Lawyer rating start-up and nascent online community Avvo scored a big win yesterday when it convinced a Washington district court to dismiss a putative class action lawsuit filed last June. Avvo aggregates available attorney information, assigns subjective (and undisclosed) value to various factors, and comes up with a 1-10 rating. (Initially, Avvo rated every lawyer in its database. Shortly after its launch, and after the lawsuit was filed, Avvo responded to concerns about this practice and altered its approach.) Avvo’s ratings are thus generally analogous to Google’s PageRank: factors are weighted and a score is assigned. The lawyer-plaintiffs in the suit challenged the accuracy and validity of Avvo’s ratings and argued consumers would be misled by the flawed system. Avvo countered that the rating system yields no more than opinions entitled to absolute first amendment protection. The court agreed:

Avvo’s website contains numerous reminders that the Avvo rating system is subjective. The ratings are described as an “assessment” or “judgment,” two words that imply some sort of evaluative process. The underlying data is weighted based on Avvo’s subjective opinions regarding the relative importance of various attributes, such as experience, disciplinary proceedings, client evaluations, and self-promotion. How an attribute is scored and how it is weighed in comparison with other attributes is not disclosed, but a reasonable person would understand that two people looking at the same underlying data could come up with vastly different ratings depending on their subjective views of what is relevant and important. . . . Neither the nature of the information provided nor the language used on the website would lead a reasonable person to believe that the ratings are a statement of actual fact.

This is obviously good news for Avvo, and for any site that crunches variables to assign a rating. As Mike Gunderloy observed when the suit against Avvo was filed, this includes much of the Web 2.0 ecosystem. While Mike was concerned primarily about protections available to rating systems based on user (i.e. third party) feedback, it’s interesting to note that the court’s decision to dismiss the suit against Avvo was based solely on the First Amendment and not on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides limited liability protection for assertions made by third parties. Section 230 played no role here despite the fact at least some of Avvo’s ratings are based on third party assertions, specifically “peer endorsements.” The Avvo plaintiffs apparently “disavowed any claim based on content that Avvo obtained from a third party,” and there was thus no reason for the court to consider or discuss Avvo’s Section 230 defense. Thus, as with the KinderStart case against Google dismissed earlier this year, this court found that an algorithmically generated opinion can’t be “wrong,” “inaccurate,” or “invalid,” and failed to consider the potential (ultimately probable) role of Section 230 in limiting claims of this kind.

The recent and unexpected passing of my grandmother (she was the only 98-year-old I’ve known who could, and did, blindside hundreds with her death) opened my eyes to the fact that death in 2007 has become an online, interactive experience. The mortuary partnered with MeM.com to provide an “Everlasting Memorial,” complete with a photo slideshow (which was displayed at the memorial service; this was in Silicon Valley, after all), still images, and guest book:

Customers have told us that one of the most cherished features of the Everlasting Memorial is the guest book section. This allows family and friends from around the world to send messages to share their thoughts and fond memories. To send a message, a loved one merely clicks on the “send message” button, and begins drafting their message. Once received, family approval is required prior to publishing to the web.

Of course, they upsell/make a number of “keepsakes” available to the bereaved.

The San Jose Mercury News, where we ran the obituary, partners with Legacy.com, a similar service. Nicer guestbook format; no slide show. This memorial isn’t everlasting though, until some family member or other benefactor comes along to sponsor the (considerable) hosting fees.

Thus does the Live Web creep into all aspects of life and death. Even while the family is thinking of other, hopefully more profound things, these online communities of mourning — moderated to control, I suppose, disparagement and spam — spring into being at the hands of those on the business side of the death.

While I’m struck by the Web’s increasing role in building communities around death, I’m equally struck by the willingness of the related enterprises to fleece the unsophisticated public. The “keepsake” prices, e.g., around $70 for a hardbound book, are quite high. (Compare QOOP’s hardbound photobooks starting at $29.99.) Consider too the daily charge to run an obituary in the Mercury News:

• $9.75 per 31 character line, plus
• $117 per day to include a photo.

