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Federal Appeals Court’s Affirmation That Most New York Rules on Attorney Advertising Are Unconstitutional Likely to Effect Other States

April 3, 2010

New York’s Appellate Division adopted new rules prohibiting certain types of attorney advertising and solicitation, which were to take effect February 1, 2007. The new rules barred testimonials from clients relating to pending matters, portrayals of judges or fictitious law firms, attention-getting techniques unrelated to attorney competence, and trade names or nicknames that imply an ability to get results. The amendments also established a thirty-day moratorium for targeted solicitation following a specific incident, including targeted ads on television or in other media. A New York attorney, along with his law firm and a not-for-profit public interest organization, challenged these provisions as violating the First Amendment. (more…)

Posted under: Civil Practice, Internet Safety | Comments (0)

What a Maroon! Man in Crowded Train Station Loudly Speaks His Name, Social Security Number and Date of Birth into Payphone

March 3, 2010

There I was in the train station, reading the newspaper while waiting for my train, when I heard a man in a loud voice say “Representative”. I turned to see a man using a pay phone and empathized with his plight to get a live person on the other end of the line. But then the man stated and spelled his name for the “representative”, said he was going to give his social security number and then did so in its entirety, and finally blurted out his date of birth. Can anybody say “identity theft”? Yet none of it seemed to phase the man, who was just trying to obtain information about how certain stocks were doing in the market that day. (more…)

Posted under: Civil Practice, Internet Safety | Comments (1)

NYSBA Annual Meeting Hits Hot Topics of Wrongful Convictions and Attorneys’ Use of Social Media

January 30, 2010

The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) had its annual meeting in New York City this week. For the past number of years the meeting has featured a Presidential Summit at which the Bar President chooses hot topics of the day for a distinguished panel to discuss. This year’s topics were wrongful convictions and attorneys’ use of social media, which centered mostly upon issues of privacy and the internet. I was fortunate this year to be able to attend the Presidential Summit for the first time, and it was well worth the time (I shouldn’t say it was well worth the price of admission because attendance was complimentary to meeting registrants). (more…)

Posted under: Events, Internet Safety | Comments (1)

Florida Judges Should Not Be Facebook “Friends” With Lawyers Who Appear Before Them – OK to Be “Fans” During Judicial Elections

December 26, 2009

Florida’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has ruled that judges should no longer “friend” on Facebook lawyers who appear before them. The committee ruled that online “friendships” could create the impression that lawyers are in a special position to influence their judge friends. The committee did conclude that a judge can post comments on another judge’s site and that during judicial elections, a judge’s campaign can have “fans” that include lawyers. Social networking sites such as Facebook were found to be troublesome because the judge selects the lawyer as a part of the group, and has the right to approve or reject the lawyer’s being listed in the group. (more…)

Posted under: Internet Safety, Motor vehicle accidents | Comments (0)

Woman Convicted of Computer Fraud After MySpace Taunts Leads to Young Girl’s Suicide

November 28, 2008

The woman accused of using MySpace to bully a vulnerable teenage girl who subsequently killed herself has been found guilty of three misdemeanor charges. Lori Drew created a fake MySpace profile in the name of Josh Evans and used the persona to flirt with a thirteen year old girl named Megan Meier, who her daughter had previously fallen out with. After weeks of flirting Drew then sent her message which said: “You’re a shitty person, and the world would be a better place without you in it.” About 20 minutes later, Tina Meier found her daughter hanging from her belt in her bedroom closet. She died at the hospital the next day. (more…)

Posted under: Civil Practice, Internet Safety, Sexual Misconduct Comments Off

“Google Transit” To Help Customers Navigate New York City Transit System, But At What Cost to the Privacy of Its Customers?

September 23, 2008

This is cool! Google Transit, a feature of the Google Maps online mapping service, provides point-to-point public transit trip planning. Google Transit will now allow travelers to access streamlined, regional trip-planning based on up-to-date schedule data across the subway, bus and rail systems, including walking directions for the beginning or end of the trip. The new service will include transit services throughout the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) service territory including: New York City Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, MTA Bus, Long Island Bus and Staten Island Railway, as well as other regional connecting services participating in the initiative, such as New Jersey Transit, the Port Authority’s AirTrain and Staten Island Ferry. (more…)

Posted under: Consumer Issues, Internet Safety | Comments (0)

They’re Marketing Prescription Medications to Our Children in Our Schools

August 27, 2008

Advocates for children are upset that Alloy Media and Marketing has run ads for prescription drugs from its Channel One website. Channel One provides free news and original programming to about 10,000 middle and high schools. Channel One is, in the opinion of many, a controversial in-school news program that makes viewing ads a compulsory part of the school day for grades six through twelve. One of Channel One’s drug ads links to Acneheroes.com, a kid-targeted website created by the pharmaceutical company sanofi-aventis to promote BenzaClin, a prescription drug for acne. The website features actor Cody Linley, who introduces himself as one of the stars of Hannah Montana, (more…)

Posted under: Consumer Issues, Internet Safety, Pharmaceuticals | Comments (0)

Do You You Know What “Hash Value” Is? New York State Uses It to Combat Child Pornography on the Internet

July 21, 2008

Every online picture has a unique “Hash Value” that, once identified and collected, can be used to digitally match the same image anywhere else it is distributed. It is analagous to a fingerprint. As part of an undercover investigation, the New York State Attorney General’s office built a library of the Hash Values for images identified as being child pornography, enabling investigators to filter through tens of thousands of online files at a time, speedily identifying which Internet Service Providers were providing access to child pornography images. This led to five of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers (”ISPs”), AT&T, AOL, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to reach an agreement with the New York State Attorney General’s office to shut down major sources of online child pornography. (more…)

Posted under: Consumer Issues, Internet Safety, Sexual Misconduct | Comments (0)

Governor Paterson Busy Protecting Citizens from Harmful Doctors, Drugs, Toys and Sexual Predators – Part 2

May 22, 2008

Part 2 of this topic discusses new legislation regarding dangerous drugs, defective toys and sexual predators using the internet to prowl and prey. The information herein is set forth in press releases issued by the governor’s office. Proposed legislation designed to protect patients from medical malpractice was discussed in Part 1 of this blog. (more…)

Posted under: Children's Toys, Consumer Issues, Dangerous Products, Internet Safety, Medical Malpractice, Pharmaceuticals, Sexual Misconduct | Comments (0)

Governor Paterson Busy Protecting Citizens from Harmful Doctors, Drugs, Toys and Sexual Predators – Part 1

May 20, 2008

Last week was a busy week for New York’s Governor David A. Paterson on issues often written about in this blog – medical malpractice, dangerous drugs, defective toys and sexual predators using the internet. Some bills were signed, others introduced. The most ambitious of these was on the medical malpractice front, Governor Paterson proposed legislation that offers more transparency for patients and tougher discipline for physicians; enhanced infection control requirements will facilitate the prevention of and response to infectious disease transmissions. Part 1 will discuss this legislation, Part 2 the others. The information herein is set forth in press releases issued by the governor’s office. (more…)

Posted under: Children's Toys, Consumer Issues, Dangerous Products, Internet Safety, Medical Malpractice, Pharmaceuticals, Sexual Misconduct | Comments (0)