The Internet Law Blog

2005-06-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released a study on digital music. The study, which features a detailed review of online music services, concludes that "it is very difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the size of the drop in music sales and the rise of file sharing." The report notes that sales of CDs, as well as the success of licensed on-line music services are likely to have been affected to some degree by a variety of other factors, for example physical piracy and CD burning, competition from other, newer entertainment products and faltering consumer spending in some markets.

I'm surprised at the conclusions drawn in the study. I realize that there are a number of factors that may contribute to the drop in music sales, but when you consider that somewhere between 50 - 60% of all broadband traffic is the result of peer to peer file sharing, it's hard to make a convincing case that file sharing, and more specifically, music downloading, is not a significant factor in the recent deterioration of music sales.

2005-06-14T01:52:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, I know this is a blog about Internet law, but I just finished reading this book and I wanted to pass it along. It caught my eye in a New York Times review and, since my knowledge of eastern-European affairs is lacking, I couldn't pass it up. The author effectively weaves his personal story of love into the experiences shaping his decisions during a war that is very misunderstood. The book makes you think about love, tragedy, personal motivations and emotions. It's well written and provides a perspective on U2 that I wasn't aware of. I highly recommend it.

2005-06-11T22:54:00.000-05:00

I just finished a presentation to the UT Computer and Computer Law Conference on the Enforceability of Online Agreements. It was a GREAT conference. It was well attended and there were a nuber of excellent presenters. This has always been one of my favorite conferences. I was somewhat surprised that this year the audience seemed to be much more interested in each presentation which lead to a number of very interesting questions. I'm already looking forward to next year's conference.

2005-06-08T23:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back. A rather long hiatus I realize - nearly 2 years. Nevertheless, I couldn't stay away. A lot has happened since my last blog but I can't even imagine trying to get everyone caught up. In short, I now have two boys in diapers and bags under my eyes. The boys are a blast and I can't imagine life without them. So, now that I've had a chance to catch my breath, it's time to get back to the blogging business. I'm looking forward to blogging again about Internet law and anything else that seems to be interesting.

2003-08-29T12:17:00.000-05:00

Turning a Good Thing Into a Bad Thing
Wasn't it great when we thought that Howard Dean was adding a fresh voice to presidential campainging by utilizing the Internet in new and different ways. He even incorporated blogging into his grass roots operation. But now he's gone too far. Yesterday he acknowledged that his campaign staff spammed an undisclosed number of people with unsolicited political advertisements. His staffers said Dean remained opposed to spam and blamed the spamming on two contractors who had promised to contact only people who had specifically requested to receive the advertisements.

2003-05-19T22:36:00.000-05:00

Googlewashing debate continues. The issue is this: Do blogs rate too highly in a Google search? If you search for a story about the man who is selling tea kettles on ebay with reflective photos of his nude body (using the words "tea" "kettle" "nude" and "ebay") the Internet Law Blog is listed number 2 on the search results. True journalists argue that blogs should not receive that kind of presence on Google, and that more traditional media should be rated higher. The important point articulated Doc Searls' important is that "If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web." If traditional media wants Google-views, they should open up their archives to the masses. If they don't, it's hard to be sympathetic to their view that blogs receive too much attention.

But now Google faces a new threat. Microsoft is taking aim at the popular site.

And some amazing facts from Google . . .

It would take 5,707 years to do a manual search of Google's 3 billion Web pages, at one minute a page

It takes 0.5 seconds for Google to search its database

You can have the Google home page set up in 88 languages, including Urdu, Latin and Klingon

2003-05-18T14:31:00.000-05:00

The Feds arrested 50 people this weekend. charging them with a variety of crimes, from setting up fake banking websites to collect the account numbers of unsuspecting customers to surreptitiously taping and selling unreleased movies. According to Ashcroft, online crime now accounts for more than one-half of all fraud complaints. Since Jan. 1, the Justice Department and other federal agencies have uncovered more than 89,000 victims bilked out of some $176 million. Hopefully the government has carefully thought through how they will establish jurisdiction over the defendants. More importantly, I hope they have the evidence necessary to prove their allegations so that the online thieves spend some real time in jail. Otherwise, the message will be completely lost.

