We finally acheived the academic recognition we have craved for so long when University College London appointed us as joint professors of Bootlawyering invited us to speak to Entrepreneurship students as part of its guest lecture programme, part of UCL Advances.

The event was captured for posterity by the UCL film society, so here it is:

You can find the full list of companies taking part in the Mission here.

Speaking of nuts, we agreed to take part in a short promotional film for the Mission – part of which was filmed in our offices a few weeks ago when we got together with most of the companies – which is in the style of, erm, Mission Impossible.

Digital Mission 2010 from Newspepper on Vimeo.

Danvers speaking @ Tempero #ugclaw

Bootlaw was out and about last week as I was asked to speak at an event organised by comment moderation company, Tempero, on User Generated Content (UGC) and the Law.  The event was to mark the launch of an eBook produced by Tempero, which contains a useful overview of some of the key legal issues raised by UGC.  With perfect timing, the event came on the same day that news broke that the Italian Courts had found three Google executives to be criminally liable for a video posted on Google Video of an autistic child being bullied.  Although this case demonstrates how companies can be liable for content posted by users, our view is that this case is an abberation – in complete contradiction to established principles of European law – and is likely to be overturned on appeal at a later stage.  Whatever happens, we’ll be watching with interest.

Back at Tempero, Dominic Sparkes introduced the evening with a brief introduction to the company, which we first met on the very first Digital Mission.   I was next up talking about “common misconceptions” in particular, discussing the extent of the “ISP Defence” for publishers who do not moderate. It is often thought that publishers who allow all comments and other UGC through and only moderate reactively (in response to take down notices, for example) will automatically be able to defend on this basis.  However, where a publisher has obviously read all the comments posted on a blog (or could reasonably be expected to have read all the comments – e.g. if they were few in number), then it is unlikely that the ISP defence would work.  A publisher has to argue that it did not have knowledge of the offending comment AND could not be expected to know that it could have been defamatory.  The limits of reasonableness were debated – but given this has been largely untested by the courts, it is only possible to speculate what might work.

Attentive audience @ #ugclaw

Other speakers included John Robinson from NHS Choices, who spoke about the challenge of allowing patients to review the service they had received from the NHS, or in some cases the treatment relatives had received – which could sometimes be quite harrowing.  Jon Bishop, Community Manager at Gumtree, talked about the challenge of managing a massive community driven site and how Gumtree moderates its message boards as well as its main site.

Next up, Molly Flatt gave us an informed overview of the sorts of crafty marketing strategies which have been banned, such as astroturfing, sock puppets, as well as the correct way of promoting products to independent bloggers. Finally, we heard from Debbie Towersey on some of the HR implications of social media, with a few amusing examples of employees being caught out by some dumb postings on their Facebook (it’s always Facebook!) pages.  Remember, HR people have no qualms about using sock puppets to “friend” you on Facebook to circumvent privacy settings!

Tempero’s own report of the evening is here.

And here is the ebook.

User-generated content and the law

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As the economy slowly recovers we are seeing more companies looking to make strategic acquisitions of other businesses in whole or in part. The opportunity for entrepreneurs is on either side of the fence, so on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 we will be looking at the key legal issues involved in selling parts of your business, negotiating an exit and also making an acquisition. We’ll also look at the concept of M&A-lite which involves the sale of a significant stake to a strategic partner.

This session is highly recommended for any Bootlawyer thinking about buying or selling a business or part of a business this year – or anyone who wants a evening of great networking, pizza, beer and the scintillating wit of Barry and Danvers…

Bootlaw members can sign up here

6.30pm – Doors open (beer and networking)
7pm – Legal presentation, Q&A
8pm – Beer and pizza
9pm – Pub o’clock

David Maher Roberts, CEO of The Filter, said:  “Douglas joins us at a time when the Filter is focussing its attention on its B2B Software As A Service – delivering the best recommendations for major content publishers.”  The Filter has launched a new business solutions website for its B2B offering: http://systems.thefilter.com/.

This high profile appointment was reported by Techcrunch earlier this month, and further commented on by the company’s blog.

Despite still being pre-launch, our mysterious client Koogaloo has a had busy time of it lately, not satisfied simply with an appearance in the national press (which we reported on here), its holding company, Waxwired Limited, has been busy raising its first round of seed financing which we helped to close earlier this month.

Speaking exclusively to Bootlaw.com, Waxwired director and head Koogalooer Leon Crutchley said “Completing our first financing is a big milestone, which has allowed us to grow our development team, and focus on getting the product right for the launch in the summer”.

Few details have been made public as to what Koogaloo.com will do when it launches, and its blue furry CEO (pictured above) is keeping schtum. Sources close to the company suggest that it will involve calendars – but quite frankly we at Bootlaw towers hope that there is no nudity involved….

We’re delighted to say we recently closed a significant funding round for our client, Secret Sales, who received investment from German company, Brands4friends, both operating in the hot space of private retail sales - the story was reported on here and here (Techcrunch).

As reported in the joint press release:

“In just two years, brands4friends.de has established itself as Germany’s largest online private shopping club with annual revenues of €80 million. The investment accelerates the international expansion of brands4friends.de and will allow Secretsales.com to become the UK’s leading online private shopping club.

Established in London in July 2007, Secretsales.com has grown quickly to become one of the UK’s leading online private shopping clubs. The founders have concentrated on building a diverse portfolio of lifestyle, fashion, homeware and leisure product categories spanning over 450 partner brands.

Christian Heitmeyer

“After carefully examining various options, it quickly became apparent that Secretsales.com was our first choice in the UK,” said Christian Heitmeyer, CEO and founder of brands4friends.de. “The combination of entering one of the largest and most key e‐commerce markets in Europe and partnering with Secretsales.com holds enormous potential. We recognize large prospects in Secretsales.com. The existence of a strong management team led by CEO Nish Kukadia and our learning curve convinced us that together we will reach the leading UK position. The expansion will benefit our valued brand partners in terms of brand awareness, sales and image and also our customers by gaining access to even more top brands from the planned portfolio expansion.”

Secretsales.com’s vision and leadership coupled with its performance and consistent growth since launch has attracted significant interest from a range of different investors, and brands4friends.de was identified as the perfect partner for reasons of shared strategic vision and economies of scale.

Nish Kukadia

Nish Kukadia, a founder and Chief Executive of Secretsales.com expands: “Having brands4friends.de on board provides Secretsales.com with the best route to realising our plans and pursuing an aggressive growth strategy. The brands4friends.de team in Germany has already demonstrated an exceptional capacity to create a market‐shaking online shopping club business. We will work closely to share and capitalise on their learnings, technology, marketing intelligence, infrastructure and cross‐sourcing opportunities which will undoubtedly benefit the combined supplier portfolio and extensive customer base. We´re extremely proud to be working together.”

You can see all the Knowledge Base videos on its YouTube channel here.

The first videos are now live on the site, including mine with my 5 top tips for bootstrapping your legal budget.

As you can see, I have a little difficulty in counting to five.

Read all about it here.