• Disappearing ink. Facebook is testing, for a small group of users, a feature that will permit a user to schedule a post for automatic deletion after a specified period of time. It seems that the period can range from an hour to seven days, according to people who have seen it. It is worth noting, though, that these posts can take up to 90 days to vanish from Facebook's servers permanently.
  • Feel free to Yelp. If you have a problem with your plumber or your car rental in California, go ahead and complain online. California Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a new bill that prohibits businesses in that state from using contracts that prohibit consumers from writing negative online reviews. Some businesses include these prohibitions, known as non-disparagement clauses, in the sometimes lengthy terms and conditions that they impose on their customers. These clauses will now be illegal in most cases in California.
  • Picture this. Just because a photo appears on a social media site doesn't mean that it is free to use, as Agence France-Presse and Getty Images found out recently when a federal court upheld a damages award against them for infringing the copyright in photos of the Haitian earthquake that had been posted on Twitter.   The court had previously held that, although the photographer had given Twitter a license to display his photos by uploading them, he didn't give AFP or Getty the right to use them.  In the recent ruling, the court declined to set aside the jury's $1.5 million damages award against the defendants.

Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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