As Twitter reveals a user’s identity, what now for free speech?

Twitter’s controversial decision to reveal an anonymous user’s identity is a wake-up call to social media users everywhere that they really have to think twice before posting.

Remember the old sayings, "there’s many a slip between cup and lip" or "loose lips sink ships"? Many of us grew up in an age where discretion was a cherished quality.

However, the rise and rise of social media in the last six years changed everything and the ability to update your status on Facebook or post a tweet on Twitter saying exactly what’s on your mind or what you think of so and so on the box has created a sort of psychological compulsion to say it, no matter what ‘it’ is.

We all do this: you could be watching the news, a weekend talk show or a current affairs show and religiously – because our social bubble (in our heads) expects it – you blast off that tweet excoriating the host’s lack of comic timing or the views of a politician or the lousy lip-synching of a pop star. It’s about saving social face, but it’s an invisible compulsion, you begin to value your worth by your output and the ensuing ripples and reactions.

Well, that’s over.

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Source: Silicon Republic
By: John Kennedy

#Winning the Battle with Social Media and Electronic Discovery

It seems all too easy to poke fun at Charlie Sheen’s antics of late. And, while they serve as cautionary tales in numerous contexts, his use of social media to launch his “tiger blood” fueled rampage against his former employer may mean that these rants may actually turn into evidence someday soon in his breach of contract action. On one hand, his public meltdown was surely a high water mark for social media as a window into the real-time (can’t look away) train wreck that is now Mr. Sheen’s career. After all, he now has over 3 million Twitter followers and for those who don’t expressly follow his now infamous rants (e.g.,“#winning”) other media outlets stand by to repost and re-tweet every scintillating (less than 140 character) proclamation.

For those who think that they’d prefer to have less Sheen in their daily diets, let’s use his 15 minutes of über-fame to examine the impact of social media on the traditionally email oriented electronic discovery process we’ve all come to know and love. On balance, while the electronic discovery and regulatory issues are all fundamentally the same, the social media genre does genuinely pose a range of tactical and strategic challenges.

Accept Reality and Plan Accordingly

For many organizations, it’s easy to exhale as they’ve finally reigned in some of the email chaos during the 2000s. But, this small victory in the larger information management war has been eclipsed by new challenges posed by social media. The problem isn’t just that the types (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) are increasing at a mind numbing speed, but the volumes of accumulated data (1 billion tweets per week) is also proliferating wildly. A recent article published under the Sedona Conference’s aegis, The Impact of the Internet and Social Media on Records and Information Management: Unexpected Bedfellows Highlight the Need for Effective Information Management –Now More than Ever points out:

“Most commentators agree that, if social networks in the workplace are inevitable, corporations must resign themselves to the inevitable and prepare accordingly. …

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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Dean Gonsowski

EU’s Privacy Law on Cookies May Trigger Confusion

European Union data privacy rules forcing companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. to seek consent before targeting users with online advertising may sow confusion because of national differences in the way they are applied.

A day before countries are meant to put in place a 2009 law including restrictions on so-called cookies, industry groups and lawyers say it’s unclear how the rules will be implemented across the 27-nation region.

“What we see is that the member states transpose it in a totally fragmented manner,” said Kimon Zorbas, vice-president of IAB Europe, a digital advertising group whose members include Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) The law’s text, which is a mixture of old and amended articles, is “quite messy” which in turn “brings huge legal uncertainty in the markets and nervousness” as to which rights apply when doing business across the EU, he said.

The EU is cracking down on companies invading Web users’ privacy, by promising people more control over their data and harsher sanctions, including criminal penalties, against violations. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook Inc., the top social-networking service, are among several Internet companies under scrutiny for possible privacy-rule breaches.

Under the new e-privacy law, technology companies will be obliged to get user consent whenever they want to store or access data on a computer for a service the user hasn’t explicitly requested. The consent requirement affects the use of cookies, which are small data files that track browsing habits and can help online advertisers figure out which ads work with which Internet users.

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Source: bloomberg.com
By: Stephanie Bodoni

Make Partner Through One Simple Discovery Request

Before April 20, it was easy to feel fungible as an associate. The hours were long. The tasks were menial. The ingenuity in cases came from senior members of the legal team -- lawyers whose decades of experience taught them how to develop the complex, creative factual and legal arguments that eventually won the case. Sure, associates tended to be technologically savvy, but that ultimately was more parlor trick than substantive help to the case.

But on April 20, the technology gods evened the playing field. On that fateful day, lawyers learned that many of the most commonly used smartphones appear to track their owners' locations.

Although the details are still emerging, here is what we know, from an April 20 article from the technology website O'Reilly Radar: A software "glitch" in the Apple iPhone and perhaps other smartphones results in the phone's location being tracked and stored in a data file on the phone. Unless the smartphone is "jailbroken" (don't ask if you don't know) or the software hasn't been updated in a year or more, there is no way to enable or disable the tracking feature; if the phone is on, location tracking is on.

The data file is highly detailed -- early reports suggest that the tracking file is updated erratically but frequently enough to meaningfully track the owner's movements. The data file is stored on the phone in an unencrypted format and is so easily decipherable that multiple programs already have been developed (at least one is available for free on the internet) to plot the data from the tracking file onto local, regional, or national maps to facilitate the analysis of the data. If the smartphone is backed up to a computer, a copy of the tracking file exists on the computer, as well.

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Source: law.com
By: Kip Mendrygal

Who's responsible for personal data in cloud computing?

You and your Saas, Paas and IaaS providers

When processing personal data in the cloud, who's responsible for data integrity and security? Who's liable for any data loss or security breach?

Cloud customers

A business holding personal data about other people, eg its customers, is "controller" of that data under the EU Data Protection Directive (DPD).

If it chooses to store or work on that personal data in the cloud, it remains controller. It can't offload its data protection law responsibilities just by putting the data into the cloud.

That much is clear.

(Note. I'll assume that all cloud customers discussed below are "controllers" under the DPD, and aren't exempt eg because they're holding personal data for purely personal, not business, purposes. Also, only controllers with certain EEA connections are within the DPD's scope. I'll cover the required connections in a future article, but when controllers are mentioned below, I assume that they have that connection.)

Cloud services providers

What about providers of cloud services?

Now, a cloud provider is "controller" of its human customers' personal data, whether obtained in the sign-up process or from their use of its service. (I say "human" because most EU states give data protection law rights only to humans, not non-individuals like companies.)

