Competing for an audience with the pulsating beats emanating from the hotel’s legendary pool area proved tough, but attendees were treated to a tightly-focused discussion on vital business issues that impact all companies large and small alike.
Moderated by Colin Rowntree of Wasteland.com, panelists included lawyer David Adelman of Encino, Calif.-based Greenburg & Bass; Scott Flacks of Stickam; and Stephen Alford of Alacera International.
David Adelman opened the discussion with a staggering statistic: more than 160 million personal records were compromised last year according to a privacy watchdog group. Identity theft costs consumers and businesses $53 billion per year. As Adelman said, “data breaches go a long way towards damaging companies’ reputations.”
The panel agreed that in-house security breaches from employees represent the biggest threat to information security. So how can a company balance necessary data access by employees with security concerns?
Scott Flacks suggested a multi-pronged approach. All companies should employ background checks, install Internet filters and monitoring software on workplace PCs, restrict remote access through Blackberries and PDAs, and create a tiered system to access proprietary company information.
At the very least, Flacks said, all companies should deploy firewalls, spam filters and a comprehensive suite of network security software on the technical side. Additionally, business owners should make employees sign confidentiality agreements and non-compete contracts.
Following the panel on information security, Rowntree moderated the final seminar of the XBIZ Summer ’07 Forum: Content Security — How to Protect and Exploit Your Exclusive Content.
Gregory Piccionelli and wife Anna Vradenburgh, both of the law firm Piccionelli & Sarno, participated in the discussion.
Since the primary product of every single adult entertainment business is intellectual property, Piccionelli and Vradenburgh went into great detail on how to stay protected.
Intellectual property is comprised of copyrights, trademarks, patent rights, right to publicity (name and likeness), trade secrets and future rights.
Piccionelli said that copyright pertains to expressive works — photos, videos and even erotic stories.
“Since there is so much of it, content is diminishing in value,” Piccionelli cautioned attendees. “There is a bigger need than ever before to exploit your content and brand through numerous platforms.”
Piccionelli said that the creator owns the copyright for their lifetime plus seven years and that copyrights are the most heavily protected do to the Bern Convention.
“Copyright infringement is incumbent upon the holder to prove damages,” Piccionelli said. “How much did you lose versus how much the infringer gained?”
Vradenburgh, who secured the Virtual Sex trademark for Digital Playground, said that a trademark is a word, phrase or sound, which identifies the source or creator from another. Trademarks “can be indefinite and are created by use,” she said.
For adult website owners, Vradenburgh said that just because you own the website, that does not mean you own the trademark rights.
After taking a few questions from the audience, the seminar portion of the XBIZ Summer ’07 Forum concluded. From there, the dash was on to the Hard Rock Hotel pool’s north side for the Silvercash Bikini Contest.