Making It Legal:

Although my colleague, Howard Greenstein, wrote his post “How to Honor September 11th” several years ago, I still think it has enormous value today.

Wouldn’t it be something if we really could turn this day into a day of community service?

On September 11th, people made the ultimate sacrifice for our ignoring the warning signs and reports.  Our citizens and soldiers continue to put their lives on the line every day in ways and places where my grandmother would have asked, “You want to do what?  Where?  What kind of meshugeneh idea is that?”  I don’t know anyone personally who perished in the terrorist attacks of September 11th . . .  I only know people who did.  I have been supremely blessed.

There is a level of courage that human beings displayed when confronted with the unspeakable terror and horror of choosing the way they would die:  Jump from 80 stories or try to outrun thousands of tons of burning steel about to crush them.  They were tested in a way that I hope never to experience.  A day of working toward a better world, a smarter world, an aware world–away from the mind-numbing stupidity on television, in the political corridors, even in cyberspace–would be a profound way to honor those innocents who lost the gamble.

Some people may complain that they don’t need commmunity service–they’ll remember September 11th and its impact for as long as they live.  But what about those who aren’t born yet?  Or who were too young to remember?  As poet and philospher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

I spoke at the Brooklyn Creative League earlier today, and the question, “Isn’t it true that there’s no regulation of the internet?” came up.  So once again, I had to debunk that myth.

In addition to the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, there are a host of federal and state laws concerning false advertising, trade, trademarks, copyrights and contract terms that DO apply to your online business activities.

So how can you create an e-commerce website that doesn’t become a breeding ground for lawsuits? For starters, have a look at “Careless With Your Business Website?  Don’t Get Sued.” written by my colleague, technology lawyer Mark Grossman, Esq.  Also check out my article on Website Terms and Conditions at GreatBusinessLawTips.com.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) recently introduced the Home Office Tax Deduction Simplification and Improvement Act (H.R. 7074).  According to a press release by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Department of Advocacy, the goal of the bill is to simplify the home office deduction by introducing a standard deduction for small-business owners.  It is companion legislation to S. 3371, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

According to research from Advocacy, tax compliance is 67 percent more burdensome for the smallest businesses compared to their larger competitors.  Tax complexity, combined with the fact that 53 percent of America’s small businesses are home-based, prompted Advocacy’s support for H.R. 7074.

Last week, Small Business Adminsitration executives celebrated the anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988.  According to an SBA press release, the pioneering legislation, also known as H.R. 5050, created the SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership, the SBA’s Women’s Business Center (WBC) program, and the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), which serves as an independent source of advice and counsel on economic issues of importance to women business owners.

The news release underscores the fact that:

SBA’s Women’s Business Center program, administered by its Office of Women’s Business Ownership, promotes the growth of women-owned businesses by providing business training and technical assistance, helping with access to credit and capital, and identifying federal contract and international trade opportunities. The program provided business counseling and training assistance to 148,106 individuals during fiscal year 2007.

The first Monday in September wasn’t always considered an official rest from work. According to the Department of Labor’s website, the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. Over time, the movement to recognize Labor Day grew–first with a handful of municipal ordinances, then state legislation. Finally, in 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

Why care? Because of Labor Day’s history. Said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor:

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day . . . is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.”

Rather, it celebrates the social and economic achievements of American workers, and the contributions they have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.

The significance of the July Fourth holiday tends to get lost amid travel plans, a short work week and the desperate need for relaxation in our increasingly frenetic world.

Our Founding Fathers also felt a need to be released from tyranny . . . of a different sort. They wrote:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness . . . .

Just as a wedding is a declaration of the feelings and relationship that two people have developed for and with each other, The Declaration of Independence was a declaration of the political feelings the American Colonies had developed about the system of government they had to endure. They weren’t happy–not by a long shot–and took their lives in their hands when they declared themselves “Free and Independent States” and that “all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.” The rest–and the chain of events that unfolded thereafter–is history.

56 people signed the Declaration of Independence, including two future presidents.

In a rare moment of bipartisan and bicameral cooperation, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate introduced legislation geared to help protect the nation’s 27 million small businesses from computer hackers and information security breaches. Entitled the “Small Business Information Security Act of 2008,” the bills (H.R. 6206 and S. 3102, respectively) were introduced June 9. According to a press release from the Senate’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the bill would establish a Small Business Information Security Task Force to:

• Identify information security concerns and the services that address those concerns;
• Make recommendations to the SBA regarding how it can better assist small businesses to both understand cyber-security issues and identify resources to help meet those complex challenges; and
• Promote current programs and services that will help small businesses protect their customers’ valuable information.

“Inspired” by recent high-profile data breaches, bill sponsor Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said in a statement, “Nearly one-fifth of small businesses do not use virus-scanning for e-mail, [more than] 60 percent do not protect their wireless networks with encryption, and two-thirds do not have an information security plan.”