The more interesting and difficult question is, what's the provider's position if its customer uses its service to process other people's personal data, eg of the customer's own customers?

The now well-known key categories of these services are IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. But it's important to note that cloud services can be "stacked" or layered.

An internet startup offering SaaS applications or services online, eg contacts management or photo sharing, could develop and deliver its services using a third party's IaaS or PaaS behind the scenes, instead of its own servers. Many have.

One questions there is, to what extent is the SaaS provider responsible for personal data processed via its service by its own customers? But a further question is, to what extent is the IaaS or PaaS provider responsible for personal data processed via its services by the SaaS provider, or indeed by the SaaS provider's customers?

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Source: blogs.computerworld.co.uk
By: Kuan Hon

Do what you do best and outsource everything else

Back in 2007, when newspapers first came under heavy siege from the effects of the Internet, media analyst and provocateur Jeff Jarvis came up with a simple rule that news organizations could follow: “Do what you do best, and link to the rest.”

Traditionally, newspapers expended vast resources in order to be everywhere and report everything to all people. Among other things, that resulted in widespread duplication of news stories. Editors, he said, should look at other news stories and ask, “Could we do that better?” If the answer is no, link to that other story and focus your time and efforts on what you and your staff can do extremely well.

The legal marketplace is about to adopt the principles of “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” And it’s going to change the nature of law firms.

Lawyers tend to assume that they’re the best qualified people for any given task, whether trained for it or not. Law firms tend to compensate lawyers on a time-and-effort basis, motivating lawyers to personally carry out as much work as possible. These two tendencies have led law firms to try doing everything themselves in-house, including many tasks beneath lawyers’ talents and experience.

Picture an automotive plant that forges its own steel or crafts its own satellite radios on the premises, rather than contracting with specialized suppliers for these products. Picture a movie studio that keeps all its actors and crew members on full-time payroll, rather than hiring specific people for specific film projects. Picture a newspaper that maintains a full-time news bureau in every world capital, rather than using wire services when necessary.


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Source: The Lawyers Weekly
By: Jordan Furlong

Don't gamble your company's reputation on data governance

Over the last two decades, the primary contribution of information technologies in firms has been about efficiency and enablement: to improve processes, make people more productive, reduce time to market, or enable things that couldn't be done previously. The focus has been on costs and payoffs. This decade is witnessing a new challenge: data. There is suddenly too much of it, and while firms rush to mine it, they do so without adequate regard for the risks in keeping and using it.

Hardly a week goes by without yet another major breach or scandal involving data. The last month has been particularly bad. Tom Tom sold location data to law enforcement without asking its consumers, Apple has been gathering consumer movement and use data on its devices, while >Epsilon and Sony were hacked, with sensitive data on hundreds of millions of individuals stolen. Despite reassurances from these companies, it is hard to be certain whether and when this data will be misused. More importantly, the reputations of these companies have been badly damaged.

Are these incidents any different in terms of potential impacts on franchises from product recalls due to defects in industrial products? Not really. And perhaps some companies are beginning to realize this. Indeed, one major positive development from the Sony fallout has been the creation by the company of a "Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)". This is a laudable step that others should follow. But it doesn't go far enough in acknowledging the real problem.

Sony and many other firms view the security and use of data as a technical problem. But in fact, the governance of data is a management problem. The lapses we are seeing are not technical ones, but failures in management. Where data is the lifeblood of commercial activity, its management in many industries must reside in the C-suite, not in the trenches.

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Source: goodgearguide.com.au
By: Vasant Dhar and Arun Sundararajan

Why we chose Exchange Online, not Google Apps

The City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has never owned an Exchange server, but starting on Memorial Day it will roll out Exchange and Outlook e-mail for 2,700 of its workers.

Winston-Salem - population 230,000 - is yet another in a recent spate of city governments that have chosen to move to a cloud service for e-mail and collaboration. With tighter budgets than most corporations, government agencies have been the first wave of cloud adopters, setting off a war for Uncle Sam's business between Google (Google Apps) and Microsoft (Office 365).

Phase one of Winston-Salem's cloud strategy: Move to Exchange/Outlook Online after many years of using Novell Groupwise for e-mail and collaboration and Novell ZENworks for desktop management.

"Groupwise is a good e-mail platform, but there have been support issues and Groupwise only works with BlackBerry smartphones, which is a limitation," says Winston-Salem CIO Dennis Newman.

"Outlook is well-accepted. Most of our employees have used Outlook before."

Of the 2,700 seats that Winston-Salem is deploying, 2,100 are fully-functional desktops and 600 are "deskless" workers - labor positions like sanitation pickup and landfill workers - who don't have desks but still need occasional e-mail and network access.

Winston-Salem tested out Google Apps and Gmail on these deskless workers as a way to evaluate Google's cloud service without having to make the full commitment.

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Source: cio.com.au
By: Shane O'Neill

E-Discovery Market Predicted to Reach $1.5B in 2013

The worldwide electronic discovery market saw revenue of $889 million in 2009 and will reach $1.5 billion in 2013, technology research firm Gartner predicted this month.

Upcoming trends in vendor consolidation, industry standards, and a focus on data integration will all be signs of a maturing and increasingly mainstream market, Gartner analysts John Bace and Debra Logan said in their May 13 report, "Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software."

The analysts see five leaders in e-discovery: Autonomy, Clearwell Systems, FTI Technology, Guidance Software and kCura. Autonomy and Clearwell both expanded further last week, with the former buying much of archiving specialist Iron Mountain's product lineup on Monday for $380 million and the latter being acquired by data management giant Symantec on Thursday for $390 million.

A quarter of all e-discovery companies will be consolidated by 2014, Bace and Logan said, and mainstream IT companies are expected to get involved. "We've had interest from [Hewlett-Packard], as they've announced information governance at least," via a partnership with Clearwell established in January 2008, Logan said. "Will Oracle do something? And certainly anyone who sells storage will have to do something with this," along with Microsoft which already has email archiving technology, she said.

Bace and Logan also said customers should pay attention to challengers EMC, IBM, and Nuix. (They also put Symantec in the challengers category, but its situation may change because of the Clearwell deal, and a new report about that is being prepared, they said.

Likely acquisitions targets include the companies in Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner's industry visionaries category -- AccessData Group, CaseCentral, Catalyst Repository Systems, CommVault, Exterro, Recommind and ZyLab, Logan added.