Assuming you’re also charged for the spaces in your 31 character lines, that’s roughly $850 per day for a 400 word obituary w/ picture. This brief blog post, also with picture (one I enjoyed, and hope you do too), is about that length already. It’s clear obituaries are cash cows for the newspaper industry. What’s not clear is how long people who can get the same information out to a larger audience for free or basically free online will continue writing those checks. One of my favorite Steve Jobs-isms, about the challenges they faced at the beginning of the personal computer era, seems particularly apropos here: “People couldn’t type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.”

Bonus links: Shelley Powers, Death 2.0; Matt Marshall/VentureBeat on ‘Respectance’.

(Image by welovethedark, CC Attribution-2.0)

If you’re doing business on the Live Web, get thee this Wednesday, October 10, to EFF’s Bootcamp, “a one-day session for Web 2.0 workers on user generated content:”

Does your interactive company have to contend with the maze of laws dealing with user privacy and publishing user content? Want to do the right thing by the online community that gives your business value, and still fulfill your legal obligations?

EFF is hosting a one-day session for Web 2.0 workers who handle issues arising from users and user-generated content. From DMCA to CDA to ECPA, the law surrounding internet content can be confusing, especially for the folks who have to decide on the fly whether to let something stay up or take it down, or whether to give their customer’s name to the FBI agent on the phone. Let us help.

This is an incredible and cheap (between $100 - $200) opportunity to learn how to spot and avoid trouble from the best of the best in this field: EFF’s staff attorneys. (If the registration fee is still too rich for your blood, then apply for one of the 20 available Google-sponsored scholarships, explained here.)

I am hard pressed to conceive of a Web-based communication platform, community, or business model that doesn’t need this kind of overview. For nine examples of why, check out Rafe Needleman’s 9 fun ways Web 2.0 startups can commit legal suicide, gleaned from an interview with Fred von Lohmann in conjunction with the upcoming event:

Von Lohmann’s two big takeaways: First, be sure you know when you’re stepping into a danger zone. Music? Financial data? Private information? Kids? Don’t let yourself think you’re more clever than another industry’s legal machine. Second, realize that no matter how hard you try to stay clean, ‘You’re probably doing something wrong already. For the most part it doesn’t matter, but something just might.’

For yet more examples of the legal minefields Web businesses must daily navigate, you might want to eavesdrop on Fred von Lohmann’s IP and Innovation Policy class at Stanford by way of its blog. Bring your Aleve; plenty of brain teasers there.

Bootcamp starts at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday at Fenwick & West in Mountain View. (Brilliant move by the firm, hosting this. I’m sure plenty of Fenwick’s existing clients are thrilled for the opportunity, and once EFF’s staff has had the chance to terrify educate all the non-client attendees, the stampede to sign the firm’s retainer letter will leave some wondering how they wound up in Pamplona.)

(Image by A. www.viajar24h.com, CC Attribution-2.0)

Some very competitively interesting Web companies are being launched and/or featured today and tomorrow at TechCrunch40. In the wrap-up portion of the Community Collaboration session, former Napster executive Don Dodge was quick to note that many of these companies depend on user submissions and uploads to populate their services, and they need to be managing the IP considerations on the front end.

StoryBlender (a project from the creators of Cyworld) provides an online editing tool for collaborative video production. When pressed on the related IP issues, the presenters said they have learned from YouTube’s experiences and will have rigid policies (and presumably technology) in place to block uploading of copyrighted, unlicensed works.

It will be interesting to see whether AOL’s BlueString, which launched today at the conference and offers storage and sharing for photos, videos, and music, will take a similar approach. Its terms unsurprisingly put the copyright compliance obligations on the individual users. It invites users to upload their photos, their videos, and “their music” — though of course, as the ’80’s mix cd graphic now on the homepage suggests, BlueString users are unlikely to have created “their music” themselves, thus putting the service in the likely and unenviable line of fire of the major record labels.

Probably the biggest crowd favorite today was musicshake, a company that aims to change the assumption that a user’s “own music” was not created (at least in part) by the user her/himself. It’s a slick online music creation site, like GarageBand moved to the Web and made very user-friendly. The clips forming the foundation of musicshake creations are all licensed, and the company plans to let users sell their creations, keeping some of the proceeds themselves and kicking some to those providing the clips on which the finished work is built. It would be nice to see musicshake include Creative Commons licensing, but there was no mention of this today.

