Nota Bene

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Without comment, the justices declined to hear the case involving a segment of the $1.5 billion fantasy sports industry in the United States, in which participants manage imaginary teams based on the real-life performances of professional players.The lawsuit involves C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing Inc., a Missouri company unable to obtain a license from a subsidiary of Major League Baseball to use players’ names in C.B.C.’s fantasy baseball games.

The Missouri company sued, saying it did not need a license to continue to sell its fantasy baseball games on its Web site.

The baseball players’ union jumped into the case on the league’s side, alleging a state law violation of the players’ publicity rights _ the ability to profit from the commercial use of a person’s name.

A federal court and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in favor of the fantasy baseball business, saying that enforcing state law rights would violate C.B.C.’s right of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

This Week in Law is one of the more useful podcasts floating around the internet. April’s edition covers the liability and insurance issues that arise from blogging and podcasting. Suppose you are a lawyer and are sued for a blog post or podcast. Will that lawsuit be covered by insurance? What are the employer-employee ramifications for blogging? Do any insurers sell policies that cover blogging?  What do they cost?  This Week in Law’s expert panel discusses these issues and suggests some best practices for minimizing risk while blogging and podcasting. Any attorney who blogs or who advises companies that allow blogging should listen to this excellent podcast.

Yahoo! News reports:

A federal judge who shuttered the renegade Web site Wikileaks.org reversed the decision Friday and allowed the site to re-open in the United States.

In mid-February, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White issued an injunction against Wikileaks after the Zurich-based Bank Julius Baer accused the site of posting sensitive account information stolen by a disgruntled former employee.

I guess someone showed Judge White a copy of the First Amendment.

The ACLU has issued this press release:

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last night filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the domain name Wikileaks.org shut down. The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and used documents on the Wikileaks.org website in their work and want to continue to be able to do so.

“The court’s order shuts down and locks up the domain name Wikileaks.org permanently, effectively interfering with the public’s ability to access the materials on the website as easily as possible,” said Aden Fine, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The public has a right to receive information and ideas, especially ones concerning the public interest. This injunction ignores that vital First Amendment principle.”

It was widely reported earlier this month that pages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were photographed and published on the Internet in advance of the official release. The Electronic Frontier Foundation had an interesting take on this story:

Perhaps the leaker didn’t realize that the digital camera he or she used — a Canon Rebel 300D — left digital fingerprints behind in every image. We downloaded a copy of the leak and took a look at the images with the open-source ExifTool, one of dozens of programs capable of reading the industry-standard EXIF digital photo metadata format. As the press reported, the camera’s serial number is in there, along with over 100 other facts including the date and time that the photos were taken and an assortment of photo-geek details about focus and lighting conditions.

It may be, then, that the leaker can be traced; there are several ways Canon might know who owns (or used to own) this camera, including a possible warranty registration or service or repair on the camera. A retailer might also have kept relevant records when it originally sold the camera. Another prospect: if images taken with the same camera were uploaded to a photo-sharing site like Flickr, their EXIF metadata might associate use of that camera with a particular account. (Flickr and other sites usually don’t allow the public to search by EXIF tag values. But it’s possible that Flickr itself, or a third-party spider that had downloaded all of its images, could perform such a search.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Deep Links” Blog reports:

After more than three years of litigation, a single mom who was improperly swept up in the RIAA’s P2P litigation “driftnet” has finally been vindicated. An Oklahoma court has ordered the RIAA to pay nearly seventy thousand dollars in fees and costs to defendant Debra Foster. EFF, Public Citizen, the ACLU, and the American Association of Law Libraries filed an amicus brief in the case, supporting Foster’s motion for fees.

Soon after the RIAA brought suit against Foster in 2004, it became clear that the the recording industry was pursuing the wrong person. But the RIAA not only refused to dismiss the case, it brought additional, unsupported claims of secondary infringement. Finally, two years after filing suit, the RIAA dropped the claims and attempted to walk away scot–free.

Legal Pad reports:

Working for Robert Nudelman must have been a really bad experience — because some of the fellow lawyers in his Woodland Hills firm decided to take him down.

State Bar officials announced Monday that they shut down Nudelman’s Criminal Defense Associates Inc. last week because the firm had become “incapable” of properly representing its 150 clients who face criminal charges.

Nudelman resigned from practicing law immediately, officials said in a press statement, after the State Bar seized about 700 files, froze the firm’s bank accounts and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

State Bar Deputy Trial Counsel Kimberly Anderson said Monday that some of the lawyers employed by Nudelman are largely responsible for stopping Nudelman before things got worse. (more…)

TBO.com reports:

Kevin Alderman thinks of himself as “the Hugh Hefner of the digital millennium.”

He’s built a virtual adult entertainment empire, making and selling cyber sex toys in a three-dimensional online world known as “Second Life,” a hugely popular Internet community with 7 million residents. It’s an Internet universe where businesses thrive, universities teach, musicians perform and people fly.

But Alderman wants the real-life courts to settle his grievance with another avatar, or online persona.

On Tuesday, his company, Eros, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming the avatar known as Volkov Catteneo has violated the trademark on one of his devices called a Sex Gen. Eros claims the avatar has made unauthorized copies of the device and is selling it for a profit.

Via The Hollywood Reporter, Esq.