2003-05-16T04:42:00.000-05:00

New Links. I spent a little time updating the links. Check them out when you get a chance.

2003-05-15T21:40:00.000-05:00

Spam Soup: Proposed anti-spam legislation gets watered down. According to the Washington Post, Lobbyists for the marketing, retailing and Internet service industries have been working closely with two powerful House committee chairmen to craft federal legislation to curb junk e-mail, creating a bill that state law enforcers and several consumer groups say would do more to protect mass e-mail advertising than to combat spam. Of course, what else would happen if the Direct Marketing Association, America Online, Microsoft and the National Retail Federation (among others) weighed in on an anti-spam bill? This will NOT turn out to be a compromise bill like the legislators suggest.

2003-05-15T21:14:00.000-05:00

Who feels the pain when you download music? After making a lot of assumptions, it appears that for every $16.98 album that you don't buy because you downloaded the songs, the promoters, producers and the label lose about $16.64 and the artist loses about $.34. A case study in the NY Daily News breaks down the cash flow of a hypothetical hit album. It identifies all the people that get paid along the food chain, including some odd recoupable record company expenses, like a 25 percent "packaging deduction" and a 15 percent "free goods charge," off the top, most of which the label keeps. The bottom line is that the old model for music distribution no longer works, even at the rates charged by Apple. At iTunes' prices, the 14 songs on a typical CD would cost $13.86, just about the retail price of a CD. However, downloading a song does not incur any of the costs associated with the physical distribution of music, a significant share of the final retail price. As I've mentioned in this blog before, we need a new model for buying music online.

2003-05-13T04:42:00.000-05:00

Hacking iTunes. It appears that Apple's new iTunes software contains features that allow Mac users to stream music to each other over a network. Hackers can listen to any song on another network-connected Macintosh's hard drive and they ave converted that ability into listening over the net. This is all very frustrating to Apple, of course, who wanted to stay away from the issues associated with swapping free files. Streaming songs typically requires a specific kind of license from the copyright holders separate from the license required to download and play the same song. The war over streaming licenses has been intense and, IMO, is not over.

2003-05-12T21:12:00.000-05:00

An intriguing listing of awards and settlements in IP infringement cases. Gregory Aharonian, Internet Patent News Service, provides a table listing the monetary awards that companies have received because they were either victorious in an IP infringement lawsuit, or they negotiated deal in the absence/presence of a infringement lawsuit, or related technology litigation such as antitrust. He collects the reports from the media and the results are impressive . . . and very interesting. He's looking for more if you know of any.

2003-05-10T20:48:00.000-05:00

Wristomo: The wave of the future. Keep your eye on wristwatch-sized cellphones. NTT DoCoMo's Wristomo I-mode wristphone sold out within 20 minutes of going on sale. Wristomo was made available to the Japanese public on Wednesday at 10am local time. By 10.20am, all 1000 devices that made up the wristphone's first production run, had been sold.

2003-05-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

I usually like to put photos with the stories, but I just couldn't do for this one . . . A Florida nudist colony is planning what it's calling the first-ever webcast of a nude tennis tournament. For a fee of $10-$13, Internet surfers can go to http://www.TennisInTheBuff.com and watch on demand the two-hour tournament after it's played tomorrow. Yikes! The idea of nude tennis is bad enough, but the thought of putting it on the Web takes it to a whole new level.

2003-05-06T06:55:00.000-05:00

Patenting a cure for SARS. According to the Wall Street Journal, scientists' hunt for a SARS cure has turned to a race for patent rights. The Journal describes a number of patent filings which hadn't previously been made public. Most of the claims in the applications are sufficiently broad to allow their holders to claim rights in most diagnostic tests, drugs or vaccines developed to cope with the outbreak. Researchers are divided over whether it is appropriate to seek commercial gain from the discovery of the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome. Still, the patent applications reflect a scrambling for competitive position among both scientists and companies as the SARS epidemic continues.

