Technology Insights
Analysis and practical guides on technology.
150 articles, checklists, and guides on technology law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Domain Name Security and Recovery Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns domain name security and hijacking recovery into ordered, check-off tasks for in-house counsel, IT and security teams, and outside lawyers. The prevention phases cover building an inventory with clear ownership, securing the registrar, email, and phone accounts that control each name, using registry and registrar locks, managing renewals and expiration windows, and putting domain control terms into vendor and employee agreements. The response phases cover the first hours after a hijacking, evidence preservation, notifications, and each recovery channel from registrar reversal and the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy to the UDRP, the in rem ACPA action with a temporary restraining order, and claims against an identified person. Red-flag boxes, a deadlines table, a short worked example, and common failure points round out the checklist. Each item links to governing authority where one exists and to related MC Law guidance.
The Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act: What US Companies Actually Have to Do
Two European regulations now govern how American platforms operate, and the thresholds that trigger them are lower than most companies assume. This article explains what the Digital Services Act actually requires—the notice and action mechanism, statements of reasons, internal complaint handling, out-of-court dispute settlement, trader traceability, advertising transparency, and the escalating tiers that culminate in systemic risk assessment and independent audit—and who each obligation applies to. It then covers the Digital Markets Act, which is not a platform-conduct rule at all but a set of prohibitions and obligations aimed at a designated handful of gatekeepers, and explains why a non-gatekeeper still has to care. Along the way it maps the collisions with United States law, including Section 230 and the constitutional limits the Supreme Court described in Moody v. NetChoice. It closes with what a compliance program actually contains and what it costs.
Space Venture Toolkit: License Applications, Liability Allocation, and Data Rights
This toolkit supplies the documents a space venture needs, ordered by when the work has to happen rather than by which regime is most interesting. It opens with an export classification register and a technology control plan, because those violations occur first and are criminal, then a regulatory schedule keyed to launch minus dates and a monthly status sheet built for investors and boards. It provides an orbital debris worksheet designed to run before the design freeze, a remote sensing availability analysis, launch services agreement terms built around the statutory cross-waiver, a board briefing that explains why there is no remedy for launch failure, and an insurance matrix. Later tools cover earth station and ground segment tracking, imagery and data license terms constrained by license conditions, a government data rights worksheet, and a conjunction assessment procedure that doubles as evidence. Each item is annotated with the failure it prevents.
Space Launch and Satellite Licensing Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a space venture's regulatory work in the order that reduces risk fastest, beginning with export control because violations occur before anyone considers them and the exposure is criminal. It then builds the schedule backwards from launch, files the communications application early enough that the license shapes the spacecraft, and runs the orbital debris analysis before the design freezes rather than after. Later sections cover remote sensing tiering and license conditions, the launch provider relationship and the payload review, the cross-waiver and the three-tier financial responsibility structure, insurance layers, and ground segment authorizations at home and abroad. Closing sections handle customer agreements constrained by license conditions, government contracting, human spaceflight, continuing obligations, and the activities no statute clearly covers. Every item is written so a "no" tells you what to do next.
Software License Audits and Compliance Disputes: True-Ups, Indirect Access, and the Letter You Did Not Want
A software audit letter arrives without warning and puts a company on a clock it did not set, under an audit clause almost nobody read. This article explains what the audit right actually permits, why the difference between a contract claim and a copyright claim determines the size of the exposure, and how the licensing metrics that generate most findings—named users, processors, virtualization, and indirect access—actually work. It examines the case law that shapes both sides: the copy-in-RAM line of authority, the license-versus-sale question, the essential step defense under section 117, and the decisions holding that some license restrictions are covenants rather than conditions. Practical sections cover the entitlement records a company should build before it needs them, the negotiation dynamics of a true-up, and the contract terms that make the next audit cheaper. Worked examples follow a virtualization finding, an indirect access claim, and a merger that triggered three audits at once.
Software Audit Response Checklist
This checklist runs a software licence audit from the arrival of the letter to the contract amendment that should follow the settlement. It opens with the audit clause review and the contract stack analysis that establish what the publisher is actually entitled to demand, then the channel, privilege, and instructions that prevent the most damaging documents from being created. Negotiation items cover the auditor NDA and the written scope document. Entitlement reconstruction and deployment discovery sections identify the sources that yield the most and the data each metric actually requires, including the migration logs that decide virtualization disputes. Later sections cover the reconciliation, remediation before production, the findings rebuttal, the arguments that work on each metric, the settlement and release, and the contract terms to fix while leverage is highest.
