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BT Wins Again: Second Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment and $175,000 Fee Award
After years of litigation based on spurious allegations of copyright infringement, BT was vindicated again this week when the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the case on summary judgment and the award of $175,000 in attorneys' fees to BT.
War Correspondence: The Digital Revolution's Dangerous Turn
An article in Sunday's New York Times by Chris Nicholson brings home an important lesson about digital life under The Law of Disruption. When social contracts are formed, the medium is often the message.
The story involves the Second Life virtual environment. A couple met and married online through the site, and with virtual currency called Lindens, purchased and furnished an island retreat. After the husband died in real life, the wife could not continue to make maintenance payments on the island. Linden Labs, which runs Second Life, erased all of their shared digital possessions.
Nokia v. iPhone: Business as Usual, Alas
If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.
Earlier this week, Nokia filed suit in the U.S. to force Apple to pay royalties on Nokia patents involving cell phone technology, patents the company claims Apple is infringing with its iPhone.
As I write in The Laws of Disruption, for better or for worse (mostly for worse) litigation has become a strategic tool in the strategy arsenal of companies trying to slow down, distract, or simply stop competitors who are eating into their market share. Litigation can be a relatively inexpensive way to put a thumb on the scales of competition. (Emphasis on “relatively.”)
More at: http://larrydownes.com/nokia-v-iphone-business-as-usual-alas/
FCC's proposed neutrality rules: Nothing to see here, folks
My analysis of the FCC’s proposed neutrality rules appears this morning on CNET.
No surprise, I think the FCC’s plan is a bad idea, and I think, more to the point, that the FCC is the wrong organization to be “saving” the open Internet. Among other crimes, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, the FCC is the same regulator who has ramped up the penalties and frequency of fines for “indecent” content over the airwaves.
The FCC is also the organization that has tried repeatedly to push through, at the behest of the media industries, the notorious “broadcast flag,” which would force electronics and software companies to limit the legal use of broadcast content.
For more, see http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10385865-94.html?tag=mncol
For Texas Instruments, Calculator Hackers Don't Add Up
Great article on my Texas Instruments dispute in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, with a picture of one of my clients: For Texas Instruments, Calculator Hackers Don't Add Up.
Legal Challenges In An Age Of Robotics
I'm moderating an upcoming panel on law and robotics, co-sponsored by the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance and the Stanford Program in Law Science and Technology's Center for Computers and Law (CodeX). Details below. Register here.
November 12, 2009 from 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Stanford Law School, Room 190
5:30 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Reception
6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. Panel
Once relegated to factories and fiction, robots are rapidly entering the mainstream. Advances in artificial intelligence translate into ever-broadening functionality and autonomy. Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of robotics in warfare, medicine, and exploration. Industry analysts and UN statistics predict equally significant growth in the market for personal or service robotics over the next few years. What unique legal challenges will the widespread availability of sophisticated robots pose? Three panelists with deep and varied expertise discuss the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law.
Identity Theft: Not Dead Yet
Julia Angwin’s column in The Wall Street Journal argues that identity theft is nothing but a “fear campaign.”
Not exactly.
I also have some strong words about the overuse and abuse of the term “identity theft” in The Laws of Disruption, and have written elsewhere in this blog on the subject. But I don’t think the problem is, as Angwin writes, merely a linguistic construct “designed to get us to buy expensive services that we don’t need.”
For more, see: http://larrydownes.com/identity-theft-not-dead-yet/
11/2: CIS Speaker Series - Betsy Masiello, Google Policy Analyst
End: November 2, 2009 2:00pm
Location
Betsy Masiello is a Policy Analyst on Google’s public policy team and is one of the internal leads for Google’s privacy engineering efforts. Prior to joining Google she was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she served global telecommunications companies on new business strategies around emerging technology. Academically, Masiello holds a BA in Computer Science from Wellesley College, a MSc in Economics from Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and an SM from MIT’s Technology & Policy Program.
The Web has enabled unprecedented levels of communication and sharing, expanding access to information around the globe, while also raising broad concerns about the future of individual privacy. This talk will explore a range of frameworks that can be used to understand privacy today, and the fundamental engineering challenges that follow in designing privacy into information products.
Hearsay Culture shows #98 and #99 -- Profs. Jacqui Lipton and Elizabeth Townsend-Gard -- posted, and #100 coming up!
I am pleased to post two more new Hearsay Culture shows. The first is Show # 98, October 14, my interview with Prof. Jacqui Lipton of Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
FTC to Bloggers: Drop that Sample!
The Federal Trade Commission has announced plans to regulate the behavior of bloggers. Unfortunately, not their terrible grammar, short attention spans or inexplicably short fuses.
Instead, the FTC announced updates to its 1980 policy regarding endorsements and testimonials, first developed to reign in the use of celebrity endorsers with no real connection or experience with products they claimed to use and adore.
The proposed changes require bloggers who recommend products or services to disclose when they have a “material connection” to the provider—that is, that they were paid to write positive reviews or given freebies to encourage them to do so. (The FTC, of course, is limited to activities in the U.S.)
For more, see http://larrydownes.com/ftc-to-bloggers-drop-that-sample/
Spotlight on CIS
Securing Privacy in the Internet Age
Edited by Anupam Chander, Lauren Gelman, and Margaret Jane Radin.
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Spotlight on Fellows
CIS Fellow Elizabeth Townsend Gard
Non-resident fellow Dr. Elizabeth Townsend-Gard is an Associate Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School. With the help of her students, Elizabeth has developed the "Durationator," an online tool and accompanying study that tracks copyright duration in the U.S. and abroad. A beta version is expected to be released in January 2009. Their progress can be followed on her blog.
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