2003-05-06T00:59:00.000-05:00

It's official, now EVERYONE is doing it. Apparently the latest entrant into the blogging scene is none other than the eternal politician, Gary Hart. The former Colorado senator and 1988 Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination, before his offshore "escapades," is not officially a candidate, but his blog on Garyhartnews.com is testing the waters. It promises regular political musings from the man himself and a place for readers to comment. I'm not sure it will be terribly successful, however. Not because a blog is not a great way to communicate, but because his content is so lame. In todays comments he says that he "won't run unless he thinks he can win." That's not the kind of stuff that will keep people coming back!

2003-05-04T16:53:00.000-05:00

Got some work to do today. While I'm at it, you can square up your squirrel.

2003-05-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

Broadband in the Bathroom. MSN is putting PCs in porta-johns! No joke. MSN UK is creating what Microsoft calls the world's first Internet outhouse, or iLoo, complete with flat-screen plasma display, wireless keyboard and broadband access. The portable lavatory is being tested and will debut at festivals around Great Britain this summer. Microsoft plans to build a single prototype MSN iLoo that will travel the festival circuit, and may build more if the response to the pioneering potty warrants it. Of course, they are negotiating with toilet paper manufacturers for special rolls with URLs printed on them. UPDATE: It IS a joke after all.

2003-05-03T07:33:00.000-05:00

My wish list keeps growing. PoGo! Products is on to something with Radio YourWay. It's an MP3 player with a built-in AM/FM radio recorder that can be set to record at specific times, and can save up to four hours of programming as MP3 files which can then be transferred to a PC when you run out of space. There are a few radio programs that I don't like to miss and this would be a slick way to catch them.

2003-05-02T18:30:00.000-05:00

Apple Music is a GREAT service at the wrong price. Apple rolled out its new iTunes Music Store last week to rave reviews (they sold 275,000 tracks in 18 hours). There are no monthly fees. You can buy as many or as few songs as you like. There's no special Web browser or any new software. You can play a free 30-second preview of any song, and if you like what you hear, you just click a single button to buy it. No shopping-cart screens appear. The songs you buy begin downloading to your computer immediately. Every purchased song includes a picture of the album cover, which shows up in iTunes when you play the track. Once you buy a song, it's yours to keep. It never expires. You can copy it to as many as three computers, which don't have to be owned by the same person, or even be in the same location. You can copy each song to an unlimited number of iPods, and burn each song to an unlimited number of home-made CDs. All for 99 cents per song.

Even at 99 cents, the cost still seems too high to attract users of peer-to-peer file-trading services. Some people say that even at $.18 a song, the price would be too high.

My former Copyright Law professor at the University of Texas, Neil Netanel, advocates a compulsory licensing scheme. This is one of those fairly rare cases when I agree with a prof. Under a compulsory licensing scheme, people would pay a tax of around 4 percent on ISP subscriptions or purchases of devices that download or play content from file-trading services. The proceeds of the tax would compensate copyright owners for revenues lost because of file trading. Everyone wins. The copyright owner gets paid and the otherwise honest consumer pays an imperceptible upcharge for technology and gets the peace of mind that comes with paying for the songs he listens to.

2003-05-02T03:22:00.000-05:00

GoogleAnswer. I just learned about GoogleAnswer from Ernie the Attorney. For a minimum of $2 you can post a question on just about any topic and get a quick response. Ernie's excursions to Paris caused him to wonder if the French word for heart ("couer") had any relation to the origins of the word "court" as used in the legal sense. The answers he received are more than impressive. It's a pretty cool tool!

2003-05-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

Just Finished This Book: The Barbary Plague: The Black Death In Victorian San Francisco. This is an incredible book and the similarities between the bubonic plague and today's SARS epidemic will blow you away. For example, ships were quarantined as they entered port in 1900 just as airlines were quarantined for SARS in 2003; the inception of both the plague and SARS was in the Guandong province of China; and bodies were hidden from health officials in both cases to lessen the tourist impact caused by fear of the illnesses.There is no doubt in my mind that this book will soon become the standard reference on bubonic plague in California. It is the first book length study covering the two plague outbreaks which visited San Francisco between 1900 and 1909. It's wonderfully easy to read and illuminates a history forgotten to all but a few medical historians. The book is by Marilyn Chase, whose writing and research are excellent. She tells of the outbreaks from the perspective of the two United States public health officers most intimately associated with the story, Joseph J. Kinyoun, founder of the NIH, and Rubert Blue, who's success in dealing with the 1907 plague outbreak in San Francisco lead to his elevation to the position of Surgeon General. Definitely worth reading.

