By Eric Goldman No one is better at coughing up legislative hairballs than Congress. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (grafted to the end of the SAFE Port Act) was passed over 2 months ago, but my repeated…
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: *…
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…
I am participating in an intriguing conference on search engine law being sponsored by the Haifa Center for Law & Technology on December 21. See the conference website. If you’re going to be in Israel between December 17 and 27,…
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…
By Eric Goldman Exactly 1 year ago, I started using Google Personalized Search. Since then, Google Personalized Search has recorded 6,700 searches of mine–an average of over 18 searches a day, every day (including weekends and vacations), or over 1…
By Eric Goldman Omega World Travel, Inc. v. Mummagraphics, Inc., No. 05-2080 (4th Cir. Nov. 17, 2006) Wow, what a huge ruling on spam from Judge Wilkinson in the Fourth Circuit! People–even judges–hate spam so viscerally that it’s almost impossible…
By Eric Goldman BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2006 WL 3242333 (D.S.C. Nov. 7, 2006) Despite all of the hype about blog law, the reality is that we’ve had comparatively few blog-specific lawsuits. As a result, we give extra attention to…
By Eric Goldman Barrett v. Rosenthal, S122953 (Cal. Supreme Ct. Nov. 20, 2006) The California Supreme Court issued a tremendous defense-favorable opinion today interpreting 47 USC 230. This opinion makes two principal points. First, it defines the word “user” in…
By Eric Goldman Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Law, Inc. v. Craigslist, Inc., 1:06-CV-00657 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 14, 2006) A group of lawyers sued Craigslist for displaying user-submitted classified ads that putatively violated the federal Fair Housing…