Two companies who either are or are contemplating offering Creative Commons licensing are docstoc and AOL’s BlueString (mentioned above). docstoc, which blends document storage with sharing and social networking, bakes in Creative Commons licensing à la Flickr, and BlueString’s terms advise users that they “may” have the option to apply a Creative Commons license to what they put on the site.

Remember that between entries here you can keep up with the Live Web (and other) issues I’m spotting by subscribing to my Google Reader Starred Items. Among the links now playing:

California court invalidates Alienware arbitration provision in online terms and conditions, from Internet Cases by Evan Brown

“Among other things, the memorandum suggests that the [U.S. Supreme] Court will begin making electronically-filed briefs available for access over the Court’s own web site“, from How Appealing

“A Quest To Get More Court Rulings, Online and Free”, from The Trademark Blog by Marty

Technophilia: Where to find public records online, from Lifehacker by Wendy Boswell

Drawing That Explains Patent Costs, from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Erik J. Heels

Wired Piece on How to Run a Corporate Blog, from Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel

American Airlines Sues Google Over Keyword Ads, from Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman

Burn the books, brave the blogs, from IP Law Daily by Jeremy

Joining OIN, from Official Google Blog by Karen

Documentary Tests Fair Use, from IP Law Daily by (author unknown)

Social Network Portability: Do We Need a Creative Commons-ish Campaign for Privacy?, from Like It Matters by Brian Oberkirch

Lyrics sites out of tune with copyrights, from ZDNet News - News Page One

Did You Violate Copyright Law Today?, from Law.com - Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs by Carolyn Elefant

Free MySpace Music Downloads?, from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere, August 2007, from Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs by kevin@lexblog.com (Kevin O’Keefe)

Linus on Subversion, GPL3, Microsoft and More, from Slashdot by CmdrTaco

Why watermarking is a bigger devil than DRM, from ZDNet Blogs by George Ou

Remember that between entries here you can keep up with the Live Web (and other) issues I’m spotting by subscribing to my Google Reader Starred Items. Among the links now playing:

Two-word license agreement: “F— YOU!”, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Fair Use for YouTube & MySpace Users, from Slashdot by Zonk

What bloggers should know about copyright protection for their writing and photographs, from IP Law Daily by mamarant

Trademarks FAQ, from Blawg IT-Internet Patent, Trademark and Copyright Issues with Attorney Brett Trout by Brett Trout

Catching Up: Derivative Works and Fair Use, from IPTAblog by Andrew Raff

Avatar Rights, from Wonderland by Alice Taylor

Proposal to Make Suing Anonymous Avatars Harder, from Virtually Blind - Virtual Law | Legal Issues That Impact Virtual Worlds by Benjamin Duranske

Lawsuit Filed Against Second Life Avatar, from Top Tech News by Phil Davis

Prophesies, from Doc Searls Weblog by Doc Searls

A Guide to Google’s APIs, from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

It All Comes Together: The getting good with BitTorrent roundup, from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk31), from TorrentFreak by Ernesto

Stop! Don’t click “I Agree” before you read the Terms of Service, from Yap 3.0 by Robin

YouTube, Google Street View: the copyright, trademark, AND privacy trolls are coming!!, from ZDNet Blogs by Russell Shaw

Getting data OUT of Facebook, from ZDNet Blogs by Dennis Howlett

Electronic Filing Of Copyright Applications Has Arrived (at least for beta testers), from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Aaron Silverstein

Internet Vote-Swapping Legal, Says 9th Circuit, from Threat Level - Wired Blogs by Sarah Lai Stirland

Facebook, Identity, and OpenID, from Ministry of Intrigue by daniel@andrlik.org (Daniel Andrlik)

Let’s kill all the lawyers: web-based negotiation platform seeks to revolutionize the creation of contracts, from Online Guide to Mediation by Diane Levin

Taking Intangible Electronic Files is Criminal Fraud–NM v. Kirby, from Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman

Video Site Veoh Sues To Stop Universal, from Top Tech News by Richard Koman

Surfing your clickstream, from ZDNet Blogs by Ed Gottsman

Hyperlinking & the law: IMPACT guide to the essentials, from IMPACT® by Alex (note the focus of this piece is UK/EU)

“Social Networking 3.0″ was on the agenda this afternoon at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit. This one was a “must watch” for me, as will be Dan Farber’s later today on “The Democratization of Media.” You can follow along with the conference’s live Webcast here.

