Law

Is America Getting More Like China?

Since Obama became President -- and yes, I voted for him -- there has been a great deal of optimism and energy around the idea that the Internet can be used to improve or "reboot" our democracy. The Administration has hired some great people to work on making government more open and transparent. This is all great. But how much good will all of this nifty e-government do for American democracy if citizens' rights to privacy and free expression are not also fiercely defended? more

Google’s Simple Home Page Now Patented

Ryan Tate of Valleywag writes: "After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company's iconic home page. We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's an innovative 'graphical user interface. ...In other words, subject to how the patent is enforced, Google owns the idea of having a giant search box in the middle of the page, with two big buttons underneath and several small links nearby." more

Email Snooping Can Be Intrusion Upon Seclusion

Analysis could also affect liability of enterprises using cloud computing technologies... Local elected official Steinbach had an email account that was issued by the municipality. Third party Hostway provided the technology for the account. Steinbach logged in to her Hostway webmail account and noticed eleven messages from constituents had been forwarded by someone else to her political rival. more

Choosing the Right Path to a Permanent Accountability Framework for ICANN

Over the next month, the ICANN Board will consider its options for ensuring that some framework is in place to ensure ICANN's accountability to the global Internet community after the approaching expiration of its Memorandum of Understanding and Joint Project Agreement (MOU/JPA) with the U.S. Department of Commerce. We analyze these options in our new paper... more

Study Finds Some 4000 Domains Expired After Being Won in Court, Some Disputed Again by Same Company

According to a recent study on trends of disputed domain names, companies could save millions on legal costs by being more proactive about registering the names first. "The results indicate more than $220 million was spent on reclaiming domain names from third parties through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)," says Corporation Service Company (CSC). "If brand owners had registered these domain names proactively, it would have only cost them $1.1 million (£600K), yielding a cost savings of $219 million." more

An End to Spam Litigation Factories? (Gordon v. Virtumundo)

When CAN-SPAM was passed in 2003, it was fairly clear that Congress wasn't trying to enable broad private enforcement. Everyone knew that rabid anti-spammers would seize any new statutory right for a litigation frenzy... Although I personally think Congress would better served all of us by omitting all private enforcement rights in CAN-SPAM, unquestionably the private rights in CAN-SPAM are drafted narrowly to prevent their abuses. That hasn't stopped some zealous anti-spammers from testing the limits of CAN-SPAM's private enforcement remedies anyway. more

Content Filtering Ineffective, Harmful According to Public Knowledge Study

A report released today by Public Knowledge points out that their recent analysis indicates filtering Internet content, as advocated by media companies, will not be effective and in fact harmful to the Internet. An accompanying 60-page whitepaper contains the full report including a number of reasons why the user of copyright filters should not be allowed, encouraged or mandated on U.S. Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. more

I Needed Music ‘cos I Had None…

The latest report on young people's online music-finding habits from consumer research company The Leading Question has attracted a fair amount of coverage for its headline finding that UK teenagers use of filesharing services has dropped by a third... Music industry pollsters will inevitably look for a silver lining in the cloud of consumer behaviour, and a focus on the growth of legal services is to be expected. But even with that caveat in mind, there has clearly been a shift in behaviour as more young people find licensed ways to listen to the music they want, watching YouTube videos, streaming songs through MySpace and Spotify and generally using legal avenues to find and enjoy the music of new bands like Florence and the Machine. more

Appeals Court Revives the CFIT Anti-Trust Suit Against VeriSign

Back in 2005 an organization called the Coalition for Internet Transparency (CFIT) burst upon the scene at the Vancouver ICANN meeting, and filed an anti-trust suit against VeriSign for their monopoly control of the .COM registry and of the market in expiring .COM domains. They didn't do very well in the trial court, which granted Verisign's motion to dismiss the case. But yesterday the Ninth Circuit reversed the trial court and put the suit back on track. more

Court Finds Pirate Bay Defendants Guilty, With Jail Sentence

A Swedish court on Friday found all four defendants guilty in a copyright test case involving one of the world's biggest free file-sharing websites. "The Stockholm disctrict court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws," the court said in a statement. "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison." more

Government Regulation of Cybersecurity: Partnership (or Power Grab) in the Making?

A cybersecurity bill introduced in the U.S. Senate on April 1st, 2009 would give the United States federal government extraordinary power over private sector Internet services, applications and software. This proposed legislation is a direct result of a review ordered by the Obama administration into government policies and processes for defending against Internet-born attack. The focus of the bill, according to a summary released by the sponsoring senators, is on establishing a new partnership between the public and private sectors in a joint effort to bolster Internet security... more

ICANN’s Implementation Recommendation Team for New gTLDs: Safeguards Needed

During the recent ICANN Board meeting in Mexico City, the Board authorized the creation and funding of an Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT). This team was to be comprised of "an internationally diverse group of persons with knowledge, expertise, and experience in the fields of trademark, consumer protection, or competition law, and the interplay of trademarks and the domain name system to develop and propose solutions to the overarching issue of trademark protection in connection with the introduction of new gTLDs." more

Susan Crawford to the White House on Ada Lovelace Day

Just in time for Ada Lovelace Day comes the news that Susan Crawford (Wikipedia, CircleID) is headed to the White House as special assistant to the president for science, technology, and innovation policy... more

A Telegraph-Era TLD?

While doing research for a paper on telegraph codebooks, I was reminded of something I had long known: one could have short addresses for telegrams. A short article in The New Yorker described how it worked in New York City. Briefly, one could pick more or less any name that wasn't in use, and list it with the Central Bureau for Registered Addresses... more

WIPO Proposal for Paperless UDRP

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has sent to ICANN a letter proposing Paperless Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)... This would save considerable amounts of paper, reduce courier charges (as the notice weighs far less than the full complaint), and thus would be good for the environment. more