2003-05-01T03:37:00.000-05:00

Before seeing this, my biggest concern with online auctions was some occasional fraud. I just happened on this on Boing Boing. It appears that there's been some hidden nude self-portraiture on eBay. In addition to this tea kettle, a guitar was offered in which the seller of this guitar is reflected naked in the chrome. If this guy keeps it up, eBay should ban the sale of all reflective objects.

2003-04-30T21:05:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Tom Mighell for mentioning The Internet Law Blog in Inter Alia: An Internet Legal Research Weblog, Among Other Things.

Also, thanks to Denise Howell for adding my blog to her Bag and Baggage blog. Denise has been at this a while and I always enjoy catching her comments.

2003-04-29T23:18:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Spam. . . You've got to check this out. Three Alaskans taking Spam (the lunch meat, not the email) on their travels. This shot is from Istanbul, Turkey on the "Asia side" in Kadikoy.

2003-04-29T23:15:00.000-05:00

Nailing Down Jello: Jail-Time for Spammers in Virginia. Spammers now risk landing in prison and big fines under a tough Virginia law signed today. The penalties can apply even if the sender and recipients live elsewhere because much of the global Internet traffic passes through northern Virginia, home to major online companies such as America Online and MCI and a conduit to major federal communications hubs in neighboring Washington and its suburbs. Although by my count about 27 states have anti-spam laws, no other allows authorities to seize the assets earned from spamming while imposing up to five years in felony prison time.

Meanwhile, two recent Senate proposals that would subject chronic spammers to criminal charges seem to have stalled. The latest plan, introduced this week by Sen. Schumer, authorizes fines and prison time for "severe repeat offenders," Schumer wants to create a national no-spam registry, modeled after do-not-call list legislation enacted this year that enables people to avoid getting calls from telemarketers. Schumer's legislation differs slightly from the Can-Spam Act of 2003, introduced earlier this month by Senators Burns and Ron Wyden. The Burns-Wyden bill does not call for a do-not-spam list, but does propose fines, along with prison terms of up to one year, for spammers who knowingly send unwanted mail with false or misleading headers.

Although the principle behind proposed federal legislation is drawing praise from anti-spam activists, many doubt its practicality. It's easy to outlaw spam, but terribly difficult to catch the outlaws who send it. Or as Robert Bulmash, president of the privacy rights group Private Citizen, said "Pinning down a spammer is like trying to nail down Jell-O."

2003-04-28T23:18:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court Should Leave Jurisdiction Issue to Congress. The Supreme Court rejected an appeal today that would have helped unravel the sticky web of Internet jurisdiction. Northwest Healthcare Alliance apparently didn't feel that it received a sufficient grade from Healthgrades.com, a company that offers ratings of health care providers on the Internet, so it filed a defamation suit in Washington state. Healthgrades.com, which operates out of Colorado, claimed it wasn't subject to the jurisdiction in Washington. After removal to federal court, the case was dismissed on for lack of personal jurisdiction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, however, finding that Healthgrades.com "purposefully interjected itself" into the Washington state market by offering rankings that it knew would be of interest mainly to Washington residents. Healthgrades.com appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which refused to take the case. Now Healthgrades.com and lots of commentators are whining about the Supreme Court's failure to act.

While I sympathize with the point that we need to clarify Internet jurisdiction, it really isn't a job that should be left for the Supreme Court. The U.S. Congress has the authority to enact legislation that could provide clear jurisdictional guidance. Congress has the ability to factor in a number of viewpoints and reach a consensus among the states, ISPs and users, an ability that the Supreme Court simply does not have. And hopefully, once the U.S. has clear laws establishing jurisdiction, other countries will follow.

2003-04-27T16:43:00.000-05:00

Add This to My Wish List. I've heard a lot of buzz about the Mini-PC and the Web site is finally up. It's a small laptop that weighs less than a pound and is just one inch thick. Made by Vulcan (one of Paul Allen's companies), it will run a full version of Windows XP, and have integrated WiFi, a 5.8-inch LCD screen, a 20GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM and a built-in mini-keyboard. Not bad for $1,999. They say it will be out later this year.

