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…
Infomediaries–Where Are They?
I have been thinking a lot about “infomediaries.” If you’re not familiar with the term, John Hagel first described it in a 1997 Harvard Business Review article The Coming Battle for Customer Information (with Rayport) and then fleshed out his…
Copyright Office Posts Comments Regarding Orphan Works
The Copyright Office has posted the comments it received regarding orphan works—a total of 716 comments! It will take a while for the copyright office to work through these. A number of the submissions are brief, in some cases just…
Getting Paid to Drive an Ad-wrapped Car
Do you remember the dot com boom phenomenon of turning cars into mobile billboards? Some great photos here. The model was that advertisers would give drivers a new car (or pay some amount per month) to drive around in a…
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC, 73 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1898 (D. Del. Jan. 13, 2005). The parties compete in the online club membership business, selling packages of services that combine price discounts, insurance-esque protections and other low-value services that consumers…