theWHIR.com Blogs - David Snead

What is a blogger

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:33:41 -0400

By David Snead The New Jersey Superior Court recently determined that an individual commenting on a blogged news story was not entitled to the protection of the state's shield laws that allow reporters to refuse to disclose their sources. This case is very interesting because it provides real insight into the difficulty courts have applying laws based on physical media to the virtual world. It is also interesting to hosts since it discusses allegations of defamation - which hosts must deal with on a daily basis. While the facts of the matter are not clearly set out in the decision, it appears that the defendant was a participant in a message board, and allegedly defamed the plaintiff in several of her posts on the board. She then invoked the journalist shield law to avoid disclosing her sources. The court was forced to analyze whether her conduct fell within a law written with traditional media in mind.

More on the CDA

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:57:32 -0400

By David Snead The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently handed down an interesting decision in Barnes v. Yahoo. While the facts underlying the dispute are disturbing, they are, unfortunately, all too common occurrences for hosts. Ms. Barnes broke up with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend then decided to post indecent pictures of her on a Yahoo site, and solicit partners for Ms. Barnes in on-line chats, sending the partners to Ms. Barnes' office and house. Ms. Barnes contacted Yahoo and followed Yahoo's procedures to delete the profile, and take other administrative action. Yahoo dropped the ball several times, leaving the profile up in spite of repeated assurances that it would be deleted. Yahoo only deleted the profile when Ms. Barnes filed suit against the company.

Lesson 3: Whose Law Governs?

Tue, 19 May 2009 11:36:09 -0400

By David Snead My past two blog entries, and my next three, are based on my presentation at WebHostingDay in March. Right now, I'm in Prague, at the Cloud Computing Expo, and here, like at WHD, the most questions I got dealt with "whose law applies?" This is a topic that lawyers and scholars can debate until even the worst insomniac gives into sleep.

Lesson 2: Working with U.S. lawyers

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:07:49 -0400

By David Snead One of the hardest things for non-U.S. companies to understand is how to work with U.S. lawyers. Like it or not, in the U.S. business does not generally get done without the assistance of a lawyer. Unlike in most other countries, U.S. lawyers play a role as a counselor, advocate and legal advisor. In most other countries, lawyers tend to focus solely on interpreting the law. In many cases, this role works to the benefit of non-us companies. Chosen correctly, your lawyer will not only be a subject matter expert on the legal issues facing your business, they will also have a good idea who are the major players in your industry (at least in the U.S.), have negotiated with them before, and can advise you whether the business terms you are getting are standard for your industry. Because there are so many lawyers in the U.S., we tend to have pretty specialized practices, or practice area. As a result, it is generally relatively easy to find a lawyer who has handled your issue before, and is active in your industry.

Doing business in the U.S. #1

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:56:52 -0400

By David Snead I recently gave a presentation on the "Five legal issues you must understand when doing business in the U.S. at Web Hosting Day. In the next five blog posts, I'm going to summarize my points. For those of you who are interested in hearing them in person, I will be presenting a version of this presentation in mid-May at the Cloud Computing Expo in Prague. Lesson #1: Contracts are Interpreted by the Terms.

We're from the government. We're here to help.

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:50:39 -0500

By David Snead Given that a lot of people are in Redmond this week, I thought it would be a good time to post an observation I made about Microsoft while attending the Parallels summit. To put it in lawyerspeak: what's up with Microsoft? One of the first groups of people I met at the Monday networking reception was a group of Microsoft license enforcement employees (my term, not theirs). This group works with you when you come out of compliance with your Microsoft agreements. This group said that they were at the event to answer people's questions about their licenses.

Does size matter?

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:18:37 -0500

By David Snead One of Serguei's points during today's Parallels' summit keynote dealt with "competing with the big boys." This is a prominent topic at most hosting gatherings. So I'll bite, how do you compete with the big boys? Well given that I'm a lawyer, let's start by deconstructing the term "big boys," "hosting giants," or whatever term you want to give them. How do you measure "big?" Is it number of customers, servers, ad pages in the WHIR, number of Super Bowl ads, domains registered, number of people who want to have dinner with you at HostingCon, or valuation? It honestly seems to be whatever standard you need to choose to make your point.

Legal Issues in Virtualization

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:01:00 -0500

By David Snead I'll be giving an online presentation on legal issues related to virtualization today at 2:45 PST. The presentation will cover three different virtualization topics: server virtualization, application virtualization and virtualization of the desktop.

Own your own jet

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:49:00 -0500

By David Snead Today at the Virtualization and Cloud Computing Expo, Songnian Zhou made the analogy that traditional server allocation is like owning your own jet: traditionally, each company owns its own servers, because every once in a while, they need the full capacity; similarly, you can own your own jet, because every once in a while you need to go somewhere. Each may be an example of poor resource allocation. This is a great analogy. I spoke yesterday on the topic of legal risks inherent in virtualization and cloud/grid computing. One of the most important issues I asked attendees to consider, was the fact that they would be using distributed computing assets, as would their customers. This shared use of resources requires a different legal analysis.

Happy Birthday DMCA

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:12:00 -0500

By David Snead The DMCA has been around for 10 years now. It remains as controversial as it has ever been. The most controversial aspects of the Act, the anti-circumvention provisions, don't generally apply to hosts. The "notice and takedown" aspects of the Act do. In spades.The DMCA, for all its flaws,has made life a bit easier for hosts. Prior to the DMCA, hosts were often faced with lawsuits arguing that they were liable as third party infringers for the content of their customers. With the DMCA, as long as you comply with the Act, you fall within a "Safe Harbor," insulating you from liability.