Attorney Has a Lot of Clients with "Internet Regret"

Los Angeles, CAFive years ago, Los Angeles attorney Erik Syverson saw the future. He decided to focus his legal practice on what happens in the world of cyberspace. "The internet is here to stay," says Syverson. "I realized a few years ago that the internet world is going to bring up all kinds of legal issues."


As a 30-something-year-old, Syverson describes himself as being somewhere between the generation that grew up with the internet and the previous generations that are still coming to grips with it.

"I have a lot clients who have what I call internet regret," says Syverson. "I could probably talk to you about internet regret for two hours. You do something or you post something and in the internet age it follows you.

"In the old world, you tell your lawyer or banker something in private and the only way that information traveled was if they talked about it at cocktail party or someone broke into their office. Now that information can be shared online, and fast."

And What Is Going on out There?

Internet defamation, trademark violations, content raiding and, of course, violations of privacy—that's what's going on.

Privacy issues may be where the wave of class actions comes from in the next decade. Google recently reached a proposed settlement of $8.5 million in a class action alleging that Google Buzz violated privacy laws when it exposed the contact lists of Gmail account holders to others without permission.

"I think you have two competing philosophies," says Syverson. "The consumers want to protect their privacy, while social media networks like Google or Facebook have the philosophy that the data is valuable to them in an economic sense and they also want to involve as many users as possible in their goods and services.

"Everything from banking to watching TV is happening online. Brick and mortar transactions continue to migrate online, and information follows.

"As more and more people face the repercussions of what I call online over-sharing, or being exposed online, more consumers are going to be more willing to call someone like me and say, 'Erik, I was using Facebook and they exposed part of my profile I thought was private."

Erik Syverson is one of the few lawyers practicing internet law in the US. He graduated from Loyola Law School in 2002. And yes, he has a Twitter account.