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Source: law.com
By: Evan Koblentz

Symantec Moves Further Into E-Discovery With Acquisition

Adding Clearwell Systems' platform will bolster its Enterprise Vault product.

Symantec agreed to acquire Clearwell Systems on Thursday for $390 million, in a move that adds electronic discovery tools to Symantec's offerings.

Clearwell has more than 400 customers and 75 partners in 14 countries. It's e-discovery platform is a well-regarded product in the fast growing e-discovery space, and Symantec's move will add to its previous (although somewhat basic) e-discovery product called Enterprise Vault. Enterprise Vault is primarily an archiving and assessment e-discovery tool.

Clearwell's product will give Symantec end-to-end e-discovery capabilities by addressing the electronic discovery reference model (EDRM) areas of preservation, identification and collection, processing and analysis, review and production, and case management and reporting.

"Clearwell brings the full end-to-end EDRM," said Brian Dye, VP of Symantec's information management group, in an InformationWeek interview. "We only had the first part--literarily the information governance side and though our archiving technology the ability to capture the information and store it effectively. We had some early case assessment, but the rest of the legal review and processing capability is what Clearwell brings."

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Source: informationweek.com
By: Chandler Harris

Court Orders Payment of E-Discovery Costs Pursuant to Title 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4)

Race Tires Amer., Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire, Corp., No. 2:07-cv-1294, 2011 WL 1748620 (W.D. Pa. May 6, 2011)

Following summary judgment, the Clerk of Court issued his Taxation of Costs which allowed for recovery of defendants’ e-discovery costs. Plaintiffs objected, arguing that such costs were not taxable pursuant to Title 28 U.S.C. § 1920 and sought review of the issue. Following careful analysis, the court upheld the determination of the Clerk of Court.

Defendants in this antitrust case were granted summary judgment upon the court’s determination that plaintiffs failed to establish they had “sustained an antitrust injury.” Following the subsequent appeal (in which defendants prevailed), defendants each filed a Bill of Costs “in which the majority of amounts requested involve[d] e-discovery costs.” Plaintiffs objected but were overruled and the Clerk of Court thereafter issued his Taxation of Costs which allowed for defendants’ recovery of their e-discovery costs in a reduced amount. Plaintiffs

sought review.

The court first established that its review of the Taxation of Costs would be de novo and identified the relevant statute at issue, which allows assessment of costs including, “fees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case.” The court went on to note that “[a] finding that costs incurred were ‘necessary’ to the proceedings requires more than mere assertions from the party requesting payment” and that “[t]he dividing line between ‘necessary’ and ‘for the convenience of counsel' . . . is not particularly well established.”

The court then turned to its discussion of the present case and established that at the outset of litigation the parties anticipated that “discovery would be in the form of electronically stored information (“ESI”)” and entered into a detailed Case Management Order requiring production in a specific format and according to specific parameters.

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Source: ediscoverylaw.com

Attorneys Who Work in the 'Cloud' May Get ABA Wake-Up Call With Proposed Rules

For lawyers struggling to cut costs and boost efficiency, Internet-based data storage and client service has been a popular alternative. But those who have their heads in the clouds when it comes to client confidentiality concerns may get a wake-up call by the American Bar Association.

The ABA's Commission on Ethics 20/20 has issued proposed changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct designed to remind lawyers of the need to safeguard client confidentiality when engaging in "cloud computing," a phrase that refers to storing, managing and processing data on remote Internet servers rather than on a personal computer.

Proposed rules would require lawyers to take reasonable steps to stay abreast of the benefits and risks associated with technology used by Dropbox and other popular cloud computing services.

The rules changes, which would have to be adopted by individual states, are part of a review of Internet-based client service and marketing by lawyers. Also coming are guidelines on lawyer use of social media, blogs and websites.

Commission member Frederick S. Ury, a partner at Ury & Moskow in Fairfield, Conn., said the recommendations strike a balance between the legal profession's need to tap the benefits of technology while protecting clients.

"We should look at the rules as they exist to at least give lawyers some guidance as to how they should operate," Ury said. "The rules should not be constructed in such a way that it prevents lawyers from taking advantage of new technologies to have their practices be more efficient. We were very, very careful to try to balance those two."

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Source: law.com
By: Marie P. Grady

New Views From the Bench of E-Discovery at LegalTech

What do judges see during electronic discovery when they see a motion to compel responded to by a paralegal for the organization -- or a vendor? The answer is a far from flattering portrait -- not of paralegals or of vendors -- but of the legal team and the case they're bringing before the court.

That question represented the first glimpse of "The View From the Bench -- Why the Legal Industry Needs to Change and Embrace Technology," the second plenary session at LegalTech West Coast 2011, presided over by U.S Magistrate Judges Suzanne H. Segal and Jay C. Gandhi, both of the Central District of California.

It would seem obvious that such a declaration should be written by a lawyer or an expert consultant. But the judges presented this document as the kind of unnecessary error they see far too often during the discovery process.

As Segal admitted: "Like all judges, we know very little about technology." The onus of technological expertise is on the shoulders of those on the other side of the bench: when it comes to preservation and production, you'd better make it clear how you've met your e-discovery obligations and you'd better make it concise or face the consequences. Gandhi iterated, "I come from the world of private practice, so I firmly believe in sanctions."

Segal recommended that rather than fall prey to preservation not acting fast enough and not acting broad enough, err on the side of caution if you want to impress the court. Craft a litigation hold in memo format -- two pages that talk about the litigation and identify the appropriate people. And have a follow-up plan about what to do with the existing information.

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Source: law.com
By: Michael Roach

Twitter Brands, @OMGFacts, and an Allegedly “Predatory” Contract

Imagine that you have nearly 1.9 million Twitter followers. In your attorney’s words, you tweet about “retrieved and republished titillating, sometimes trivial, factual tidbits such as celebrities, pop culture, world history, and commerce.” Your followers include “many celebrities.” In other words, you’ve built a brand, and a very successful one at that. And then, you allege, someone pulled the rug out from under your feet.

