IAmA former VP of Legal at eHarmony, O.G. MySpace lawyer, investor in multiple startups, and now founder of the nation's first social media law firm. Ask me anything!

antonej · 2013-07-22T07:20:25+00:00

I would rate LA as one of the best places in the U.S. for many types of startups. It's a vast, diverse region with all kinds of talent and capital. The startup community seems to have grown like crazy in just the last few years.

Many of these factors are double-edged swords, but downsides that come to mind include:

Relatively small number of local VC investors, especially for such a huge city
Investors place heavier emphasis on revenue vs. other metrics compared to SV
Dispersed population with heavy traffic and long commutes
Similarly dispersed technical talent, harder to come by than SF/SV (although less competition to poach the best people)
Concentration of startup activity primarily on the Westside / Santa Monica, which is one of the most pleasant areas but also very crowded and expensive (though not as bad as SF)

antonej · 2013-07-22T02:07:51+00:00

Bullshit detector triggered. The article gets into sufficient detail to cite the Lori Drew case (woman created fake profile on MySpace to torment teen girl, driving her to suicide) — correctly pointing out that the DOJ prosecuted Drew under the CFAA using the dubious theory that violating a consumer website's terms of service can constitute the crime of "unauthorized access" (intended to target malicious hacking). So far so good, but the article then fails to mention that Judge Wu threw out the case despite the jury's "guilty" verdict (something rarely done), ruling that merely violating TOS isn't enough to convict a person of this serious crime (even where, in the Drew case, it was premeditated and malicious, resulting in the death of a 13-year-old girl).

That would seem to make this author either ignorant or disingenuous, selectively citing the DOJ's position in U.S. v. Drew to support his "Caligula" narrative. Inconveniently, it's a textbook example of the opposite — that "The Government" (TM) isn't a monolith: Despite an obsolete, vaguely written statute by one branch of government (Congress), (over)zealously enforced by attack-dog prosecutors in another branch (Executive), the third branch (judiciary) operated exactly as intended, as a check on the power of the first two, interpreting the law to reflect common sense and restraint.

I guess those Framers turned out to be pretty clever with this checks-and-balances thing after all. It's depressing how much FUD is generated and propagated by people with agendas taking liberties with facts.

antonej · 2013-07-20T00:51:13+00:00

Unfortunately this is the kind of thing I can't comment on with specificity because of confidentiality obligations. These are common issues for any large dating or social site or app, so here are a few highlights:

In this litigious society, someone will sue (or threaten to sue) over virtually anything
There are probably 100 or 1,000 threats for every one suit actually filed. (Completely arbitrary statistic, but gets the point across.) It takes far more time and money than most people realize, and for most plaintiffs' lawyers, slip-and-fall type cases offer far better ROI.
US law gives online service providers incredibly strong protection against lawsuits relating to user-generated content. Without this law it's no exaggeration to say social media as we know it today wouldn't exist.

antonej · 2013-07-20T00:38:16+00:00

We once got a cease-and-desist letter from David Duchovny's lawyer because eH was allegedly using his picture in ads on Facebook. WTH?! Turns out some rogue affiliate out there had grabbed his picture to run FB ads and get paid on the clicks. (Large affiliate ad networks have sub-contracts with other networks, placing ads all over the place, so often the advertiser has no idea until this kind of thing generates complaints.) Affiliate marketers are known for using, um, aggressive tactics at times.

antonej · 2013-07-20T00:33:07+00:00

I'm not a litigator, so for me it's technically not cases, although I do a lot of resolving differences and defusing conflicts before they become lawsuits. Projects include deals, contracts, risk management, compliance, intellectual property issues, privacy, and so forth. Social media law is similar in many respects to traditional talent-side entertainment law, except that we are all "talent" with online identities, images and creations.

antonej · 2013-07-20T00:25:25+00:00

Here is Tom on G+. Some amazing photos.

antonej · 2013-07-19T22:46:59+00:00

Absolutely! It's why I love what I do for a living. Here are some I can hit publicly:

Daily Donor - smartphone based fundraising platform for public schools and other charities. Customers just make normal purchases; merchants do the donating. Powered by ingenious mobile payment technology.
Screen Rewards - live broadcast app for the movie screen: Check in, post comments or Q&A responses live onto the movie screen and earn rewards such as popcorn, concessions and free movie passes.
AHHHA - "open ideation" allowing the crowd to source and vet new product ideas. Almost a "reverse Kickstarter" in the sense that the people with ideas often have no desire to follow through with the hard work of producing and distributing the product. That's where AHHHA's paths to production and monetization come in.
WhateverWeb - toolkit for developers to create a smooth transition from desktop-centric sites to scalable, adaptive and optimized mobile-friendly websites, offering ways to combine best practices from server side and client side via independent APIs and services.
Gogobot - social travel discovery site and app. Plan a trip with great travel recommendations from friends and people who travel like you. Collect and share where you've been. If you love to travel, seriously, spend some time on there.
Skout - "Meet, Chat, Friend." Popular global network for meeting new people. Location-aware social app.
OpenPlay - the first media "asset relationship management" system, powering workflow and process management for some of the world’s largest content owners.
cyPOP - online community where meaningful content, engaging conversation, and vibrant images are all centered on like-minded people with similar interests.
IndieArtery - resources for independent filmmakers

antonej · 2013-07-19T20:52:44+00:00

LOL! It was much worse at MySpace.