Responding to a Software License Audit: A Practical Guide
A software audit is a project with a deadline, an adversary, and a number attached, and the outcome is largely determined in the first three weeks. This guide sets out the response sequence: reading the audit clause before answering, establishing privilege and a single channel, negotiating an NDA and a written scope document, and completing an internal assessment before the auditor's. It explains how to reconstruct entitlements when the records are scattered, how to run deployment discovery that answers the metric rather than producing noise, and how to build the reconciliation that becomes the customer's case. Later steps cover reviewing and rebutting the draft findings, the arguments that work on virtualization and indirect access, and the settlement negotiation—including the contract terms to fix while leverage is highest. It closes with the governance that prevents the next audit from being expensive.
Responding to a Cross-Border Data Demand: A Practical Guide
This guide is the operating manual for a company that receives government demands for customer data, written in the order the work happens. It starts with intake and the validation pass that catches most defective demands, then routes by demand type through a decision tree covering United States criminal process, foreign government demands, civil subpoenas, section 1782 applications, emergency requests, and national security process. Later steps cover scope negotiation, which resolves more demands than litigation does, handling nondisclosure orders and the customer notification they collide with, preservation tracking, and the production itself. Final steps address when and how to challenge a demand, transparency reporting, and building the function so it survives volume. A running example follows a provider standing up the program after outgrowing an inbox.
Negotiating a Colocation or Cloud Infrastructure Agreement: A Practical Guide
Infrastructure agreements are negotiated once and lived with for years, and the provisions that matter are not the ones lawyers usually spend time on. This guide sets out the sequence that produces a good outcome: building the requirement in the units the market actually prices, running a competitive process that preserves leverage, and reading the provider's form for the handful of terms that carry the economics. It works through the power and capacity negotiation, the service level definitions and their exclusions, interconnection and access, and the liability stack. Cloud-specific sections address committed spend, price protection, egress, capacity reservations, and change-of-terms rights. Later steps cover security and audit, regulated-customer requirements, and the exit provisions that must be negotiated before signature because they cannot be negotiated afterward. Worked examples follow a first colocation deal, an enterprise cloud renewal, and a migration between providers.
Licensing a Space or Satellite Venture: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through licensing a space venture in the order the work must actually happen, which is not the order most companies attempt it. It begins with the export control program, because violations occur before anyone thinks about them and the exposure is criminal, then the regulatory schedule built backwards from the launch date. It covers filing the communications application early enough that the license shapes the spacecraft design rather than the reverse, the orbital debris showing that has become the substantive core of that application, remote sensing licensing where a camera is involved, and the launch provider relationship where the license belongs to someone else. Later steps address the launch services agreement and the cross-waiver that removes the remedy clients expect, insurance decisions, ground segment authorizations, and the continuing obligations that outlast the launch. A running example follows a constellation operator through twenty-two months.
License Compliance Toolkit: Entitlement Records, Audit Clause Analyses, and Settlement Frameworks
This toolkit supplies the working documents for software licence compliance, from the register that should exist before any audit to the amendment that should follow one. It provides an entitlement register schema, a reconciliation worksheet by metric, and an interpretation memorandum template that records how each ambiguous term was read and why. Audit response materials include an acknowledgment letter that concedes nothing, an auditor NDA, a written scope of audit agreement, a production cover letter, and a findings rebuttal structure. The negotiation section supplies a settlement and release with the scope customers actually need, and a full set of amended audit clause provisions—cure period, negotiated remediation pricing, frequency and notice limits, records-only scope, and metric definitions written into the agreement. It closes with a virtualization exhibit, a change gate, and a programme dashboard.
Infrastructure Agreement Toolkit: SLA Schedules, Power Commitments, and Exit Provisions
This toolkit supplies the drafting language for the provisions that carry an infrastructure deal. It opens with a requirement specification template that states capacity in the unit the market actually prices, followed by a power commitment schedule with usable continuous load, redundancy, metering, and a bounded escalation mechanism. The service level materials include an availability definition, a maintenance clause with capped windows and preserved redundancy, a root cause obligation, a credit schedule, and the chronic-failure termination right that gives the commitment force. Interconnection, access and suspension, and remote hands clauses follow. Cloud provisions cover committed spend with roll-forward, price protection, egress waiver, capacity reservation, and change-of-terms rights. The toolkit closes with legal process and data export clauses, a full exit and transition schedule, a lien carve-out, a credit claim letter, and a one-page agreement summary.