Consumer Reviews May Lift E-Commerce Conversion
By Eric Goldman Judith Chevalier & Dina Mayzlin, The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews, Journal of Marketing Research, August 2006. [see a free earlier version from 2003] For a while, Epinions got into the “syndication”…
Article on Regulating Marketing–A Coasean Analysis of Marketing
By Eric Goldman Eric Goldman, A Coasean Analysis of Marketing, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming). In 2001, I had a career-altering epiphany while I was working at Epinions (this is the topic that prompted me to consider becoming a…
Must Websites Comply with the ADA (and State-Law Equivalents)? National Federation of the Blind v. Target
By Eric Goldman National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp., No. C 06-01801 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 6, 2006) This case got a fair amount of attention when it first came out, so I’m a little late to this party….
Sept. 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Some stories that caught my eye in September: * Digg users are gaming the Digg algorithm. Greg Linden’s take. Naturally, Digg is fighting back by tweaking its algorithm to reduce the effect of gaming and preserve some…
New York v. Direct Revenue Amicus Brief
By Eric Goldman David Post, Scott Christie and I have filed an amicus brief in New York v. Direct Revenue LLC, No. 401325/06 (N.Y. Supreme Ct.), one of Spitzer’s office’s high-profile enforcement actions against adware companies. Among other aggressive positions,…
eBay User Agreement Upheld, Part II–Durick v. eBay
By Eric Goldman Durick v. eBay, 2006 WL 2672795 (Oho Ct. App. Sept. 11, 2006) I didn’t anticipate this being eBay Law Week, but these issues often seem to arise in cycles. Yesterday I blogged on the Nazaruk case, which…
Amazon’s Display of Book Cover Doesn’t Violate Publicity Rights—Almeida v. Amazon.com
By Eric Goldman Almeida v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2006 U.S. APP. LEXIS 17989 (11th Cir. July 18, 2006) Introduction Product photos on e-commerce websites’ product pages are a notorious liability trap. During my tenure at Epinions, product page photos were the…
Denver IP Summit Presentation
By Eric Goldman I attended the Denver Summit on Intellectual Property and Digital Media. The audience was principally cable industry participants, but there were plenty of content creators (and legal academics) in attendance. I spoke about the various ways that…
Microsoft Will Be an Adware Vendor
By Eric Goldman Microsoft is considering migrating some of its software titles to an ad-supported model instead of a consumer licensing fee model. This isn’t exactly a new idea–this development has been anticipated for at least a decade. However, if…
California Anti-Phishing Law–Cal. B&P Code Sec. 22948
By Eric Goldman Going through my stack, I came across Cal. Business & Professions Code Sec. 22948-22948.3 (SB 355), California’s recently enacted anti-phishing law. In general, compared to other state anti-Internet behavior laws, this law is relatively targeted and unobjectionable….