February 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * The California Highway Patrol (which, for reasons unclear to me, has investigatory power here) has concluded that the Angelides campaign did not break any laws when they reverse-guessed URLs on Schwarzenegger’s website and found an unrestricted…
Search Engines Defeat “Must-Carry” Lawsuit–Langdon v. Google
By Eric Goldman Langdon v. Google, Inc., 2007 WL 530156 (D. Del. Feb. 20, 2007). My write-up on Langdon’s complaint from last summer. Langdon is a griper. He sought to buy ads on the major search engines to advance his…
January 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * Marketers (including Microsoft) are paying authors to write Wikipedia entries. Surprised?! * Also on the topic of Wikipedia and marketers, Wikipedia has tagged all of their pages NOFOLLOW so that there’s no way a marketer or…
Advertisers Settle NY Anti-Adware Action
By Eric Goldman Earlier this week, the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG) office issued a press release with the blazing all caps headline: GROUNDBREAKING SETTLEMENTS HOLD ONLINE ADVERTISERS RESPONSIBLE FOR DISPLAYING ADS THROUGH DECEPTIVELY INSTALLED “ADWARE” PROGRAMS Groundbreaking…or groundless? After…
December 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * JP Enterprises, Inc. v. HDVE, LLC, 1:06-cv-01046-REB-PAC (D. Colo.). In June 2006, JP Enterprises sued Yahoo for selling its trademarks for keyword-triggered ads. In December, JP Enterprises and Yahoo stipulated a dismissal of the case against…
Google Wins Publisher’s Lawsuit over AdSense Termination–Bradley v. Google
By Eric Goldman Bradley v. Google, Inc., 2006 WL 3798134 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 22, 2006) I’m struggling with developing a policy regarding blogging about pro se lawsuits (i.e., lawsuits brought without a lawyer) against major companies like Google. On the…
Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years
By Eric Goldman [UPDATE: I put together a more formal assessment of Wikipedia’s challenges in my 2010 article, Wikipedia’s Labor Squeeze and its Consequences.] About a year ago, I predicted that Wikipedia will fail in 5 years. My logic: *…
“Junk Mail is Alive and Growing”
By Eric Goldman Many people thought the era of cheap electronic communications would spell doom for junk mail because of the cost advantages of printing and distributing electronic solicitations over dead trees solicitations. But instead, over the past year, marketers…
Nov. 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman My monthly roundup of noteworthy tidbits: * Yesmail, an email outsource vendor, was busted by the FTC under CAN-SPAM for failing to honor opt-out requests because Yesmail’s incoming email filters blocked those opt-out requests as spam. This…
One Judge’s Derisive View of Junk Faxes as Conversion
By Eric Goldman Rossario’s Fine Jewelry, Inc. v. Paddock Publications, Inc., 443 F. Supp. 2d 976 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 17, 2006). I’ve blogged before on courts’ rejection of a common law conversion claim based on the receipt of junk faxes….