In this issue: Crowd Control: SEC Cracks Down on Crowdfunding Venture; Using Copyright Assignments to Control Customer Reviews; A Short History of Social Media; Stir It Up: Bob Marley and Cease & Desist Letters; Two Recent Cases Illustrate Limitations of the CDA Section 230 Safe Harbor; Reboot: Facebook Overhauls Its Promotions Guidelines; Twitpic Puzzles Users With Terms of Service Changes, Photo Agency Deal; Privacy Bill of Rights Introduced in Congress; and Status Updates.

We welcome you to the latest issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award-winning guide to the law and business of social media. In this issue, we take a look at legal issues in connection with the use of social media to raise funding for new ventures (a/k/a “crowdfunding”); efforts by doctors to use copyright law to combat negative customer reviews posted to websites; risk issues in issuing meritless notices of copyright infringement to online service providers; limitations on the broad Communications Decency Act safe harbor shielding website operators from liability for user-generated content; Facebook’s recent revisions to its Promotions Guidelines; and the online firestorm created by a social media provider’s efforts to expand its rights in user-generated content. We also provide an overview of the Kerry-McCain privacy bill introduced in Congress earlier this year, and present a brief, visual history of social media. We conclude with Status Updates, a round-up of social media news items that we did not have room to summarize in full. Here we go...

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