Adorian Deck, who turns 18 on May 22, created the Twitter feed @OMGFacts in September 2009. As of the date and time of this posting, Deck has 1,857,639 followers. A Google search for the sequence of letters “omg” reveals the following URL as the fourth result: http://omg-facts.com, which falls under the umbrella of the Spartz Network, a name that figures prominently here and leverages the OMG Facts brand. The power of the brand may well be evidenced by the fact that when I viewed the site within the past hour, a highly respected legal electronic discovery vendor was advertising in the headline banner.

According to a lawsuit filed against Spartz, Inc. in federal court in the Eastern District of California, Deck used OMG Facts to “denote his distinctive online products and services such that ‘OMG Facts’ has become publicly associated exclusively” with him. OMG Facts, Deck’s attorney argues, in essence became his unregistered trademark under the common (non-statutory) law.

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Source: blogs.forbes.com
By: Ben Kerschberg

In House E-discovery Requires Cross-functional Cooperation

Lora Bentley spoke with Amanda Berger, who heads the Guidance Software Advisory Program, about what it takes to build an in-house e-discovery process and bring together the team to carry it out.

Bentley: I read that Guidance has been involved in helping companies bring e-discovery efforts in house. How long has that trend been developing?

Berger: In the last 8 months to a year we started seeing a lot of requests from large-scale retailers, or banks, or insurance companies that wanted us to come in and help them figure out how to manage both the organization and their data to really create consistent policies and procedures that can be run out of one central area any time they have litigation or other kinds of discovery needs. To me it’s a really exciting trend, because it means that companies are taking e-discovery seriously.

Bentley: Who’s driving it? Legal departments?

Berger: I see it being mostly IT-driven, actually. The CIOs in the large-scale companies have started to organize their IT departments into different shared services groups. That way, disparate groups within the company have one place to go with whatever IT needs they have.

Bentley: That’s interesting. So when the customer comes to you with this kind of request, what’s your process? What comes first?

Berger: Well, it’s typically IT-sponsored, but there’s also a need for many different kinds of resources when we start one of these. Legal needs to be involved, as does security. So it often ends up being a collaborative, cross-functional organization.

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Source: itbusinessedge.com
By: Lora Bentley

Here’s Yet Another Headache for Cloud-Computing Providers: Liability

Sony (SNE) announced that it would start to restore its PlayStation Network, following cyberattacks that compromised the personal data of 100 million user accounts. Now it turns out Sony has Amazon (AMZN) to thank for the attacks, at least indirectly. Someone set up a fake-name account with the company’s EC2 cloud service and used Amazon’s massive computing power to wreak havoc.

It’s easy to focus on the impacts on Amazon’s customers and on Sony. But let’s talk potential liability instead. When individuals and companies get hurt, they want someone else to pay, and cloud vendors are frequently the ones wearing the targets. That could mean some major business problems for cloud vendors — even those who don’t consider themselves cloud vendors at the moment.

The cloud as liability

Not that lawsuits have started flying quite yet. But cloud vendors seem to be going out of their way to attract them. Last month, for instance, Amazon’s cloud service had a massive service outage that temporarily crippled such high-profile Web 2.0 businesses as Foursquare, Reddit, and Quora. And this isn’t a one-time event. The same thing happened in 2007, when another Amazon EC2 outage permanently lost some customer data.

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Source: bnet.com

By: Erik Sherman

Court Orders Cooperation to Create ESI Protocol and Re-Production of ESI in Searchable Format

In re Facebook PPC Adver. Litig., No. C09-3043 JF (HRL), 2011 WL 1324516 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 6, 2011)

In this case, the court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel Facebook’s participation in the creation of an ESI Protocol, despite Facebook’s resistance, and ordered that Facebook re-produce ESI in native format. The court also prohibited Facebook’s use of Watchdox.com, a website on which Facebook had made available responsive documents, subject to its significant control (e.g., uploaded documents could not be printed and Facebook was able to track which documents had been reviewed and by whom).

Following several discovery-related disputes, plaintiffs sought to compel Facebook’s participation in the creation of an ESI Protocol “that would ‘set forth the manner and form of electronic production, including an agreement on search words or phrases, custodians, time frame and/or terms that Facebook will employ in producing ESI ….’” Facebook resisted and argued that there was “no basis” for the court to “impose ‘rigid[,] up-front requirements that [P]laintiffs are demanding'” and stated “concern” that “forcing the parties to try to anticipate and address all potential issues on the form of electronic production would likely have the result of frustrating and slowing down the discovery process.”

Rejecting Facebook’s arguments, the court reasoned that “[t]he argument that an ESI Protocol cannot address every single issue that may arise is not an argument to have no ESI Protocol at all” and that “the clear thrust of the discovery-related rules, case law, and commentary suggests that ‘communication among counsel is crucial to a successful electronic discovery process.’” Accordingly, the parties were ordered to meet and confer to agree to an ESI Protocol that would address both the format of production and search terms.

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Source: ediscoverylaw.com

EU to review data protection laws

Wants to be cloud-active.

The European Commission has sought feedback from cloud providers and web users for an upcoming strategy paper which could set the stage for an overhaul of the continent’s data protection laws.

The study will cover views on data protection and liability in cross-boarder situations, legal and technical barriers that can slow down European cloud developments, interoperability, SME take-up and ways to promote innovation.

The strategy will aim to “clarify the legal conditions for the take-up of cloud computing in Europe”.

Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president for the EU’s Digital Agenda initiative was excited about the potential for cloud computing to cut costs.

“We need a well-defined cloud computing strategy to ensure that we make the best use of this potential,” she said.

At a recent Microsoft conference, Kroes argued that changing cloud providers should be as easy as switching mobile phone operators, and hoped Europe could turn its data protection regime into a "competitive advantage" for cloud investments.

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Source: itnews.com.au
By: Liam Tung

Clouding The Issue

New rules could complicate firms’ use of online data storage

For lawyers struggling to cut costs and boost efficiency, Internet-based data storage and client service has been a popular alternative. But those who have their heads in the clouds when it comes to client confidentiality concerns may get a wake-up call by the American Bar Association.

The ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 has issued proposed changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct designed to remind lawyers of the need to safeguard client confidentiality when engaging in “cloud computing,” a phrase that refers to storing, managing and processing data on remote Internet servers rather than on a personal computer.

Proposed rules would require lawyers to take reasonable steps to stay abreast of the benefits and risks associated with technology used by Dropbox and other popular cloud computing services.

The rules changes, which would have to be adopted by individual states, are part of a review of Internet-based client service and marketing by lawyers. Also coming are guidelines on lawyer use of social media, blogs and web sites.