Moderator Charlene Li, senior analyst for Forrester Research, was joined by Travis Katz, senior vice president and general manager of MySpace International; Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook; Rich Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media and former MySpace executive; Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning; and Karl Jacob, CEO of Wallop. Dan blogged the panel on Between the Lines, and, as he says, most of the discussion focused the future of social networks. I was most interested in the comments concerning social networks and identity, attention, and intellectual property.

On the identity front, Charlene Li stated the truism that maintaining identities across different social networks is “a pain,” and wondered when the social networks we see today will become more open. Facebook’s Dustin Moskovitz recognized that portable identities are necessary, but didn’t go into particulars of how Facebook is or will be addressing this. Rich Rosenblatt said they talk internally at Demand Media about “the portable profile,” and says Demand Media is working on letting users log in with a single profile then select from a mix of options as to where they want to be. (My impression was he was not talking about navigating out of the Demand Media environment.) MySpace’s Travis Katz is interested by the notion of OpenID and a single, portable identity, but thinks it’s “complicated” to make it happen. And Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that social networking users want a single, inflexible identity to follow them around: “Your wakeboarding social network is fundamentally different from your independent journalist one. People in the real world have different sides of themselves that they show to different groups, different people, different communities.” She makes a good point, and I think the digital identity community is on top of that nuance. Though Tantek Çelik Twittered me to ask about their plans, if any, for using microformats as an open portability standard, sadly I didn’t get the nod from the microphone handler. [Update:] See Fred Oliveira: “A good start: A few social networks already have microformatted data on user profiles (Last.FM, Dopplr, Twitter and Cork’d), meaning any other network could easily consume this data when you sign-up, saving you a load of trouble - which is exactly what Dopplr (being smart as it is) does. Now if other networks would tag along, that would be superb.”

Travis Katz, Dustin Moskovitz, Rich Rosenblatt, Gina Bianchini, Karl Jacob

On the attention front, in response to the question “Where’s the money going to come from?” the panelists answered with nearly a single voice: targeted advertising. But transactions based on user desires and intentions are on the radar as well:

Travis Katz: the advertising model on social networks is going to be here a long time. Other models will probably emerge too. MySpace is looking at ecommerce models. You always feel better buying from a trusted source. When you talk about transactions between individuals, there’s a commerce opportunity there too.

Karl Jacob: Wallop is all transaction, no advertising. We believe there’s a world down the road where you buy the things you need to dress up your profile and the applications you want to use. Akin to the ringtone market.

Gina Bianchini: If I had to choose between the ringtone market and targeted advertising, I’d choose targeted advertising. There’s a huge opportunity to bring what is happening with AdWords into social networks. If you take a monetization model that’s working today and generating significant amounts of money, and apply it to a market that is only going to get bigger and more sophisticated as far as targeted advertising, it gets very interesting.

Finally, on the subject of intellectual property, when asked what was missing from the social networking ecosystem and what he would invest in if given the opportunity, Rich Rosenblatt commented on the need for what I would call a “third estate” of media: outside the copyright and use limitations of the products of the big studios, labels, and publishing houses, and yet a step above one person’s photos, films, etc. made primarily for personal use. A class of media produced and designed for Web distribution. Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that “amateur” media can’t comprise this third estate:

Rich Rosenblatt: We’d like to see more content actually made for the Internet. There are two layers of content. Studio generated (lots of trouble and fighting there), and user generated but not usable (one guy’s photos of himself). We’d like to see content that more than a few people want to see.

Gina Bianchini: I would argue that that’s happening today. On YouTube some of that gets lost in the crowd, but put it in a community of really interested people, and it’s very powerful.

