Law Office of Richard Kuslan LLC

Without even a glance at the Deep Web, people search the internet (sometimes known as the "Surface Web") for their own names and find, to their surprise, the following freely available to anyone:

• Home phone numbers and residence addresses going back many years, often decades;
• Old resumes on job sites;
• Images others have posted and tagged with their names;
• Legal documents made public record in court filings;
• Defamatory comments.

(Try searching for yourself at Zabasearch, Inteliius or Skipease.)

The business executives I know are rightly concerned about reputation -- both theirs and their company's -- but it surprises me how few make a regular review of the net for references to themselves and their goods or services.  Daily or weekly review would constitute an obsession, but for most situations, a quarterly review is sufficient.

When any of the above are discovered - and something will display that disgruntles you at some point -- what can a person do?   In some cases, a strong letter or email from an attorney is sufficient to bring about the desired result, such as removal of the offending post.  But what if the defamatory comment is made anonymously?  

Depending upon the website, the fact of poster anonymity may not be determinative of outcome.   As an example, I represented a business executive about whom libelous comments were made online.  The magnitude of the problem was serious: the negative comments appeared on a website frequented by thousands of potential customers.  My letter, citing relevant legal authority and site policies themselves, resulted in the removal of the comments within 24 hours of the site's receipt of my communication.  The executive was very pleased with these results.   

A cached version of a web page -- as with all webpages -- is normally discoverable through Google for a period of several weeks thereafter.  For situations in which urgent removal is required, Google provides a removal tool, which the site owner can access in Webmaster Tools.  Webmasters will not perform this action without a demand made upon them because they think it sufficient for the content to naturally drop out once the site deletes the content.

I confirmed the identity of the poster, using a variety of web search techniques.  Contact with the poster himself may also be part of the strategy by which the injury can be addressed.

TO BE CONTINUED

[This Part 3 is the final installment, continued from April 25, 2011 below.]

EMAIL PROPERTIES

The review of e-mail properties aims to decipher the province of the e-mail and whether that product agrees with the e-mail contents. As an example, an email may purport to originate from a company in Shanghai, but upon examination the e-mail itself likely originated from a server in, say, Singapore.  For those with a basic knowledge of world geography, this should not make sense. Perhaps you should look at an atlas once in a while.

Does the sender claim to be an executive of a large corporation, but have an unpersuasive personal e-mail like smilingbob (at) yahoo.com?  Delete.

Does e-mail content or e-mail address (e.g. chuang (at) cashwithasmile.com) lead to a good looking website?  Anyone can build a website.  At this point several simple tasks can be performed, taking less than five minutes of your time:

1)      Input the website address into Google maps and see what comes up.  I once discovered the London address of a false company to house a falafel restaurant.

2)      Check the website whois information, i.e. to whom the website was registered and compare it to the information on the e-mail. If inconsistent, delete. If the whois info is private, delete. Check whois information here. 

3)      Those wishing to pursue further research – are there any by now -- must look to third-party references, such as business directories.

For more detailed analysis, you will need to learn about Internet Headers.  You may discover that the email “from Seoul” actually originates from a curious provenance, such as the island of Malta.  This page on Stopspam should be required reading for anyone who uses e-mail.

YOUR OWN MOTIVATIONS

Your response to a scam email is a declaration that you are a mark; that your e-mail is valid; and that you are vulnerable or dumb enough to be a potential target.

Who doesn't feel the pressure of business?  You, just like everybody else, need and want the business. It’s only natural.  But for your own sake, you must begin with the premise that e-mail from persons unknown offering profitable deals from overseas is guilty until proven innocent.  And they are rarely, oh so rarely, so.

The theft of a laptop presents more than a simple loss of an asset, especially when it holds confidential or valuable data, or work in progress.  Without regular backups, companies put themselves at risk.  

In a survey of more than 125 small businesses with 20 or fewer employees, Carbonite found that companies approach backups in a piecemeal fashion with a variety of physical devices, including thumb drives and CDs.  And it is usually the business owner, generally the one who has the least time available, who performs the back ups.  Continuous online storage, now available with adequate security and privacy for most applications, is a preventative measure that can pay for itself when something happens.  So, will it happen?

There are any number of causes of a computer outage, including, for example, human error, computer failure, software corruption and theft.  The Graziado Business Review reports that:

One study reports that a company that experiences a computer outage lasting for more than 10 days will never fully recover financially and that 50 percent of companies suffering such a predicament will be out of business within 5 years

David Smith, the survey's author, estimated the cost of each computer outage at approximately $4,000.  

But most surprising is the author's report of some 403,000 episodes of laptop theft, if only because so few companies make use of laptop theft prevention mechanisms, such as LoJack for Laptops or Prey.  This post on TechDirt leads to the marvelous story, told in Tweets, of the loss of his laptop to a thief, the method by which he tracked it down and the social media by which he retrieved it.  It alone should be enough to convince any business owner, usually a positive and optimistic person,  to spend a little time and money planning for the events that might negatively affect electronic assets and then proactively provide the necessary protection.

The Tolkien Trust, holding valuable rights in the famed Hobbit and Lord of the Rings properties penned by its namesake, JRR Tolkien, is, I think, known to aggresively protect its intellectual property.   And with good reason -- its IP is valuable.  

In 2009, the Trust, together with Harper Collins, sued New Line and successfully negotiated a settlement over profit participation in the Lord of the Rings movies.  The original claim was substantial:

The Tolkien Trust and HarperCollins filed the suit in February 2008, alleging New Line had failed to pay at least $220 million to members of the trust. The plaintiffs had asserted that under a 1969 contract, the trust and other plaintiffs were entitled to 7.5% of gross receipts from the three films -- which grossed a combined $3 billion worldwide -- and related products, minus certain costs. 

One of the more interesting blogs to come across the desk in recent memory is The Frodo Franchise (sub-captioned: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood).  Ms. Thompson (who is not an attorney, but a writer and scholar of film) posted details of the suit here.

More recently, the Trust and Stephen Hillard sparred in federal court in the Western District of Texas.  Mr. Hillard is the author of Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien, described as both fiction and "critical analysis" of Tolkien's works, curiously employing Tolkien as a character.  

Apparently, in response to a cease and desist letter from the Trust (a copy of which I've not found online) demanding the destruction of books already published, Mr. Hillard went on the offensive, seeking a declaratory judgment from the court under state and federal claims.  The lawsuit, which may be found here, settled as well, with a relatively rapid positive result three months after filing, apparently for both sides.    No mention is made of the terms of settlement, but the suit will be dismissed and the work itself will be published

:...the book will now be released with a modified reference to Tolkien on the cover and will also include the disclaimer, "This is a work of fiction which is neither endorsed nor connected with The JRR Tolkien Estate or its publisher." 
 
Of course, whether or not legal action is justified depends upon the facts of the case, the law implicated and their willingness to move forward aggressively.  However, these cases demonstrate that offensive and defensive action, including litigation, can lead to positive results.  

These survey results sums up the case of Tech Startups very nicely in pictures:

1. Most tech startups employ one or two people and subsist on their own savings.
   
2. They spend virtually nothing.
   
3. Half die in the first six months.
4. Two-thirds aren't focused on selling their product (yet).
5. Most think they'll break even in under a year but the vast majority do not.
   
6. Only 20% have problems with sales and marketing.  Most find the snags occur in product development.
   

This leads one to the unstartling conclusion that tech startups -- needing a product to sell -- focus their few hands on product development.  Without a revenue stream, even minor expenses, over a short time, will prove detrimental to the enterprise.  The longer view is vital, but often only gained through difficult experience.  

Details of the survey may be found here at FounderSpeak.