Legal Niches

After being sued by NBC Universal and Fox, Red Lasso has shut down its video search and clipping website.  Without permission "RedLasso . . . recorded TV shows and then indexed clips so users could find, pull, and embed them on other Web sites."

NBC and the NFL are planning to stream professional football games online for free.

This week, former Google employees launched a competing search engine.  They promise that the new search engine, Cuil, will be more comprehensive than Google and produce more relevant search results.

"Recent legislation aims to help the IRS collect more taxes from online enterprises, many of which either don't know about their tax obligations or are ignoring them, according to the agency. . . . The provision, part of the housing rescue package that President George W. Bush is expected to sign within days, will require PayPal and other processors of online payments to report annual gross receipts to the IRS for all but the smallest online merchants."

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.