Rich Rosenblatt, to Gina: But if you could buy wakeboarding content for your wakeboarding social network, wouldn’t that be great?

Gina Bianchini: From my perspective, one of the benefits of social networks is you and your friends can watch your own stuff. Another benefit is the good stuff rises to the top. I would rather have the material be truly user generated.

Karl Wallop: the good content and the good applications will all come from the current and up and coming generations of users.

I have long thought Creative Commons moves us significantly closer to this third estate media ecosystem, but doesn’t quite take us all the way there. John Palfrey points this out in his post today on blog scraping and the ongoing licensing/compensation gap.

alwayson, alwayson2007

Chris Pirillo is on Pownce at pownce.com/chrispirillo, and has 69 friends. Or wait, that’s not Chris. I can scarcely catalog the related legal considerations, which include:

Can Chris stop someone from using his name and likeness without his consent? Possibly, under right of publicity laws, but the ones I’m most familiar with preclude unauthorized commercial uses, and the jurisdictional variations are a nightmare.

Can’t Chris sue for defamation if someone is falsifying things he supposedly said and did? Perhaps, but parody is a First Amendment defense to defamation.

Is this parody? No one here has identified themselves as the "fake" Chris Pirillo. Under trademark law apparently, “A parody must convey two simultaneous–and contradictory messages; that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody. To the extent that it does only the former but not the latter, it is not only a poor parody but also vulnerable under trademark law, since the consumer will be confused.” From Cliffs Notes, Inc. v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 886 F. 2d 490 (2d Cir. 1989). (Via Chilling Effects) (I’m not sure if the same requirement extends to parody in general, and haven’t quickly found anything on point.)

Does Chris have trademark rights in “Chris Pirillo?” Let’s assume yes. And let’s assume he wanted to put a stop to someone else’s use of pownce.com/chrispirillo. Do anti-cybersquatting laws extend to other level domains? Is something to the right of .com, etc. even an other level domain? Would Chris have recourse against Pownce, the faux Chris Pirillo Pownce user, or both?

How about tags?

(My head hurts.)

Now that I’m smitten with keeping a link blog, I’ll endeavor once a week or so to cull through it for things I think might be of particular interest to Lawgarithms readers. So, here we go. I’m curious whether you find such undertakings useful or not, so there’s a poll on just that subject at the end.

University of Kansas adopts one-strike policy for copyright infringement (Eric Bangeman/Ars Technica), from Techmeme

Report: DVR adoption to surge past 50 percent by 2010, from Digg / Technology

RIAA Accepts $300 Offer of Judgement In Carolina, from Slashdot by kdawson

False Copyright Claims, from Slashdot by kdawson

Judge Says No to RIAA Subpoena Request, from Slashdot by CowboyNeal

Court: Feds can Read E-mail, IP addresses without warrant is Legal, from Digg / Technology

Might Lawyers Adopt ‘Radical Honesty’?, from Law.com - Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs by Robert J. Ambrogi

The “Secondary Liability” Theory on YouTube/iPhone, from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

HOW TO - Put DVDs on the iPhone - the super simple way, from Digg / Technology

Harry Potter Leaked Via Handheld Camera, from Slashdot by kdawson

Rewritable Song Lyrics, from Slashdot by kdawson

The Bar Exam: And You Thought Your State Was Tough, from Abovethelaw.com

Funniest Law Blog, from Blawg Review by Editor

TorrentFreak Under Attack, from Digg / Technology

Dailymotion Loses Court Battle: Pays Damages to Indie Film Producers, from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

Do Legal Blogs Even Matter to Attorneys?, from Sui Generis–a New York law blog by NBlack

Putting Canadian “Piracy” in Perspective - The Sources, from Michael Geist’s Blog by Michael Geist

If These Jurors Could Talk, from Deliberations by Anne Reed

The Flat Legal Blogosphere, and What To Do About It, from Concurring Opinions by hoffman

Music file-sharers get boost in top EU court - Reuters.uk, from Google News - Sci/Tech

