CDT Report on Adware Advertising
By Eric Goldman The Center for Democracy and Technology has released “Following the Money: How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What Can be Done to Reverse the Trend.” The report details the complex web of relationships between…
Google Sued Over Rankings–KinderStart.com v. Google
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., No. C 06-2057 RS (N.D. Cal. complaint filed March 17, 2006) Google has been sued for downgrading the PageRank of websites in contravention of its stated “objective” policies. In KinderStart’s case, they…
Do-Not-Contact Registries Proliferating?
By Eric Goldman There has been a groundswell of action at the state level to implement do-not-contact registries of various kinds. Two of particular note: 1) Don’t-spam-my-kid Registries. Two states (Utah and Michigan) already have laws enabling do-not-spam registries for…
FTC Extends COPPA Without Changes…and New FTC RSS Feeds
By Eric Goldman The FTC has extended the COPPA rule unchanged. Most significantly, the rule continues to preclude non-authenticated email as a way of obtaining parental consent. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about COPPA much any more….
AP on Internet Porn Regulation
By Eric Goldman Associated Press runs a retrospective/status report on Congress’ battle against Internet porn. Believe it or not, this battle recently entered its second decade–Congress’ first effort, the Communications Decency Act, was passed in February 1996. After that law…
ART Act Indictment for Distribution of Pre-Release Music
By Eric Goldman Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville have been indicted under the ART Act for pre-releasing four songs by Ryan Adams in August 2005, a month before the commercial release of Adams’ album. Allegedly, the…
Smoking Gun on Movie Budgets
By Eric Goldman The Smoking Gun runs an interesting feature on movie budgets. Among the goodies include the entire line-by-line budget for the movie “The Village,” and various excerpts from other budgets of movies by M. Night Shyamalan. Very interesting…
Lane’s Gifts Click Fraud Lawsuit Near Settlement
By Eric Goldman Google announced that it is near a settlement in the Lane’s Gifts class action lawsuit over click fraud. The way I read the announcement, the parties have agreed to the terms, so the settlement just needs the…
Pasquale on Copyright Externalities
By Eric Goldman Frank Pasquale has posted an article called The Law and Economics of Information Overload Externalities to SSRN. I’m not sure the title really captures the article, so don’t make the decision to read/not read it based on…
Congress Is Lovin’ the Internet…to Death?
By Eric Goldman Congress has an unresolved love-hate attitude towards the Internet. Through the 1990s, Congress frequently said that the Internet should be left alone from a regulatory standpoint. Indeed, in some cases, Congress affirmatively deregulated the Internet; 47 USC…