Napster and the "The more things change" rule
Drew Wilson at Zero Paid points out that Napster celebrates its 10th birthday this month. The Globe and Mail takes a deeper look in its Download Decade series.
Lawgarithms
Issue-spotting the Live Web, attorney Denise Howell muses about cutting edge technology-related legal issues.
Denise Howell
Denise Howell is an appellate, intellectual property and technology lawyer who enjoys broad industry recognition for her expertise on the intersection of emerging technologies and law.
Latest Posts
Microsoft's Bing playing fast and loose with fair use?
Microsoft's new Bing Search engine displays full length thumbnail videos -- with sound, stripped of ads. This appears to be the broadest "universal video search" yet, and may exceed the recognized bounds of fair use.
Video helps to quantify "fair"
American University's Center for Social Media is working to lend some certainty to the amorphous doctrine of "fair use."
Barack Obama is male, taken, and CC licensed
While John McCain recently complained about Google's application of the DMCA, Barack Obama has been quietly employing a Creative Commons license for his Flickr photostream.
Mail Goggles: an idea that goes well beyond drunk emails
There's a new GMail Labs app: Mail Goggles, by GMail engineer Jon Perlow:When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?
Jennifer Leggio unpacks demand letter over "branded community"
Over at ZDNet's Feeds, Jennifer Leggio walks us through a cease and desist email she recently received. The email suggested her blog's use of the term "branded community" might constitute trademark infringement.
Care to spend your holiday weekend policing directory listings?
I'm not a fan in general of sites that create a listing or profile for you, hoping you'll eventually claim and/or correct it. This tactic, neither user-centric nor user-driven, is insidious for at least three reasons:inaccuracies proliferate,privacy is frequently jeopardized, andusers are required to invest considerable time and supply yet more personal data in an effort to remedy 1 and 2.
Overly restrictive A.P. quoting guidelines risk winning battles at the war's expense
Saul Hansell reports today that the Associated Press "will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.
Section 230 to Twitter and others: Delete away
Community and content management don't void a site's immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Participation in an unlawful act does.
Stanford Information Law Symposium
Though it could scarcely be more cumbersomely named — the Transatlantic Information Law Symposium — this upcoming (and free) program at Stanford Law School looks excellent, featuring such big thinkers as Mark Lemley and Stefan Bechtold, and such big topics as privacy, free speech, the future of Internet regulation, and one that looks particularly intriguing from the standpoint of social media and attention: property vs. contract to govern online behavior.