March 2010 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman Internet Exceptionalism * Stern v. Sony Corp., CV 09-7710 PA (C.D. Cal. Feb. 8 2010) “to the extent Plaintiff is suing Sony as a manufacturer of video games, and the provider of online services, Sony is not…

Search Engine Legal Developments to Watch in 2010

By Eric Goldman I recently spoke on a panel about search engines and the law at SMX West. I previewed four major trends in search engine law to watch in 2010: 1) Competition issues. Antitrust/competition law has become a big…

Viacom v. YouTube Summary Judgment Motions Highlights

By Eric Goldman Who doesn’t enjoy a good old-fashioned mud-slingin’ showdown? That’s exactly what we’ve got on our hands in the dueling summary judgment motions from Viacom and YouTube in the long-running copyright infringement case (see my initial post from…

February 2010 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman Copyright * Mavericks Recording Co. v. Harper (5th Cir. Feb. 25, 2010). 17 USC 402(d) precludes an innocent infringement defense in P2P downloading case when the record companies place proper copyright notices on their works. This is…

Ninth Circuit: Creditor Can Execute Against Domain Name Where Registry is Located — Office Depot v. Zuccarini

[Post by Venkat] The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling in Office Depot v. Zuccarini [Scribd link], agreeing that a creditor may levy against a domain name in the jurisdiction where the domain name registry is located. The decision…

Kozinski and Goldfoot on Cyberspace Exceptionalism and Internet Regulation

By Eric Goldman Alex Kozinski & Josh Goldfoot, A Declaration of the Dependence of Cyberspace, 32 Colum. J.L. & Arts 365 (2009). Introduction In early 1996, in response to Congress’ enactment of the Communications Decency Act (the first comprehensive attempt…

Catching Up With Wikipedia

By Eric Goldman I recently posted the final published version of my article Wikipedia’s Labor Squeeze and its Consequences. In the course of updating the draft, I reviewed the news coverage of Wikipedia from the second half of 2009, and…

FTC Privacy Roundtable Recap

By Eric Goldman [Introductory note: I have repeatedly criticized the FTC on this blog, and this post may implicitly criticize them as well. At the same time, I want to share a couple of compliments for the FTC. First, the…

Utah May Repeal Its Spyware Control Act–SB 26

By Eric Goldman It’s that time of year again. The Utah legislature is back in session and cooking up new schemes to regulate the Internet. So far I only see one Internet-specific bill in queue, SB 26. Surprisingly, it does…

File Names Can Help Predict File Content in Child Porn Prosecution–US v. Beatty

By Eric Goldman United States v. Beatty, 2009 WL 5220643 (W.D. Pa. Dec. 31, 2009) This is a child porn prosecution. Using Phex P2P software, an undercover investigator accessed the Gnutella network and conducted searches using search terms known to…