2003-04-26T18:10:00.000-05:00

The Court Misses the Mark With Grokster Ruling. A federal judge ruled yesterday that companies providing peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software cannot be held liable for copyright infringement by users of the software. The ruling is a surprising victory for the makers of the Morpheus and Grokster software products. In an almost complete reversal of previous cases, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast (parent of the Morpheus software) and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software. "Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

Wilson ruled that it didn't matter that the companies were aware generally of copyright infringement happening using their software, Wilson added--they would have to know of specific instances of infringement and be able to do something about it, to be liable for those users' actions - and that's were he goes awry. By claiming that Grokster and Streamcast knew of no specific instances of infringement, he fails to look behind the curtain. If Grokster and Streamcast didn't know of any specific instances of infringement, it's because they refused to look. The Judge even mentions in the opinion that Streamcast and Grokster called themselves "the next Napster," that numerous internal documents revel that their users were infringing copyrights and that the Plaintiffs sent Grokster and Streamcast "thousands of notices regarding alleged infringement."

Under Copyright Law, Grokster and Streamcast are liable for contributory copyright infringement if they knew, or have reason to know, that copyrighted materials were being transferred without permission and they failed to act to prevent the distribution of the copyrighted material. Everyone, and I mean everyone (with the possible exception of Judge Wilson) knows that a phenomenal number of copyrighted files shared every hour through Grokster and Streamcast . There is no way that Grokster and Streamcast couldn't have known. I'm sure we'll see what the Ninth Circuit has to say. And the MPAA and the RIAA have a track record of getting their way in Congress, so we will also keep an eye out for new legislation.

2003-04-26T04:54:00.000-05:00

Creative Commons. You'll note by reading below that the expressions in this blog are protected under certain aspects of copyright law. Creative Commons provides an easy to read summary of those protections. It's a nice service. They've received some press lately indicating that they have set up a new process that will let authors shorten copyright term in their works to 14 or 28 years (as opposed to life plus 70 years). It is called "Founders' Copyright." By subjecting their works to a shorter copyright term, authors and artists are maintaining rights in their works during the potentially lucrative early years. After that, the works fall into the public domain and become accessible to the masses. This is a GREAT idea and Creative Commons should be commended for implementing it.

2003-04-25T03:58:00.000-05:00

Google Rocks, but Not Froogle. I'm continually impressed by Google. Not just with the way that it steadfastly avoids paid placements but by the quality of its results. And its computing power is impressive. It has 10,000 servers scanning 3 billion Web pages, handles about 200 million search queries a day, about half from outside the U.S., and it can fetch search results in some 90 languages. But I'm not impressed with its new shopping searcher, Froogle. This beta service, released late week, uses Google's spider technology to identify sites that sell products, then pulls data from those sites and returns it as search results. The results seem sloppy and not very useful. Google's a success, but they should stick to what they know.

2003-04-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

Good Book: When China Ruled the Seas. I just finished this book. While the rest of the world was still dragging itself out of the Dark Ages, China had a thriving sea trade with India and Africa, and maybe even with places as far off as South America and Australia, a feat that wouldn't be matched for hundreds of years. This book sets the scene for the building of a massive trading fleet by the eunuch Admiral Zheng He. At least one type of ship was 400 feet long (by comparison, Columbus's ships were under 100 - about 50 times the capacity). Finally, in the mid-1400s, an Imperial Decree - forbidding sea voyages, considering them unproductive, uneconomic and, more importantly, un-Confucian - effectively shut the door on Chinese expansion. Check it out.

2003-04-24T23:12:00.000-05:00

Gadget of the Week: Banryu. It eats less and sheds less than Fido. Sanyo's new Banryu guard-robot is designed to prowl around the house keeping an eye out for intruders. According to Gizmodo's correspondent, "one of the cool things with the Banryu is that you can call it from your cellphone and remotely view things it sees with its camera and control how it moves around your apartment."

2003-04-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

CHECK THIS OUT: Useful Advice for Protecting Your Intellectual Property A great article in CSO (Chief Security Officer) Magazine covers the real life issues in protecting a company's IP on an every day, in the trenches, basis. The article contains excellent examples of what companies like Sony and W. L. Gore do to protect intellectual property through technical, administrative and policy approaches. It all starts with thinking of IP "as the lifeblood of an organization."

