ReadWriteWeb

Because today's startup generally requires significantly less seed capital to function, the legal contracts once required for large-scale deals are no longer appropriate. Rather than forcing startups to draft lengthy legal documents, one attorney is offering an invaluable resource to entrepreneurs. Best known as the Fenwick and West attorney responsible for Twitter, Ted Wang recently released a series of templates to help startup companies navigate the difficult task of investment financing.

Due to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed by Microsoft, whistleblower website Cryptome [link to a backup version of the site] has been disabled by its ISP, Network Solutions.

The complaints were due to the fact that Cryptome published a 22-page Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide. Microsoft claimed copyright infringement, Cryptome's editor refused to budge, and the site was taken down this afternoon.

Last week we brought you our curated and organic List of Legal Resources For Startups and Entrepreneurs which includes blogs, online legal tools, articles and tips from venture capitalists. Just recently, Jill Hubbard Bowman's brand new blog IP Law For Startups, an excellent new source for startups, was added to the list of blogs.

This week was a busy one as Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iPad on the same day President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address - two events with significant impacts on startups and entrepreneurs. In this week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup, we discuss what the iPad could mean for startups, how mobile developers are excited about HTML 5, and how to find the perfect co-founder for your startup. We also check in with our semi-weekly series, Never Mind the Valley, in which we chronicle communities outside of Silicon Valley with booming startup scenes. This week we go international - hopping across the pond to London, and across the other pond to Beijing.

Lately on the startup blogosphere there has been a lot of talk about lawyers and how they relate to startups and entrepreneurs. A few weeks ago, Scott Edward Walker, a guest author on Venture Hacks, posted his Top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs hate lawyers, which prompted venture capitalist Mark Suster to write How to Work with Lawyers at a Startup.

Regardless of whether lawyers are something entrepreneurs should loathe or love, it seems as though a curation of legal resources for startups was in order. The following is a list (in no particular order or rank) of blogs, articles, websites, VC tips and other online resources for entrepreneurs and startups.

A year ago ReadWriteWeb published an article in defense of embargoes with an outline of how startups can effectively manage embargoes and special releases. Lately, in place of embargoes we've received a few requests to sign non-disclosure agreements. While this may simply be a rookie mistake made by early-stage entrepreneurs, NDAs and embargoes are completely different requests. Sending an NDA is absurd for a number of reasons.

As we reported earlier this week, the retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who was accused of illegally sharing 24 songs on Kazaa, was about to come to an end this week. In an earlier trial, Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay $220,000 to the music companies, but today, a different judge and a different jury came back with a new verdict that was surely not what Thomas-Rasset was looking for. A federal jury, clearly unconvinced by Thomas-Rasset's defense, awarded the recording companies $1.92 million - which comes out to $80,0000 per shared song.

Jammie Thomas vs. Capitol is probably the most infamous and longest running illegal file sharing case in the U.S., and while a judge declared a mistrial last September, the two parties met once again this week to begin Thomas' retrial. In almost every other file sharing case, the defendants settled with the RIAA out of court, but when Jammie Thomas was accused of illegally sharing 24 songs on the once incredibly popular Kazaa P2P network in February 2005, she decided to fight back. Since then, the two parties have gone through a trial, conviction, a mistrial, and now the retrial of Thomas is well under way and just entered its second day.

Today, a court in Sweden found four members of the Pirate Bay guilty of breaking Swedish copyright laws and sentenced them to a year in prison and a $3.6 million fine - a third of what the prosecution had asked for. The Pirate Bay and its lawyers will, of course, appeal the verdict, and the site will continue to function normally during the appeals procedures.

This morning, HireCube's Aniq Rahman alerted us to a major change on YouTube. A growing number of videos now appear without sound and with a notice that these videos contained "an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders." It looks like YouTube is starting to implement audio fingerprinting software that automatically removes licensed audio tracks. Update: Here is YouTube's official reaction.