July 18th 2008
American Airlines has privately settled its trademark suit with Google. Case number 4:07-cv-00487, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is history. Both companies are tight-lipped about the confidential settlement. The timing of this settlement is so close to the related Tiffany v. eBay trademark ruling that it suggests a causative […]
July 18th 2008
Terry Childs was a system administrator for the city of San Francisco’s high-speed network. According to reports, last week the disgruntled employee created a super password for the network and removed his follow administrators, effectively making himself the only person who can maintain the network. Now officials are stuck, since Mr. Childs is locked up […]
July 18th 2008
Judge Richard Sullivan’s ruling against Tiffany’s varied claims of trademark infringement is fairly absolute. When word of the ruling reached the MIT Media Lab where I was speaking this week, the audience there was delighted. The unambiguous ruling for the right of efficient commercial speech and immunization for intermediaries who take good-faith precautions and adhere to DMCA […]
July 16th 2008
The Iranian parliament is moving toward enforcing the death penalty as a punishment for blogging that encourages “corruption, prostitution or apostasy.” As I wrote last month, there are about 40 bloggers imprisoned worldwide. Blogs are filtered, and bloggers are deterred, but this is the first law that would try to eliminate bloggers altogether. Iranian President […]
July 15th 2008
There’s an Internet rumor circulating that Devo is suing McDonald’s for using their unique appearance in an American Idol co-branded Happy Meal. Devo bass player Gerald Casale fueled the rumor by providing this compelling quote: “We don’t like McDonald’s, and we don’t like American Idol, so we’re doubly offended.” But in fact-checking the story I […]
July 14th 2008
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says he wants to rule against Comcast for violating federal guidelines when it blocked and degraded Web traffic to peer-to-peer sites. Comcast reluctantly admitted to degrading peer-to-peer service after its efforts were documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. When the FCC scheduled a hearing to discuss this, Comcast paid people to […]
July 12th 2008
TV’s Getting Old: The Christian Science Monitor notes that for the first time, last season’s average viewer was more than fifty years old: “If today’s TV audience were a person, it wouldn’t even be a part of the target demographic anymore.” With games and the Internet, TV simply isn’t the “first screen” for the young […]
July 11th 2008
The Massachusetts House entertained debate of H-4822, which would force third-party ad networks that track visitor behavior between sites to allow visitors to opt out of receiving customized ads. The Cape Code Times provides details. Internet giants such as AOL and Google were represented by the Network Advertising Initiative. Attorney Justin Weiss argued that the […]
July 9th 2008
The Wall Street Journal apparently set journalistic duties aside today, and simply reprinted the Republican National Committee’s gleeful take on Obama’s reversal on a promise to oppose telecom immunity. The Journal‘s Marketwatch literally stated, “here’s was the RNC has distributed” and then apparently quoted verbatim the entirety of an RNC statement. Marketwatch classified this post […]
July 9th 2008
The Senate today voted 69-28 to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate the pending lawsuits against them, and to grant new warrantless eavesdropping authority to the President. Senators Dodd, Feingold, Leahy, Bingaman and Specter offered amendments to strip the immunity provision, or delay it pending legal reviews or investigations. Glenn Greenwald notes in Salon: “What is most […]
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