Top Cyberlaw Developments of 2007

January 11, 2008 · by · in General

By Eric Goldman

I have posted my annual Cyberlaw recap, enumerating the top 10 Cyberlaw developments from 2007, at InformIT. You’ll have to read the whole thing to find out my votes for the biggest developments from last year (can you guess my #1???). From the article, some of the runners-up:

* Jammie Thomas Loses P2P File Sharing Jury Trial. Even a jury of our peers knows that P2P file-sharing of copyright works isn’t legit.

* DVR-as-a-Service Isn’t Permissible. You can record broadcasted shows on a device in your house. Just don’t ask anyone to do it for you.

* AutoAdmit Controversy Spills Over Into a Lawsuit. Some sophomoric online banter among law students is all fun-and-games until someone gets sued.

* Commercial Referential Trademark Use Is Successful Defense. A trademark owner can’t use trademark law to stop people chattering about its business on a message board.

* Anti-Spyware Vendor Protected by 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(2). A company that doesn’t like being called spyware can’t use the judicial system to force a different label.

Curious what I thought was more exciting than these developments? Go check out the whole thing!

As an aside, you may be wondering why I published the recap at InformIT instead of here on this blog. I’ve complained before about my crummy AdSense revenues. Apparently InformIT is much better at monetizing content than AdSense is, because InformIT pays me easily 100X (or more) what I would expect to earn by posting the article here. So whether InformIT is monetizing better or just spending like drunken fools, that ratio is enough to get my attention. As an added bonus, I spiked the InformIT article with generous links back to my site, and I never mind getting some extra link love from reputable third party domains.