Commission member Frederick S. Ury, a partner at Ury & Moskow in Fairfield, said the recommendations strike a balance between the legal profession’s need to tap the benefits of technology while protecting clients.

“We should look at the rules as they exist to at least give lawyers some guidance as to how they should operate,” Ury said. “The rules should not be constructed in such a way that it prevents lawyers from taking advantage of new technologies to have their practices be more efficient. We were very, very careful to try to balance those two.”

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Source: ctlawtribune.com
By: Marie P. Grady

Antitrust Plaintiffs Ordered to Pay E-Discovery Costs

In a ruling that may send shivers up the spines of some plaintiffs lawyers, a federal judge in Pittsburgh has ruled that the winning defendants in an antitrust case are entitled to reimbursement of more than $367,000 in e-discovery costs.

In his 25-page opinion in Race Tires America Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire Corp., Judge Terrence F. McVerry of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania found that courts are increasingly approving awards of e-discovery costs, noting that one judge described them as "the 21st century equivalent of making copies."

Lead plaintiffs attorney Joseph Decker of Babst Calland Clements & Zomnir in Pittsburgh argued that the costs should be disallowed because "electronic document collection, hard drive imaging and indexing and searching, commonly referred to as 'e-discovery charges,' are not enumerated under Section 1920(4), and thus are not properly deemed recoverable costs."

But McVerry found that Congress, in the Judicial Administration and Technical Amendments Act of 2008, modified the wording of Section 1920(4), changing the phrase "fees for exemplifications and copies of papers" to read "fees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of any materials."

Since that amendment, McVerry said, "no court has categorically excluded e-discovery costs from allowable costs."

But even before the 2008 law, McVerry found that "courts in many jurisdictions had come to recognize that 'exemplification,' in the modern era, includes electronic copying."

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Source: law.com
By: Shannon P. Duffy

Social media lawsuits are multiplying

Defamation is becoming a huge issue on social media sites as lawsuits for this particular offence are rising dramatically.

In Canada and the US, 15 percent of all Web 2.0 rulings were on defamation cases. In France, it’s 49 percent and in Quebec it’s more than 10 percent.

Other infractions committed in cyberspace that are processed by our legal system include pedocriminality, harassment and threats, and privacy breaches.

These results are taken from the second phase of an extensive research project on Web 2.0 criminal activity. The project is lead by Benoit Dupont, director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology, and Vincent Gautrais who holds the Université de Montréal Chair in e-security and e-business law. These results were obtained following the analysis of 400 rulings from everywhere around the world.

“We often tend to believe that the Internet has increased the risk of threats and harassment, but that isn’t true,” says Gautrais. “It is defamation cases that have increased exponentially with the arrival of social media.”

According to Gautrais, two factors contribute to this increase: anonymity and the permanence of the information. “Behind the veil of anonymity, users are more likely to lose all inhibitions and make comments that can have serious consequences,” says Gautrais. “Contrarily to radio or television, these comments are forever on the web for all to see. There is therefore, in social media, a greater potential threat for a reputation to be damaged now that everyone can publish information.”

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Source: healthcanal.com
By: Marie Lambert-Chan

Implementation of EU data privacy rules 'lacking clarity'

The Information Commissioner's Office has been criticised for issuing vague guidelines about new EU online privacy rules.

Websites will be required to ask permission before collecting data from visitors under new EU regulations that come into force at the end of this month.

Many websites collect user data in the form of ‘cookies’ - small files that store information to help websites recognise regular visitors, sometimes including their name and address.

The Information Commissioner’s Office yesterday published advice for businesses and organisations on how to comply with the changes but many companies are worried that the guidelines are vague and there is little time to comply.

The new rules, part of an amendment to the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, come into force on May 26 and specify that visitors to websites give their consent for cookies to be stored.

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Source: telegraph.co.uk
By: Shane Richmond

Michigan proceeds with caution on social media

State sees benefits in Facebook, Twitter, but problems loom

Gov. Rick Snyder is a former computer executive, but visitors to his state government Web page won't find a link to Facebook.

And seven years after the launch of what's become the world's most popular social media site, more than half of Michigan's departments don't have a Facebook page to connect with citizens. What's more, officials plan to take down a few of the existing ones.

The reasons: legal, financial, security, privacy and other complications prevent Michigan and state governments across the nation from taking advantage of the boom in social media as rapidly as many would like.

"Social media use is … inhibited somewhat," said Charles Robb, a senior policy analyst with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers in Lexington, Ky. "Agencies are using it, but they're assuming some risk in the use of it, legal risk."

It's not a case of Snyder being technologically backward. He's on Facebook, where his "Rick Snyder for Michigan" page is "liked" by more than 38,000 people.
But because of legal concerns, he and administration officials aren't ready to put a link to that page, developed for the 2010 campaign, on the official governor's Web page at www.michigan.gov. Nor have they wanted to abandon the popular Facebook page — which still receives regular updates — in favor of a governor's page that would start from scratch in attracting followers.

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Source: detnews.com
By: Paul Egan

Bloomberg offers message archiving service

Ask most executives what are the greatest risks their business face, and it is a fair bet that few will answer “e-mail”. Yet as employees send ever greater volumes of e-mails and instant messages, the humble message is an area of increasing interest to regulators and lawyers, who know that such communications can be a trove of incriminating or embarrassing evidence.

Highly regulated companies, notably in financial services, have long been under instructions to keep e-mails, but as more high-profile lawsuits hinge on the evidence from “e-discovery”, from harassment lawsuits to insider trading cases, companies in other sectors are realising that they must find a way of storing, organising and retrieving messages.

“What’s changed in the last few years in a lot of organisations is that in addition to adopting message archiving for compliance, they are also using these tools to meet e-discovery requirements,” says Brian Hill of Forrester Consulting. Other industries, from carmakers to pharmaceutical companies, are rapidly adopting new message archiving services, he says.

Now Bloomberg, the financial data and news group, is looking to use the expertise gleaned from managing the messaging service on its familiar black terminals to tap that growing demand. Its experience shows the sheer scale of the challenge facing companies contemplating their message archiving options: Bloomberg’s 300,000 subscribers already send about 200m e-mail messages a day and 12m instant messages over what it calls the world’s largest private network.

