• Clearing the air. Aereo, the startup broadcasting service that lost big in the U.S. Supreme Court last June, just lost another, and possibly its last, court battle. A U.S. district judge in the Southern District of New York, responding to a motion filed by the major broadcasting networks, granted a preliminary injunction barring Aereo from retransmitting programs to its subscribers while the programs are still being broadcast . The ruling by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan also rejected Aereo's argument that it should be able to take advantage of the statutory compulsory license applicable to cable systems.
  • Let's be friends. Twitter's relationship with app developers has been somewhat strained since the microblogging platform tightened its rules on outside apps a couple years back. That's all changing now, as Twitter convened its first mobile app-developer conference in four years. The event in San Francisco attracted 1,000 developers. At the conference, Twitter introduced Fabric, a set of developer tools that are intended to make it easier for developers to build apps and make money from them.  It looks as if Twitter is taking note of the similar steps that Google, Facebook and others are taking to attract app developers.
  • Sharing the wealth. A New York-based tech startup called Tsu is trying to establish a whole new business model for a social network. Tsu, which has attracted a $7 million venture capital investment from Sancus Capital, will pay users based on the advertisements that their postings attract. Tsu keeps only 10 percent of the revenue that it receives from ads, sponsorships, and third-party applications. The other 90 percent is divided into two pools of money. Half of it goes to the content creator who posted the content that attracted the ad. The other half goes to the social network that recruited that content creator.

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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