tell the city when it should confiscate private property. Such flagrant abuse of public power for private purposes troubles most voters. In the wake of Kelo, some 43 states have reformed eminent domain laws to ensure they couldn't become a tool used casually against local homeowners on behalf of private interests. New Jersey is one of seven states that did nothing. The Garden State's courts have been more active, however. In 2007, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that to qualify for blight, an area must be a detriment to the health, safety and welfare of its residents. Subsequent rulings have adopted this more robust protection of private property, including for the homeowners of Long Branch."
An important case in online video sharing was decided last week. In Universal Media Group v. Veoh Networks (PDF) the federal judge dismissed the case on the grounds that he beleived Veoh Network Inc, a popular video sharing website, fell under safe harbor clauses within the DMCA. The Digital Milleniuem Copyright Act is the act that protects copyrights in the online realm. An Electronica Frontier Foundation spokesperson felt that this case would also apply to Youtube in that their terms of services and procedures are similar.
This case allows video sharing sites to fend off liability for copyright infringment from it's users given they use a rather low standard of procedures in handling reported infringing use. The case seems to acquiesce that works may be 'performed' and the sharing sites don't need to 'pre-check' the videos before it displays them. This burden on video sites to remove infringing works strikes a balance between IP rights and video dissemination. While it's still a considerable financial burden on sharing sites the costs aren't as bad as facing copyright ligitation.
What discussion of online videos and applicable law would be complete without an embedded High-Def video?
Texas voters will decide in November whether Article I, Section 17, of the Texas Constitution — the “takings clause” that sets forth government's power of eminent domain – will be amended. Proposition 11 tightens the reins on government's ability to acquire private property for public use upon payment of just compensation.
The origins of Proposition 11 date to 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London, Conn., that condemning property for purely economic development purposes was constitutional. More surprisingly, the court ruled government could rightly delegate its eminent domain power to private entities. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's succinctly summed up public opinion, stating, “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded.”
Texas legislators countered the ruling by adding the Limitations on Use of Eminent Domain statute to the Texas Government Code. The statute holds, in part, that a governmental or private entity may not take private property through the use of eminent domain if the taking: (i) confers a private benefit on a particular private party; (ii) is for a public use that is merely a pretext to confer a private benefit on a particular private party; or (iii) is for economic development purposes, unless the economic development is a secondary purpose resulting from municipal community development or municipal urban renewal activities to eliminate an existing affirmative harm on society. Voter approval of Proposition 11 would put these concepts in the Texas Constitution.
While most takings legitimately benefit the public — widening congested roadways, developing mass-transit rail facilities, building schools for expanding populations, improving detention to reduce flooding — a sporadic wrangling over what constitutes a public use may still remain if Proposition 11 is approved. For example, government will continue to have eminent domain power over blighted areas, but the definition of blighted remains ambiguous. Also not addressed by Proposition 11 are important elements of eminent domain actions, including the manner in which government acquires property and the debate concerning those elements of market value loss that constitute just compensation.
Senate Bill 18, which was not voted on by the House of Representatives, sets forth numerous landowner-leaning provisions dealing with the manner in which government acquires private property. Among other provisions are more strict guidelines concerning good faith negotiations criteria; the creation of a “Truth in Condemnation Procedures Act” that stiffens procedures relating to bona fide offers; and a tightly defined buyback provision. No doubt these issues will be the subject of spirited future debates.
3 Rss feeds for Supreme/Appellate Court Opinions, information for the bar, and news releases
This article poses the interesting question of whether using social media violates Attorney ethics codes. This question is currently up in the air in New Jersey and Texas.
Is the Texas Judiciary ready for social media? I would recommended first it's e-filing systems standardized by county.
UPDATE: The Texas Bar Association actively uses social media such as Facebook and Twitter. I can only find "7.07" rules regarding online videos and firm websites.
These days sharing your images online and protecting them from undesired/unlawful use has been seen as a misnomer. Luckily there are methods to protect your works if you desire to retain all your rights to your photos.
Display with Flash Viewer
There are plenty of free and easy methods to display photographs. Many of these methods require yout to have a basic understanding of html, but many have clear instructions on how to set them up on your website. The one's I've previewed don't have "save as image" protection automatically, so you'll have to choose one that makes it the easiest
While this method is helpful, it doesn't stop the infamous "Prnt Scrn" method of copying visual works. It also requires that you have a web host and website/blog with considerable coding freedom. (aka not Flickr/Picasa Web etc) Comes to play two other methods.
Use Tiny Thumbnails
Most "infringers" will want to enlarge photos for social media and background use. While this method doesn't allow users to see details, it gives the viewer a visual "summary" of the works.
Watermark your Images
My friend Jillian Betterly used this method to preview wedding photos for her clients. She would display samples of photos she took with a heavy watermark of her logo. She placed the watermarks right above the subject of interest within the photo, such as smiling faces.Clients or anybody wanting a copy of the photos would submit orders and she would deliver their memories without watermarks. The watermark would still allow prospective purchasers to see the areas of interest within the photos, but make it indesireable for them to copy it for their personal use without paying for her " visual memory capturing" and printing services. This method is also used by many stock photo purchase services.
Using all three methods together and tweaking them to your liking you'll make it difficult for would be infringers to take your works.
I'll often argue that artists should be able to desire how their works are licensed or ultimately used. The methods mentioned above are for artists who desire to retain their rights completedly under copyright law.
For the people who desire that art be 'released into the wild', with no desire for profit, there are alternative licensing schemes. We'll discuss Creative Commons Licensing schemes in the next post!