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Source: Financial Times

By: Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson

Social Media in Discovery and as Evidence in Litigation

In any given moment of the day, millions of people all over the world are blogging, disseminating their activities or opinions to their followers on Twitter, sharing photos through Facebook, updating their MySpace account with recent news, or engaging in other online activity. In fact, two-thirds of the world's population that has access to the internet visits social networking or blogging sites. In a March blog post, one of Twitter's co-founders claimed that one billion tweets are posted in the course of a week (with an average of 140 million tweets per day) and that almost 460,000 accounts on average were created per day in the previous month. LinkedIn boasts that it has over 90 million professionals covering hundreds of industries. Facebook claims that it has more than 500 million active users.

It is no overstatement then to say that social media has become a way for people to put their lives on display for all to see, attain semi-celebrity status, or generally participate in a growing cultural trend of over-sharing. Unless you have been completely oblivious to advancing technology, you probably have heard about these types of social media websites and tools or maybe even have used them in your personal life. But social media has infiltrated other aspects of life, going beyond merely a personal pastime to becoming a vital part of professional industries. Indeed, in the legal world, the role of social media has become more prevalent in the last five years. Attorneys and their clients are grappling with how this emerging technology will affect their cases. From reshaping the scope of discovery to potentially becoming evidence to support claims, one of the most significant implications of social media is how it can help shape litigation strategy by introducing new sources of information and serving as innovative tools in litigation.

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Source: Law Technology News

By: Michael C. Lynch and Lystra Batchoo

Social media makes legal discovery

The advent of social media is changing the way law enforcement and legal proceedings are carried out, with countries such as Singapore and the United States leveraging these platforms to track down potential lawbreakers.

Police forces around the world are adopting platforms such as Facebook not just to reach out to the community, but also to sniff out criminal activities.

Bob Yap, head of forensic at KPMG Singapore, told ZDNet Asia that law enforcement agencies can leverage various sources of information including online media.

One recent case in Singapore, for instance, local authorities took action on sensitive sermons given by a pastor from the Lighthouse Evangelism Church which were reposted on Facebook, as well as allegedly racist remarks posted by three youths in response to the sermons. Yap noted that this demonstrated the police may "consider taking action" once unlawful activities are reported in an unconventional manner.

He also highlighted the case of Pasquale Manfredi, a suspected member of an organized crime syndicate who was arrested last year in Italy after authorities purportedly used Facebook data to track him down.

Nancy Kolb, senior programme manager of International Association of Chiefs of Police, said: "Social media has many different applications for law enforcement agencies. It is used to investigate crimes, solicit tips about unsolved crimes, share information and engage with community members, and recruit employees."

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Source: zdnetasia.com
By: Tyler Thia

Recent Rulings Focus on Spoliation of ESI

Significant New York state court decisions have recently been rendered on the issue of spoliation of electronically stored information.

The Appellate Division, 1st Department, in Ahroner v. Israeli Discount Bank of New York,[FOOTNOTE 1] which affirmed that an adverse inference instruction under the circumstances was an appropriate sanction for ESI spoliation, set forth the standard needed to demonstrate that ESI spoliation has occurred and made clear that grossly negligent conduct may serve as a predicate for such a sanction.

In a decision in Ahroner on renewal of the underlying decision that was issued two months before the Appellate Division ruled,[FOOTNOTE 2] the motion court held that defendant at trial would have the opportunity to rebut the adverse inference.

The decisions discussed here emphasize that the "punishment must fit the crime" and that any spoliation sanction should be proportionate under the circumstances to the degree of mens rea of the offending party. This means taking into account the failure to comply with disclosure requests and court orders, if any; appropriate and timely notice of an obligation to preserve the ESI; and, significantly, the relevance of the ESI and "prejudice" to the moving party, which would include any negative effect on the actual prosecution or defense of an action, as well as the monetary expense of moving for a spoliation sanction.

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Source: law.com
By: Mark A. Berman

Facebook's Impact on Compliance Codes

"The Social Network" did not just tell the fascinating story of Facebook's rise to a social media power house. It showed how society is increasingly using social platforms as one of its primary channels for communication. Social media is broader than social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn. It encompasses all internet-based communications, including personal blogs, microblogging sites such as Twitter, and video and photo-sharing websites like YouTube and Flickr.

As Facebook has reached 500 million users, corporations have struggled with drafting policies that properly limit misuse of social media by employees. While a company's approach to social media will vary depending upon the corporate culture and industry, a look at the social media policies in the Fortune 500 companies' codes of conduct highlights how corporations are addressing the Facebook phenomenon.

First, social media policies are new. Most companies have yet to integrate a social media policy into their codes of conduct. Indeed, virtually all of the codes of conduct that addressed social media and/or social networking policies were revised in 2009 and 2010.

Second, technology companies are ahead of the curve in including social media policies in their codes of conduct when compared to companies from other industries. For example, 23 percent of technology companies from our study included social media and/or social networking policies in their codes of conduct, compared to only 10 percent of oil and gas companies -- an industry that has been slower to integrate social networking policies into its codes of conduct.

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Source: law.com
By: Ryan D. McConnell and Katharine Southard

Electronically Stored Information: Know When to Hold It and When to Hit Delete

Lawyers and their clients may find the preservation and production of electronically stored information to be a confusing and expensive undertaking. Many large corporations generate enormous amounts of electronic information that often becomes obsolete and difficult to recover. Although federal courts have addressed the preservation obligations of lawyers and their clients, Wisconsin courts have not specifically addressed these issues in the electronic discovery context. As a result, parties with significant amounts of electronically stored information are often unsure about their preservation obligations and the tools that are available to assist in this process.

This article addresses preservation by use of litigation holds and document-retention policies. First, the article outlines the parameters of the obligation to preserve electronically stored information and explains how a litigation hold can help a party meet this obligation. The article then defines and explains appropriate use of a document-retention policy in regard to electronically stored information. Finally, the article demonstrates how appropriate use of a document-retention policy and a litigation hold can invoke the safe-harbor provisions of Wisconsin law and insulate the producing party from liability for inadvertent destruction of electronic evidence.

The Duty to Preserve Electronically Stored Information: The Litigation Hold

The law is well settled that a person or entity that reasonably anticipates being involved in litigation is required to preserve all potentially relevant information until the matter is concluded.1 This law has been in place for many years and applies directly to electronically stored information.2 However, electronically stored information differs in some ways from traditional paper records: electronic data is voluminous, is easily disbursed, and can be deleted or modified by the routine application of basic computer systems. Electronically stored information can be stored in many formats, may be difficult to locate, and sometimes is obsolete. Therefore, different principles govern the retention, preservation, and production of electronically stored information.

