Lane’s Gift Click Fraud Complaint
Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles LLC v. Yahoo! Inc., Case No. CV-2005-52-1 (Ark. Cir. Ct. complaint filed Feb. 17, 2005). After parsing the Click Defense complaint last week, I was finally able to get my hands on one of the complaints…
Class Action Settlement in Electronic Databases Case–Should I Participate?
In re. Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, M.D.L. No. 1379 (SDNY). This case involves the republication of print articles in electronic databases like Westlaw and Nexis without authorization (part of the fallout from Tasini and similar cases). The…
Study on User Consent and Spyware
Stopping Spyware at the Gate: A User Study of Privacy, Notice and Spyware by Nathaniel Good et al. I’ve already lauded this study after I heard Deirdre Mulligan present the findings at the Boalt Spyware conference in April. If we…
Click Fraud Lawsuit–Click Defense v. Google
Click Defense Inc. v. Google, Inc., No. 5:05-cv-02579-RMW (N.D. Cal. complaint filed June 24, 2005). This is the second major lawsuit again Google for click fraud, following on the Lane’s Gift case filed a few months ago. I have yet…
Proposed GPL Version 3: Revenge of the Free Software Foundation?
By John Ottaviani Now for something NOT related to Grokster. Earlier this month, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen released an article discussing their plans to update the GNU General Public License (“GPL”). Version 2 of the GPL was released in…
Campbell v General Dynamics (II)
By John Ottaviani Eric pointed out that I neglected to mention in my post yesterday this case is actually one of the few reported “E-SIGN” decisions. The district court had questioned whether or not an e-mail agreement to arbitrate satisfies…
When In Doubt, Spell it Out — The Hazards of Using E-Mail to Amend Contracts
By John Ottaviani Although the First Circuit’s May 23 opinion in Campbell v. General Dynamics Government Systems Corp. arises in the employment context, any company that engages in the practice of amending the terms of use, a privacy policy or…
Madison on Creative Commons
Mike Madison provides a thoughtful post on why some copyright owners might resist Creative Commons. UPDATE: John Dvorak writes a powerful critique of Creative Commons. Some of John’s arguments are wrong as a matter of law, but his points are…
Does AskJeeves Have a Spyware/Adware Problem? Diller Says No. I Say…
Ben Edelman leveled two charges at AskJeeves on Monday. First, Ben asserts that AskJeeves targets kids for toolbar downloads. Second, Ben asserts that an AskJeeves distributor exploits security holes to install the toolbar without consent. This follows on the heels…
Antitrust Attack on the GPL
By John Ottaviani In the latest attack on open source software and the General Public License , Daniel Wallace, acting as his own attorney, has sued the Free Software Foundation in the United States District Court for the Southern District…