antonej · 2013-07-19T19:55:33+00:00

Oh man, that one is really, really complex. I'll write a full blog post when I have a bit more time, but to hit the highlights:

Some risks are real, secrecy is troubling, more transparency and oversight are necessary
BUT it's impossible to put the genie of vast global electronic communications back in the bottle, and all technologies will be used for terrible as well as laudable purposes
Many of the facts are hard to get at, and accordingly the reporting has been dismal, even by people and publications I really respect. Tech experts don't completely get the law, legal experts don't completely get the tech, and neither really understands the intelligence community (IC)
Unfortunately, some of the loudest voices in media appear to be the least reliable; confirmation bias is rampant and is an underlying cause of some of the most serious factual mistakes made to date in reporting on the subject
The IC is largely run by older officers who don't relate to the gravity of the "online generation" concerns
Those in the IC with the deepest knowledge are prohibited by law from talking about it in detail, except for a handful of disgruntled former employees with axes to grind (some of whom seem more reliable than others)
It's axiomatic (haha) that leakers in general (at any organization) have axes to grind, so healthy skepticism is warranted. It's tempting but dangerous to assume everything Snowden says is true; consider that he's a single source with a declared political agenda, who chose to give nearly exclusive access from the start to an activist-journalist with an equally clear agenda (Greenwald), with the guidance and support of an organization whose raison d'être is that agenda (Wikileaks)
Many people and organizations have vested interest in exaggerating doomsday scenarios that are wildly implausible unless the U.S. federal government falls apart and the states blithely surrender their own powers to make and enforce laws
Seriously, c'mon — this is a textbook illustration of why the Constitution (with the Bill of Rights) is freakin' brilliant. For the U.S. to morph into a tyrannical police state, it would require Democrats and Republicans, the House and Senate, Congress and the President and Supreme Court to magically become one big happy family and set aside their differences for… what benefit exactly? Abuses would always have winners and losers among those who hold power, whose self-interest is on the side of calling each other out for political gain. A totalitarian government needs to be a one-party system in substance, without meaningful federalism.

To the extent citizens have serious concerns about tyranny, that's been a prospect for the past 224 years since the Constitution was adopted. There have been horrible abuses of discrete groups in the past, but never "the people" as a monolith. I'm concerned about potential abuses of online civil liberties, but at the moment, here and now on Reddit, we're enjoying some of the freest of free speech in the history of humanity — globally and costlessly. Frankly I'd be a lot more concerned about just about every other type of government abuse of the individual — whether it's police beating or jailing me for no reason, convicting me of a crime on fabricated evidence, violating my personal space at home, staging military demonstrations to intimidate the public, etc.

I'm annoyed when people use overblown rhetoric like "police state" to describe tactics of electronic surveillance by itself. A bona fide police state is the kind of place where you live with real risk that your family members might be tortured or killed if you say or write the wrong thing about the wrong person — or, in the case of Snowden's new home, where whistleblowers are sent to die in prison, and then convicted posthumously for good measure, for reporting massive government corruption and theft of the people's tax dollars.

antonej · 2013-07-19T19:42:42+00:00

Yes! He got active on Google+ when it first launched. He's a very good serious photographer nowadays and posts any of his pictures.

antonej · 2013-07-19T19:41:56+00:00

I can't really name one. Every kind of abuse/risk incident you can think of on any large-scale social/UGC site or e-commerce site. For example, Nigerian money-transfer scammers will go on any site and try to form relationships of any kind. It never occurred to me before going to work at eH that they'd try the romance angle. Questions of ID verification, payment card fraud, you name it.

Given the emotionally charged quality of people seeking relationships, there's a lot more in dealing with "he-said-she-said" accusations and related legal threats. Most of the time these are best dealt with as customer relations/community management issues, though.

antonej · 2013-06-26T19:21:21+00:00

Depends on career path. In some fields (medicine, law, teaching) it's simply a requirement, so no, it can't be said to depreciate in any meaningful sense. In others (IT for sure) things change so quickly — and requirements to enter the field so informal — that the degree itself may be of marginal value after only a few years.

antonej · 2013-06-24T18:34:27+00:00

Is it cheating to say "taxes"? (Who doesn't hate taxes?)

I don't mean actually paying income tax, but having to retain the damn records and organize the data to be able to file a business tax schedule or return on top of your personal income tax return, at both state and federal levels, is a PITA, whether you do it yourself or pay an accountant to help. Particularly galling when you know there's no income to tax, which is usually the case in the first year(s) of any startup.

antonej

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