The proper application of these principles requires appropriate preservation efforts. Thus, a party must take immediate steps to preserve electronically stored information once litigation is reasonably foreseeable.3 Although courts do not expect perfection in this regard, it is often difficult and expensive to thoroughly preserve all electronically stored information that might be relevant to a discovery request. Meeting basic preservation obligations, such as issuing a litigation hold, identifying key players, and ensuring that records are preserved, is an important first step.4 Next, counsel should ensure that document-deletion policies are immediately suspended until the search for responsive records is complete.5 If these steps are followed, the producing party will be in a much better position to defend against accusations of spoliation or bad faith.

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Source: wisbar.org
By: Timothy M. Edwards

Content management services take to the cloud

Content management has proved its worth as a way to control website information, organize workflow, and handle such important corporate documents as customer contracts and product specifications. Now, many organizations are discovering that content management applications can deliver still more value when they are delivered as cloud-based services.

"With the cloud, we get a multimillion-dollar infrastructure that's always on. It's scalable, and we can compete at a level that was unheard of before," said Daniel O'Leary, vice president for global solutions at LincWare LLC, a Rochester, N.Y., maker of electronic forms management software.

O'Leary has found that cloud-based content management services benefit from the same characteristics that are driving the cloud to become an alternative and in some cases primary platform for all applications: lower overall cost, no requirement to build and own IT infrastructure, and the ability to add and subtract capacity as needed.

Further, many cloud-based content management services providers are enabling integration with other cloud apps. In addition, advances in logistics are spurring the creation of new hybrid content management services that include paper document scanning. Lastly, the cloud is gaining credibility for security and reliability -- historically, two stumbling blocks to companies considering using the cloud.

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Source: searchcio.techtarget.com
By: Stan Gibson

Analysis: Lifting the covers off Amazon's cloud outage

Post-mortem reveals some of the magic under the hood.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has published a post-mortem of its Easter cloud outage that provides the IT industry a unique opportunity to study what technologies the world's largest provider of cloud computing uses to provide resilient services.

The post-mortem was published to provide a detailed breakdown of what caused major outages on April 21 that took down many popular websites, including Reddit and Foursquare.

The announcement also provided a detailed description of how the AWS cloud is designed, what went wrong during the outage, and what the industry can learn to better prepare similar events in the future.

The trigger for the outage - referred on Amazon's service status page only as a "network event" - was a mistake made during a scheduled upgrade of capacity on the primary network for Amazon's Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service, which underpins AWS.

The mistake caused all traffic that would normally use the primary, high-capacity network to instead use a second, lower-capacity network designed for reliable communications and overflow capacity. The secondary network was quickly overwhelmed, which triggered a cascade of other issues, resulting in a "re-mirroring storm".

EBS consists of clusters of storage nodes, connected in a peer-to-peer fashion, with each node storing a replica of EBS data "volumes". These volumes are used for data read and write operations.

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Source: itnews.com.au
By: Justin Warren

Employer Restrictions on Social Media Use May Be Subject to Lawsuits

Many employers put broad restrictions on the use of social media by their employees with respect to posting commentary about the workplace. The assumption is that the employers have the right to do so because the factual scenario serving as the basis for the speech is taking place on their private property, and is therefore not subject to the same free speech requirements of a public setting. But in a recent court case, the settlement agreement reached included the employer's agreement that they could not "improperly restrict" employees from discussing their work on social networking websites, as doing so would constitute a violation of the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA"). Ronnie Gipson, founding partner of San Francisco law firm Higa & Gipson, LLP, says employers should reexamine their restrictions on social networking; if their policies are overly strict, they may be risking a lawsuit.

In the precedent-setting case [Case No. 34-CA-12576] in Hartford, Connecticut, the employer, an emergency medical services provider, demanded that one of its employees submit a written incident report in connection with an ongoing investigation that had the potential to lead to disciplinary action for the employee. The employee requested that a union representative assist her with the preparation and submission of the incident report. The employer denied that request. The employee submitted the report and received disciplinary action as a result. The employee subsequently made entries on her Facebook account about the working conditions to include the incident and the people involved. When the company became aware of the postings, the employee was terminated for violating the company's Internet posting policy.

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Source: sfgate.com

A journalist's view of covering ECM

Last week, as I read Laurence Hart's post, "Preaching to the Content Management Choir" (you have to click through for the embedded video alone) on his fine Word of Pie blog, it got me thinking. Hart opened by suggesting his blog was worthless. I'm here to tell you it absolutely isn't, but such introspection also made me look at my role as a journalist covering the enterprise content management space versus what Hart does in his role as a consultant at Washington Consulting, Inc.

As a consultant, Hart works with clients trying to help them solve actual content management issues. He has implemented systems. He understands how needs map to actual functions and when they require substantial tweaking to work as advertised. In other words, he's down in the trenches doing the hard work.
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I, on the other hand, am a journalist. I cover the ECM space closely, but I've never implemented a system. The closest I came was working on a team once documenting the content management document production process--an interesting exercise to be sure, and one that showed me how hard it can be to get a CMS from concept to delivery--this particular project never made it to the end, undone by politics and a change in external IT management.

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Source: fiercecontentmanagement.com
By: Ron Miller

The Five Hottest Topics in E-Discovery Today

Last week I listened to an episode of Digital Detectives, a great series of podcasts co-hosted by Sharon Nelson and John Simek of Sensei Enterprises, Inc., who spoke at length with attorney and e-Discovery expert Josh Gilliland, author of the noted Bow Tie Law blog.

The topic was straightforward:

What are the five hottest topics in e-Discovery today?

1. Form of Production

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(f) mandates that parties “meet and confer” in a meaningful manner. Meeting and conferring is extraordinarily important in cases involving e-Discovery and should never be a one-time event, according to Gilliland. One of the central points of procedural discussion with respect to electronically stored information is the form in which ESI is to be produced. Gilliland warns against requesting all metadata lest an attorney be faced with documents with unlimited fields. Cooperation, open communication, and transparency should take the place of gamesmanship, which also means agreeing up front that the parties won’t engage in sanctionable behavior such as producing unsearchable, unusable documents, e.g., static images or others stripped of metadata. Where native file production is expected, the parties should discuss the cost of producing and reviewing any given volume of relevant documents.