Rolling around through the halls of Congress may be the latest bill to attempt to stop pirating, or knockoff, designs. It’s hard to say who’s helped (or hurt) more by this legislation. But, as Fortune Small Business reports, the Design Piracy Prohibition Act is sure to keep lawyers busy. For the time being, unless artists and designers can show that their designs were ripped off exactly, there’s great leeway given to “creative expression” . . .  even if it happens to look an awful lot like yours.

Did you know that yesterday was Law Day? I suppose that for many of you, the day passed with nary a whiff of the incredible celebrations to be had. Parades in the street! Inspirational speeches! Revelry! Bar associations around the country use it as a day to celebrate community and the importance that law plays in it.

50 years ago, May 1 was designated by a joint resolution of Congress as the official date for celebrating Law Day. Originally established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (by proclamation), Law Day is a national day set aside to celebrate the rule of law and how the legal process contributes to the freedoms that all Americans share.

Before you start to tear your hair out about the ways that laws have complicated your life, take a moment to think about the ways that law has made our society great. People from all over the world risk life and limb, and leave their families behind, to come here. Laws contribute to this being the “land of opportunity.”

Law Day is not just a day to make lawyers feel good about themselves–if you think about what the world was like in 1958, when Law Day was first established, we had emerged from the ashes of World War II, seen two wars in the Middle East, gone in and out of Korea and watched the French get defeated in Vietnam. The U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (”separate does not mean equal”) had been decided only a few years before and opened the door to significant social change in this country. Law was (and can still be) a way of righting a terrible imbalance of tyranny and unfairness.

We may debate whether laws are wise, necessary or fair, but few would dispense with them altogether. We use laws both to provide our freedoms and to protect our freedoms.

And now, I’m free to get off my soapbox and enjoy the rest of the day!

You may have had these nasty tidbits enter your inbox: e-mails that seem to come from reputable companies (I got a host of them from “Citibank”) that tout the anti-hacking and identity-theft measures they’re taking. “In order to ensure your security, we need you to verify your contact information by clicking on the link below… etc.” The logo seems in order; it’s written in that “I want to be friendlybut I’m too stiff because my legal and compliance departments were-all over this letter” tone. You are (or at least think you were, at some point), a customer. Makes sense that you should receive it. So you click.

Sadly, all too many people and companies find that, upon doing so, they’ve been “phished.” “Phishing” (according to Webopedia) is a term that means “the act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.” The U.S. Senate has recognized the problem, and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) recently introduced legislation to provide the Federal Trade Commission with authority to enforce the prohibition against phishing (Of course, whether it authorizes the funding to pay for the enforcement is another matter). (See S. 2661 in the 110th Congress, 2nd session).

Highlights of the Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008 include:

• Prohibiting deceptive domain names (this means using a name like “Citidank” and posing as a banking institution);
• Prohibiting domain name registrars from interfering with efforts to discover the identity of “phishers” who have obtained deceptive domain names;
• Allowing all state attorneys general, aggrieved trademark holders and affected internet service providers to bring lawsuits against the culprits (note, though, individual lawsuits are not expressly permitted, and it would probably be too costly for an individual to investigate and bring a lawsuit against a “phisher”); and
• Restricting damages from exceeding $2 million (except in special circumstances).

The moral of the story: Don’t click on everything you see. Confirm all requests for private information by telephone–and do not use the number you see in that e-mail (it, too, could be a scam). Ask that the request be sent to you by “snail” mail.

Whatever I may want to say about the current occupant of the Oval Office and those seeking to sit in his chair, I wouldn’t want the job. Not for a million squillion dollars. Whether it’s brass balls or sheer insanity that makes people want the post, I’ll tip my hat to them for tenacity and courage. My life couldn’t withstand such intense scrutiny (thank God there was no Facebook when I was in college!).

So, in honor of the day, and the people who have served (and will serve) in the office of president of the United States (POTUS), here are some tidbits about the job and how it works:

• Who were all the presidents?
• Qualifications for the office
• The executive branch and Cabinet
• Duties and powers
• The Electoral College
• History of the White House and video tours (with the president as tour guide!)

As reported in the San Francisco Sentinel, the U.S. government will suspend its legal defense of a new rule issued in August to penalize employers who hire illegal immigrants, according to government papers filed late Friday in federal court. Court papers asked the judge to delay the case until March 24 or until a new program is ready.

Instead, the administration plans to revise the rule to try to meet concerns raised by a federal judge and issue it again by late March, hoping to pass court scrutiny on the second try. The rule would have forced employers to fire workers within 90 days if their Social Security information could not be verified.

The government’s proposal was a response to an indefinite delay to the rule ordered Oct. 10 by the judge, Charles R. Breyer of U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Judge Breyer found that the government had failed to follow proper procedures in issuing the rule and that it should have completed a survey of its impact on small business. As noted in the Seattle Times, his ruling effectively barred the government from mailing Social Security “no-match” letters to 140,000 U.S. employers, citing serious legal questions about requiring companies to resolve questions about their employees’ identities, fire them within 90 days or face potential fines and criminal prosecution.

The New York Times further pointed out that Breyer found that the Social Security database the government would use to verify workers’ status was full of errors, so the rule could lead to the dismissal of many thousands of workers who are American citizens or legal immigrants.