Posted on December 13, 2005 9:01 am by Shel Holtz | Legal | Participatory Communication
About eight or nine years ago, I was brought into a midwest financial institution to, among other things, speak with the executive team about the Internet. My goal was to help them understand the Net’s importance to business. Among other things, I showed them some unfavorable Usenet newsgroup posts about the company. The CEO was aghast. Seeing the CEO’s reaction, the general…
Posted on May 27, 2005 10:40 am by Shel Holtz | Business | Legal
I used to work for Mattel. From 1984 to 1988 I was a communicator at the company’s headquarters, then located in Hawthorne, California. I started out managing employee communications and was director of corporate communications by the time Mattel and I parted ways. During my time at Mattel, I came to understand that the company’s defense of its trademarks had assumed kneejerk…
Posted on April 5, 2005 9:05 am by Shel Holtz | External | Legal
Marketers salivate over new communication technologies that provide new opportunities to reach customers. The idea of blasting out hundreds of text messages over a cell phone SMS system must have seemed particularly appealing to the folks at carsales.com.au. The company harvested the phone numbers from newspaper classified ads and sent messages pitching the company’s services.
I don’t know if they got any business…
Posted on April 5, 2005 8:14 am by Shel Holtz | External | Legal
Businesses, take note. The voice of the customer has gotten a little louder.
Michael Kremer was one unhappy customer. He went to Bosley Medical Institute in Seattle for hair restoration and, while pictures aren’t available, he couldn’t have been too pleased with the result. Shortly afterward, he opened a Web site at http://www.bosleymedical.com which he used to alert the public to the…
Posted on March 24, 2005 9:13 am by Shel Holtz | General | Legal
Creative Commons allows individuals to establish rights for their intellectual property. Music, images, written words…they all can be assigned various levels of protection. The service is based on the work of Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford law professor and copyright attorney. If you’re not familiar with it, scroll down and look on the lower right-hand side of this page; you’ll see my Creative Commons…
Posted on February 11, 2005 11:29 am by Shel Holtz | Blogging | Legal
Anybody involved with blogging (including PR people who are counseling their clients to jump into the blogosphere) needs to read Jeremy Pepper’s musings on the prospects for libel actions being taken against bloggers. Jeremy’s post includes interviews with a couple attorneys, including one for the New York Times.
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