Legal Landmines in Mocial Media

Legal Landmines in “Mocial” Marketing (Mobile, social, private, direct)

BIG Event

October 20, 2011

Notes taken by: Brittany Box, Fortalice, LLC.

Executive Summary: Social media platform-based and mobile app/device marketing from a legal perspective. How to use these tools effectively and legally.

Speaker: David Almeida, Partner, Sedgewick LLP, Chicago

Some Main notes:

· we need to be utilizing proactive data security in the legal sense

· Protecting yourself from opportunistic plaintiff lawyers

· Mobile (SMS, m-sites, apps, e-commerce):

o Laws, lawsuits, ways to defend, ways to avoid

o Increasing focus on privacy—not federal law (yet), 46 different state laws

· Protecting yourself from opportunistic plaintiff lawyers

· Video Privacy Protection Act, Robert Bork ex.

· Courts have rejected many mobile marketing class action lawsuits due to ill-fitting law lags on technology

· Laws either implicitly or explicitly regulate particular channels of marketing

o Ie. The FTC Act (Section 5), State Unfair & Deceptive Practices Act

· Be transparent: make informed disclosures as to what you will do with customer data

o Protect customers’ data

o Give choice in terms of timing and method of engagement

o Provide clear and conspicuous notice to customers of what will be done and how

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA): passed in 1991, deals with direct marketing via calls, faxes, and text messages, class action lawsuits

o Claims pertaining to this are typically filed in state court

-SMS, MMS, etc…. mobile is “the new beast”

o Requires affirmative consent

o Lack of sufficient space for adequate disclosures (are hash tags good enough?)

o Absence of uniform national regulations or laws

Cost- consumers complain that unlike other forms of DM, SMS actually