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Today the Supreme Court ruled in two cases involving Megan’s law, one from Connecticut and one from Alaska. In Smith et al v. Doe et al, No. 01-729, (PDF – appeal in Doe I v. Otte, 259 F.3d 979, C.A. 9, Alaska, 2001) the court upheld the right of states to use the web to …
EU Ministers agreed to establish a new criminal offense, “illegally accessing an information system,” which would include incarceration for “serious cases.” The text of this new policy is buried on page 19 of this 27 page document (PDF), under the heading “Attacks Against Information Systems.” See also this related article in today’s New York Times, …
An update on SB 1, the California Financial Information Privacy Act: it received approval from the Senate in a vote of 23 to 6 on March 3. See my previous post on the bill here.
The recent demise of well regarded techzine Red Herring, just short of its tenth anniversary, follows the discontinuation of other prominent publications in the tech arena, including The Industry Standard in 2001, Upside magazine in 2002, and predictions that continued financial woes at Salon.com will also result in its closure. Amidst all this gloom comes …
On March 4, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations, or BALANCE Act, that mirrors the text of H. R. 5522, the Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002, introduced by Lofgren October 2, 2002. From yesterday’s press release: “This legislation would ensure that consumers are able …
This Columbia Journalism Review article, Why Information Will No Longer Be Free, highlights the growing trend by newspapers to cut losses from free access to their websites with the addition of new subscriptions models, expanded advertising campaigns and the collection of more customer personal data for marketing purposes by third parties.
On March 4, the Supreme Court released a unanimous decision in Moseley et al., dba v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc., et al., No. 01-1015, a trademark dilution case (Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 (FTDA) at Section 43(c) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §1125(c). According to Declan McCullagh’s article on the decision, “the justices …
AllTheWeb has redesigned their site, and added a new feature, AlltheWeb URL Investigator. See the company press release, and a review of the changes by Greg Notess. In other search engine news, Northern Light News No Longer Updating, and Google moves into a new arena, Google Content-Targeted Advertising. See Danny Sullivan’s commentary, Google Throws Hat …
On March 5, the government will argue before the Supreme Court that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) should be applied and that federally funded libraries must filter Internet access to patrons. See my previous posting on this case here, as well as recent topical articles from the USAToday, Case tests Congress’ ability to make …
This article reviews two applications, RoboPDF 2.0 ($50) and pdfFactory ($50), that offer a low-cost alternative for attorneys currently using Adobe to create database repositories of documents.
The Copyright Office has now posted all the public comments received on DMCA exemptions to the proposed rulemaking on anticircumvention as it applies to copyrighted works. See my previous posting here.
From Findlaw’s Writ, the author of Should Universities Crack Down On Illegal Swapping? champions the position that “universities should take the lead in mounting free speech and “fair use” challenges to the application of NETA and the DMCA.” See also my February 27 posting on this issue, P2P File Sharing on Campuses.