2. How Can Small Firms Survive Their Entry Into E-Discovery?

It can be difficult for solo practitioners or mid-sized firms to get up to speed with e-Discovery, which is especially problematic when doing so isn’t part of the implementation of processes generally, but rather is a matter of necessity when a case arises. In this regard, Gilliland expresses dismay at a common response from lawyers who practice only in state courts: “I don’t need to worry about it.” Nonsense. I recently heard the same comment during an interview with an attorney who works in a small market, but the nature of whose growing practice will no doubt see him in federal court. Gilliand adds that there is generally a lack of affordable tools for smaller firms, but said that there is now a growing set of desktop document review solutions. Moreover, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions make review affordable for solo practitioners, as one can scale up or down quickly and on demand.

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Source: blogs.forbes.com
By: Ben Kerschberg

Facebook Must Produce — Not Merely “Provide Access” — to Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in Native Formats

United States Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd of the Northern District of California compelled Facebook to produce electronically storedinformation (“ESI”), not merely “provide access” thereto on a commercial website that allowed it to restrict class action plaintiffs from reviewing those materials properly. The court’s order granting the plaintiff’s Motion To Compel Production in In re Facebook PPC Advertising Litigation (Apr. 6, 2011) analyzed three important issues: (1) the importance of ESI Protocols, (2) production of ESI in native formats, and (3) production of documents versus “access” to them.

Facts

Three named plaintiffs brought a class action against Facebook for breach of contract and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law. Each of the plaintiffs advertised on Facebook and alleged that Facebook misrepresented the quality of its click filters, which are meant to screen out certain clicks (“invalid clicks”) that do not meet specified requirements designed so that advertisers are not billed for them. When the plaintiffs were charged, they sued.

Discovery disputes ensued–surprise surprise–and plaintiffs filed their Motion To Compel in relation to three of these disputes.

1.Plaintiffs allege that Facebook refused to agree to an ESI Protocol to set forth the manner and form of electronic production, including an agreement on search words or phrases, custodians, time frames and/or other terms that the parties would employ in producing ESI.

2.Facebook uploaded its discovery responses to a commercial website in a manner that seriously limited the plaintiffs’ ability to review them.

3.The documents to which Facebook provided access, as well as others that were actually produced, were not in their native format, and thus were unsearchable and unusable.

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Source: blogs.forbes.com
By: Ben Kerschberg

RM—the changing role of technology

Records management (RM) has many pain points-the volume and diversity of information, complex regulations and concerns about risk, to name a few. Management of e-mail is one place that all those pain points converge into a particularly challenging scenario. Even the legal department at Microsoft is not immune. "My first day on the job I had 300 e-mails," says Anne Kelley, associate general counsel in Microsoft's Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) group. "We are an e-mail culture, and in our department, many of those e-mail messages are records."

LCA is also highly sensitive about issues such as confidentiality, attorney/client privilege and document security. "We wanted to use SharePoint for managing our e-mails because it is a collaborative environment and can also provide the level of security we were seeking. However, the lawyers in our department were most comfortable working in their familiar Outlook environment," Kelley explains.

Works hand in hand
One of Kelley's colleagues recommended Contributor Pro, a software product from Colligo that allows e-mails to be put into SharePoint by dragging and dropping them into a set of Outlook folders that are for records management. "This was a great breakthrough moment for us," she says. "The product was a real change agent and has had a tremendous impact."

Each SharePoint site used by LCA has a content type or classification scheme that accommodates the e-mails (and any associated attachments) delivered from Colligo. Behind the scenes is a records center in SharePoint. "That is where the policies are programmed and where the long-term retention takes place," Kelley says. "So we have a business process at the front end and compliance at the back end, with collaboration in between."

The taxonomy on which the classification scheme is based also supports security measures. "A team of three people maintains the taxonomy," says Nishan deSilva, director of information management and compliance at Microsoft, "and the taxonomy maps to security so that documents are appropriately protected if they are confidential, or if access should be limited to a subset of individuals. Taxonomy, security and retention work hand in hand."

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Source: kmworld.com
By: Judith Lamont

Your smartphone knows all about you

In the sexy but increasingly scary world of smartphone forensics, insiders have a name for all the personal information purposely or unknowingly stored inside that iPhone or Android or Blackberry in your pocket.

They call it your “digital fingerprints.”

With the right tools and physical access to your smartphone, anyone can tap into the private details of your life: texts, photos, tweets, Facebook ramblings, doctor’s appointments, favorite hiking trails, and maybe even what you had for dinner last night at that little French bistro on the corner.

“You can find out everything about someone from their smartphone,” said Amber Schroader, owner of Paraben of Pleasant Grove, Utah, which makes forensic software for investigators and the general public. “You can see their YouTube videos, the websites they’ve surfed, their pictures. People are addicted to their cell phones, so this is the freshest and most valuable information available about someone.”

While wireless companies and others have long been able to track the locations of phones remotely, it’s unclear what other information they may be able to access remotely. But forensics investigators have long known that a treasure trove of biographical data can be gleaned when they have physical access to handheld devices.

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Source: sunherald.com
By: Patrick May & Troy Wolverton

OMG: Tweets, Facebook welcome in Mass. courtroom

When the camera switches on in one of the busiest courtrooms in Massachusetts, murder arraignments, traffic and drug cases heard there will become fodder for a new experiment: how bloggers and other citizen journalists can cover courts using new media and social media.

Starting Monday, most of what happens in a bustling courtroom in Quincy District Court will be streamed live over the Web for anyone to see. The courtroom, which usually does not allow reporters to use even computers, will now welcome laptops, iPads and smartphones, and will encourage live blogging, Tweeting and Facebooking.

It's all part of an experiment court officials around the country hope will help establish suggested guidelines for courts as they grapple with how to use digital technology and how to accommodate citizen journalists and bloggers.

The pilot project in Quincy, just south of Boston, is believed to be one of the broadest experiments in the country for using new media in the courts. While many states allow cameras in the courtroom and some stream supreme court arguments online, the Quincy project is unusual because it will continuously stream live, unedited court proceedings all day. The courtroom will be unusually welcoming to bloggers and citizen journalists with a special seating section and Wi-Fi connection.

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Source: boston.com
By: Denise Lavoie