Digital Deliverance on 27 October 2014

Today is Digital Deliverance Managing Partner Vin Crosbie‘s 59th birthday, which means the start of his 60th year (which he will complete a year from today).

What happens when applied Social Media conflicts with existing laws? This month, the New York State attorney general claimed that most Airbnb listings in the city violate zoning and other laws. Earlier this year, officials in California and Pennsylvania claimed that car services like Uber and Lyft might be unlawful. The New York Times took a look. We will be looking at those three examples when next month we teach a class about where the Internet and laws conflict, in Syracuse University’s New Media Business post-graduate course.

 We’re sorry to hear a seminar being taught in St. Petersburg, Russia, by my friend Randy Covington, the director of the World Association of Newspapers-IFRA’s Newsplex Training Centre at the University of South Carolina , by Joe Bergantino, the executive director of the New England Center for Center for Investigative Reporting, was disrupted by Russian government agents earlier this month. Bergantino and Covington had recently presented the same seminar in Moscow and had, in Bergantino’s taught similar seminars “in China, Serbia, Vietnam, and other countries without interruption by government agents.” Covington and Bergantino were taken to government offices for several hours; presented to a judge; and found guilty, despite their not having had a chance to present a defense, of violating Russian immigration laws; and were the subjects of a Russian television news story. Covington and Bergantino were then released. We know from a variety of our clients that the Russian government, whose President Vladimir Putin only a few years ago was the keynote speaker when the World Association of Newspapers held its annual conference in Moscow, during the past two years has been clamping down on all foreign Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), notably those who teach or fund independent journalism.

Every forget which wing of the cavernous shopping mall you are in? South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunciations Research Institute has announced development of an indoor equivalent of a Global Positioning’ System accurate to within five meters (16 feet). Or make that within one clothing rack.

 Jaldeep Katwala at Media Helping Media has some excellent advice for journalists conducting interviews.

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