Goodlatte Reintroduces Anti-Spyware Law
Goodlatte has reintroduced his anti-spyware bill. As of today, I didn’t see a bill number yet. Compared to the other anti-spyware bills, Goodlatte’s bill was relatively inoffensive. The basic structure was to criminalize unauthorized placement of a software program on…
More on TRUSTe’s Seal Revocation
A follow up article to my previous post on TRUSTe. It looks like the problem will be solved soon by the licensee paying some money for additional employee training. This reinforces the question: just how much value is a TRUSTe…
New UETA case
Lamle v. Mattel, 394 F.3d 1355 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 7 2005) finds that an email sent before the enactment of UETA satisfies the Statute of Frauds, and the email certainly would satisfy the SOF under UETA.
“Rich Internet Applications” and Spyware
Bob Tedeschi runs a good article on “rich Internet applications.” This technology is a small applet that is downloaded to the user’s computer to facilitate getting the user to the right place. For example, the software will monitor a user…
Paul Boutin on Typo Traffic
Paul Boutin discusses the problem of searchers making typos when typing domain names into the address bar. He runs through the typical litany of gripes about product efforts to solve this problem—Microsoft’s “blatant ploy” to promote MSN search when IE…
Termination of Accounts in Virtual Worlds
I attended Santa Clara’s Rules & Borders conference on Friday, and the subject of virtual worlds came up extensively. One issue in particular is continuing to vex me. Some virtual world participants invest significant time and money in their online…
Avoiding Attention Distractions
Katie Hafner writes a good article on the difficulties we have avoiding distractions when we use our computer. It’s so true! There are so many temptations and messages competing for our attention. I know I struggle with this—there’s always something…
Randall Stross Whines About Spam
Randall Stross writes an article whining about spam as pollution and complaining that the recipient pays for spam. Haven’t we heard this argument before? As a matter of fact, we have. Often. A long time ago (his own article cites…
Ben Edelman’s Response to My Post on Utah’s Spyware Law
I got an email from Ben Edelman in response to my earlier posting on Utah’s anti-spyware law. If you don’t know Ben, you should. Ben has done some first-rate empirical research on the Internet, and I cited several of his…
Is TRUSTe Irrelevant?
TRUSTe pulled its logo from some websites for breaking its rules for the first time in 2 years. The article focuses on TRUSTe’s refusal to specify the rules violation, but this seems to miss the point, and widely. In 1999…