Lemley on Online Safe Harbors
By Eric Goldman Mark Lemley, Rationalizing Internet Safe Harbors Mark Lemley has weighed in on an topic near and dear to my heart–secondary liability online. He advances two principal arguments in his paper. First, it would make sense to harmonize…
2007 Cyberspace Law Syllabus
By Eric Goldman I’ve posted my 2007 Cyberlaw syllabus. Unlike the past few years, which were a little slow cyberlaw-wise, the past 12 months saw a lot of important developments. Let me recap some of changes I made to my…
Bracha Responds re. Search Engine Regulation
By Eric Goldman Last week I blogged on the new paper by Frank Pasquale and Oren Bracha advocating for substantive regulation of search engine operations. In my critique, I said: My biggest beef with the paper is that it focuses…
Pasquale & Bracha on Regulating Search Engines
By Eric Goldman Oren Bracha and Frank Pasquale, Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness and Accountability in the Law of Search Frank Pasquale has written several interesting papers on search engine regulation. See, e.g., my blog post on a prior work…
Food Tastes Better When Branded “McDonalds”
By Eric Goldman Recently I blogged on a study showing that consumers like search results more when they are branded as coming from Google, even if the search results are substantively identical. We now have a similar study, this time…
CAN-SPAM Defendant Awarded $111k in Fees/Costs–Gordon v. Virtumundo
By Eric Goldman Gordon v. Virtumundo, 06-0204-JCC (W.D. Wash. Aug. 1, 2007) I believe this ruling represents the first time that a CAN-SPAM plaintiff has been ordered to pay attorneys’ fees and costs to a defendant. As a result, it’s…
Taking Intangible Electronic Files is Criminal Fraud–NM v. Kirby
By Eric Goldman New Mexico v. Kirby, 2007-NMSC-034 (N.M. June 13, 2007) This is a very confusing case, so maybe you can help me figure out what it means. At minimum, this case highlights the problems that can be arise…
July 2007 Quick Links, Part II
By Eric Goldman Virtual Worlds * After a remarkable run as media darlings, Second Life is now experiencing some of the inevitable backlash. Case in point: Wired’s “How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life.” In this…
July 2007 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman Search Engines * According to this study, up to 40% of search queries are “re-finding queries” (i.e., the searcher is trying to re-find previously viewed information). The implication: “Because people repeat queries so frequently, search engines should…
Ninth Circuit Strikes Down Contract Amendment Without Notice–Douglas v. Talk America
By Eric Goldman Douglas v. US District Court ex rel Talk America, No. 06-75424 (9th Cir. July 18, 2007) In this case, the plaintiff initially procured telephony services from AOL, which subsequently sold its telephony business to Talk America. Talk…