By Eric Goldman Wired runs an article on Patently Silly, one of the blogs tracking goofy patents. The article notes the implicit contradiction in the trends for patenting pet pampering products and patenting new and more effective ways of producing…
By Eric Goldman Anthony v. Yahoo! Inc., 2006 WL 708572 (N.D. Cal. March 17, 2006) Anthony subscribed to Yahoo’s dating subscription services. He claims that Yahoo creates false personal profiles and retains expired profiles to make the subscription service look…
By Eric Goldman Gratis Internet runs several websites that promise free stuff (like free iPods) in exchange for consumers signing up for subscription trials. The trials are initially free but then convert to paid subscriptions. The idea is that many…
By Eric Goldman The Center for Democracy and Technology has released “Following the Money: How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What Can be Done to Reverse the Trend.” The report details the complex web of relationships between…
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., No. C 06-2057 RS (N.D. Cal. complaint filed March 17, 2006) Google has been sued for downgrading the PageRank of websites in contravention of its stated “objective” policies. In KinderStart’s case, they…
By Eric Goldman There has been a groundswell of action at the state level to implement do-not-contact registries of various kinds. Two of particular note: 1) Don’t-spam-my-kid Registries. Two states (Utah and Michigan) already have laws enabling do-not-spam registries for…
By Eric Goldman The FTC has extended the COPPA rule unchanged. Most significantly, the rule continues to preclude non-authenticated email as a way of obtaining parental consent. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about COPPA much any more….
By Eric Goldman Associated Press runs a retrospective/status report on Congress’ battle against Internet porn. Believe it or not, this battle recently entered its second decade–Congress’ first effort, the Communications Decency Act, was passed in February 1996. After that law…
By Eric Goldman Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville have been indicted under the ART Act for pre-releasing four songs by Ryan Adams in August 2005, a month before the commercial release of Adams’ album. Allegedly, the…
By Eric Goldman The Smoking Gun runs an interesting feature on movie budgets. Among the goodies include the entire line-by-line budget for the movie “The Village,” and various excerpts from other budgets of movies by M. Night Shyamalan. Very interesting…