February 19th 2010
According to a class action lawsuit, a Pennsylvania school district used laptops it issued to high school students to regularly spy on them at home via the built-in webcams. In a court filing (Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District), the parents of student Blake Robbins are suing the school district for: invasion of [...]
August 2nd 2009
Recently, Starbucks made news by announcing the opening of three coffee stores in Seattle that exhibit no corporate branding. Referred to as “15th Ave. Coffee & Tea,” the new properties feature Starbucks coffee and teas as well as beer, wine, and ice cream, but are devoid of the familiar green-and-black logo. The look and feel of the [...]
July 15th 2009
In a ruling that could cause shockwaves throughout the online legal community, a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personally identifiable information. According to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones: “In order for ‘personally identifiable information’ to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies [...]
June 29th 2009
In May, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed suit against Twitter in California Superior Court, essentially claiming that someone using his name was posting comments that damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress. The suit also claims damage to La Russa’s trademark rights. Ordinarily, I would have thought little about the case, believing [...]
April 28th 2009
Recently, the people over at Wikipedia.org have had a bee in their bonnet about a site called WikipediaArt.org. Wikipedia doesn’t like this other site using its name in their domain name, and is threatening to pursue legal action against WikipediaArt.org for trademark infringement. According to WikipediaArt.org: This web site documents performance art work that promotes [...]
April 10th 2009
The Associated Press plans to go after news aggregators legally and through legislation (whatever that means) who ‘take’ AP headlines and related content. Despite the obvious arguments of Fair Use and the fact that aggregators drive traffic to AP affiliated newspapers or even to the AP itself, AP Board Chairmen Dean Singleton sees it very [...]
April 7th 2009
Occasionally, one finds a website that does something a little different or a little better than everybody else. Recently, a friend pointed me towards a website whose Terms of Service (ToS ) makes a good-faith effort to explain in layman’s terms what the heck they are talking about. At Aviary.com, an online image editing service, [...]
April 2nd 2009
The EU has started an investigation into “customer profiling” on the internet. This is where online services and advertisers collect data on anything from preferences to behavior. From a recent article in the Financial Times: Officials say they will collect evidence from consumers and industry on the information commercial websites are collecting and how it [...]
March 30th 2009
While commenting on New Zealand copyright law, Google makes some interesting facts known about the DMCA. According to an article in New Zealand PCWorld: Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one [...]
March 24th 2009
According to the EU Data Retention Directive, ISPs in the EU are required to store customer internet traffic for up to 12 months. Predictably, the UK government wants to go even further with its “Interception Modernisation Programme” or IMP. IMP will monitor all web communications of UK citizens using deep-packet inspection. The information will be [...]
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