German Meta-Search Engine May Be Liable for Defamation

Einstmann v. Sharelook Beteiligungen GmbH, LG Berlin, No. 27 O 45/05, 2/22/05. Sorry I’m a little late in picking this up, but a German court has held that a meta-search engine could be liable for defamation. According to the news…

ACLU Considering Challenge to Utah Anti-Internet Porn Law

The ACLU of Utah is considering a constitutional challenge against Utah’s most-recent anti-Internet porn law. Despite Rep. Dougall’s defensiveness, this law is almost certainly unconstitutional, and I’m confident that it will be struck down when scrutinized by the courts. We…

Data Mining and Attention Consumption

My short book chapter, Data Mining and Attention Consumption, has finally hit SSRN (it took almost a month to go through the SSRN review process–not sure why it took so long). The abstract: “This Essay challenges the prevailing hostility towards…

Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer–Victory for Gripers

Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer, No. 04-55962, 9th Cir. Apr. 4, 2005. Kremer launches gripe site at www.bosleymedical.com, using the trademark of his target (with no additional words/letters) in the domain name. The court’s response was a big victory for…

Search Engines and Privacy

Wired runs an article on search engines using cookies to track searcher behavior. There is a certain “haven’t-we-heard-this-before” scaremongering in articles like this, especially the continued drumbeating against cookies and Gmail (which is a terrific service, BTW—best email account I’ve…

Boalt Spyware Conference Recap

On Friday I attended the Spyware conference at Boalt. This was an outstanding conference—I learned a lot. You should take any opportunity to attend a Berkeley Technology Law Journal annual symposium in the future—their events are typically first-rate. Tutorial on…