Unrelated miscellany, from IPTAblog by Andrew Raff

New EFF tee, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The First Online Law Degree, from Law.com - Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs by Robert J. Ambrogi

Lawrence Lessig, from Planet Intertwingly by Joi

Microsoft Excludes GPLv3 From Linspire Deal, from Slashdot by ScuttleMonkey

Digital Audio from Federal Courts, from The Connected Lawyer by Bryan

But You Can’t Sue A Wire Service On Product Liability Grounds, from The Trademark Blog by Marty

Court decision poses serious privacy threat, from ZDNet Blogs by ZDNet Government

Open source content moves forward, from ZDNet Blogs by Dana Blankenhorn

Advocacy group cites top 50 pirated films, TV shows, from ZDNet News - News Page One by Reuters/Hollywood Reporter, for Reuters

Drawing That Explains Copyright Law, from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Erik J. Heels

Drawing That Explains Patent Laws, from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Erik J. Heels

SimplifyMedia: share iTunes with anyone, anywhere, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

(Internet) users have no “reasonable expectation of privacy”, from Linuxchic.net - Because I Can by linuxchic

Do “Illegal” Codecs Actually Scare Linux Users?, from Slashdot by kdawson

Four things you may not know about technology Patent applications, from ZDNet Blogs by Russell Shaw

Copyright Board Gives Go Ahead to iPod Levy, from Michael Geist’s Blog by Michael Geist

Limewire starts a music blog, from P2P Blog

Where do you prefer your data? At home or on the “Web Cloud”, from Web Strategy by Jeremiah by jeremiah_owyang

Ask.com First Major Search Engine to Allow Deletion of All User Search History, from Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim by andy.beal@gmail.com (Andy Beal)

MPAA Responds to Harry Potter Leak, from TorrentFreak by Ernesto

Richard Stallman Talks on Copyright V. The People, from Slashdot by CowboyNeal

RIAA Admits ‘Stream-ripping’ Is Not a Problem, from Digg / Technology

Webcasting reprieve carries a dangerous payload, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Nearly Ten Percent of Companies Have Fired Bloggers, Survey Claims, from Threat Level - Wired Blogs by Ryan Singel

Facebook and the law, from Vendorprisey by Thomas Otter (via Dan Farber)

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There has been a good deal of violent agreement thus far here at Supernova, but I was pretty surprised at the degree of it we had on the panel I moderated this morning, captioned Will Intellectual Property Kill Social Media? The answer was resoundingly “no,” and the converse also held true: social media won’t kill IP, either. Instead, they’ll find a way to productively co-exist, or so we all seemed to think. In addition to me, “we all” consisted of:

• EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann
• Dabble Founder and CTO Mary Hodder
• Viacom Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mark Morril
• YouTube General Counsel Zahavah Levine
• Morgan Lewis IP partner Ron Dreben

Despite her protestations to the contrary, the BBC’s Alice Taylor took excellent notes of the session so I encourage you to check them out.

I realized about midway through I’ve been in sessions that sounded like this one before — but not at a conference, at a mediation. There was a stunning amount of agreement between Zahavah, Mark, and Fred about things like what should be done about non-transformative, verbatim copies of unlicensed works posted by users simply to make them accessible or more accessible (i.e., rightsholders should have streamlined and effective ways of policing them), and the social importance of the broad-based creativity and communication unleashed by social media tools (i.e., they must be preserved and encouraged to flourish). With all the consensus we had, if I hadn’t known there was a $1 billion lawsuit pending over these issues, if you’d tried to convince me of this afterward I’d have had to laugh in your face.

All of which leads me to shift my personal take on the likely outcome of Viacom v. YouTube: I’m now in the camp of folks convinced this is headed for a business, out-of-court solution. It felt like if we’d had a bit more time and one of those “lawsuit whisperer” mediators, we could have had one today. (Of course, Mark and Zahavah were speaking in their personal capacities, not as official company representatives; yada yada.) Such an outcome might not have the imprimatur of judicial precedent, but might nevertheless have the same kind of domino-tipping impact on similar future disputes.

[tags: supernova2007; viacomvyoutube; intellectualproperty; copyright; socialmedia]