May 6th 2008
In the court case of Atlantic v. Howell, the judge denied a request of summary judgment against the Howells. The court decision was surprisingly incisive, rejecting the RIAA’s argument that merely leaving copies of copyrighted works in a place where someone might copy them, without any evidence that they did, is a violation. This so-called […]
May 5th 2008
Last week the Italian tax office posted the names, addresses, income and tax status of every single Italian citizen on a public website. No kidding. They performed this public service just days before the outgoing centre-left Prodi government was due to leave office. Tax officials explained this was “to allow the free circulation of information […]
May 5th 2008
Three months ago, on the day when this offer was announced, I made the post Microsoft Purchase of Yahoo Won’t Happen as Predicted. Over the weekend, Steve Ballmer withdrew MSFT’s offer. Yahoo stock is trading about 20% below where it closed Friday; Microsoft is up. The Wall Street Journal‘s Deal Blog dissects Ballmer’s letter to Yang […]
May 3rd 2008
Put your trademark into Tweet Scan, a real-time database of Twitter postings, and you can see what people are saying about it, or any other topic of interest. This free service provides automatic daily or weekly summaries of up to five terms sent by email or RSS. Go ahead, see what people are talking about, it […]
May 2nd 2008
The New York Court of Appeals 1st Division recently upheld a lower court ruling that emails with signature lines “constitute ‘signed writings’ within the meaning of the statute of frauds, since plaintiff’s name at the end of his e-mail signified his intent to authenticate the contents.” At issue was the modification of an employment contract […]
May 1st 2008
Its been a cold winter for privacy advocates in the US. Some of the more remarkable privacy concerns to emerge include: The gutting of the nation’s privacy oversight board Comcast experimenting with home spying Companies swapping personal customer data The Protect America Act’s encouragement of domestic spying Spring Brings Increased Legal Support of Privacy for Citizens […]
April 30th 2008
Word-of-mouth marketing, including blogging and using “brand ambassadors,” will face legal restrictions in the UK starting May 26, when seeding positive messages online without making the origin of the message clear becomes a criminal offense. Specific penalties haven’t been spelled out, so it will likely take a test case, reported to the Office of Fair Trading […]
April 28th 2008
As a result of a mandate by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), beginning September 2007, all cars and trucks sold in the US must have a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). Here’s how it works: there’s a sensor, usually in the valve stem, that monitors information like pressure, temperature, and whether the tire is […]
April 25th 2008
Remember taking lecture notes in college? Did you ever think you were violating copyright law? Well, according to University of Florida professor Michael Moulton, you were. And you might just as well burn those CliffsNotes, too. Over the years, companies have sprung up to assist lazy or hung-over students with lectures by taking notes in their […]
April 24th 2008
Music giant EMI is demanding that music file storage company MP3tunes turn over all music stored on its servers. Apparently, EMI is demanding this irrespective of who owns, or published, the music. What is unclear is what “hand over” means in this context. Clearly, though, it does mean EMI seeks to violate the privacy and personal […]
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