The BBC reports on a study that the British do not equate downloading copyright material with theft. The British have specifically rejected one of the standard analogies that downloading copyrighted music is just like shoplifting a CD of the music…
FTC v. Trustsoft, No. H05-1905 (S.D. Tex. complaint filed May 31, 2005; Stipulated Preliminary Injunction Order granted June 14, 2005). The FTC has busted another vendor of anti-spyware software for making false claims about its products–specifically, that the “SpyKiller” software…
Alex Morganis at Spyware Informer interviewed me about adware/spyware issues. Read the interview here. This ended up being a great way for me to articulate some of my latest thoughts. I hope you find the interview interesting, and I welcome…
The EFF has released the wonderful resource “Legal Guide for Bloggers.” It successfully strikes a delicate balance between being comprehensive, accurate and accessible to lay readers. If you’re wondering about the law of blogging, this guide will most likely answer…
If you’re a cybersquatter, one of the dumbest things you can do is issue a press release describing how you plan to make a lot of money on 23,000 different domain names that are variations of famous trademarks. Apparently subscribing…
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…
The Copyright Office has announced that it will have public roundtables to discuss orphan works in DC July 26-27 and Berkeley August 2. This is interesting because, after receiving almost 900 submissions regarding orphan works already, I would have thought…
The Grokster media frenzy has reached a fever pitch. Not only is the war of words taking over the mainstream press, but we’re seeing a bubble of activity in the press release databases. A couple of examples. Orrick’s Press Release…
I’m catching up on back reading, and I came across this December 2004 Wired News article by Michelle Delio called “Spyware on My Machine? So What?” [see update below about questions about the article] Anti-spyware advocates are wedded to the…
Alaska’s legislature has passed SB 140 (to be codified at Sec. 45.45.792, 45.45.794 and 45.45.798), which is awaiting the governor’s signature. This statute contains some anti-Internet porn provisions (probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment and Dormant Commerce Clause), but I’m…