2003-04-24T05:12:00.000-05:00

FTC Steps Up Its Efforts Against Spammers. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the first time has asked a judge to block a spam operation that allegedly uses deceptive subject lines to drive customers to an adult Web site. The FTC action against Brian D. Westby, filed yesterday, was the first time the agency has targeted an alleged spammer for deceptive subject lines. According to court documents, the Westby operation generated 46,000 complains to the FTC in the past nine months. The FTC complaint against Westby is interesting. The charge related to deceptive subject lines is an unquestionably a "deceptive" practice under the FTC Act. Interestingly, the FTC also charges that spoofing -- the use of false "reply-to" addresses -- is an unfair practice. According to the FTC, an act or practice is "unfair" under the FTC Act if "1) it causes, or is likely to cause, injury to consumers that is substantial; 2) the harm is not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or competition; and 3) the harm is not reasonably avoidable." Citing 45 U.S.C. sec. 45(n). Another interesting fact is that the complaint charges that Westby profits to the tune of $884,000 in two months from the spam by directing consumers to one of his Web sites, and the Web sites invite consumers to pay a fee to join a third party adult verification service. $884k in two months!

2003-04-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Is Monster Making A Mistake? Starting on Thursday, Monster.com will begin deleting certain references on users' resumes to nations not in good diplomatic standing with the United States. The job site says it wants to comply with government regulations by removing references to Burma/Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. The move affects less than one percent of Monster's users, but there is little doubt that the tactic is discriminatory. UPDATE: On April 25th, Monster saw the light, at least in part. It now will permit its customers to describe where they went to school--using the Web site's pull-down menus--even if it was in one of the seven sanctioned nations. But its users will continue to be prohibited from selecting a sanctioned country as a place they'd like to work. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington said it had contacted the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and learned that Monster was not required to alter resumes at all.

2003-04-23T14:13:00.000-05:00

Not Surprisingly, Companies Are Increasingly Using Patents and Copyright Laws to Fight Competition. Attorneys at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference told developers today that they face a host of legal land mines that they need to consider when developing emerging technology. In a message that seems painfully obvious, and not just to an intellectual property lawyer, the attorneys said companies are increasingly wielding patent and copyright laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to thwart competitors and maintain their market share. As a result, we're heading toward a world where companies increasingly need to consider the legal ramifications of their products.

2003-04-23T09:50:00.000-05:00

If You Don't Take the Time to Read the Entire Privacy Policy, You May Be Surprised At What It Really Says. Officials at Junkbusters Corp. and the Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC") held a joint news conference this morning in which they discussed their decisions to file separate complaints with the Federal Trade Commission against eBay Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc. because of privacy concerns. In the new conference, Junkbusters President Jason Catlett said he has problems with eBay's "two-tiered" privacy policy, which he called deceptive. "The short, cheery version which is presented to the visitor is not representative of the longer more detailed version," he said. The FTC has been more aggressive recently in enforcing privacy complaints and it would certainly frown on any misrepresentation by the two companies.

2003-04-23T06:19:00.000-05:00

Free Report from McKinsey Quarterly on "Making Sense of Broadband." McKinsey Quarterly has made a premium report available for free (although registration is required) on the state of the broadband industry. With over 100 million subscribers across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, it's worth keeping up with the state of this increasingly pervasive technology.

2003-04-23T05:45:00.000-05:00

Suing Napster's Investors; Making a Case for Contributory Copyright Infringement.
Two major record labels filed suit yesterday against venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners for its investment in Napster, alleging that it contributed to rampant music theft through the former file-swapping network. The 23-page complaint charges that the Napster system, as conceived and implemented, "provided a safe haven for the rampant piracy of copyrighted works on an epic and unprecedented scale" and that "Hummer Winblad knowingly facilitated infringement of plaintiff's copyrights for its direct financial benefit." Under U.S. Copyright Law, contributory copyright infringement requires that the entity know, or should have known, that they were inducing, causing or materially contributing to the commission of a direct infringement. It's hard to imagine that Hummer Winblad didn't know that it was contributing to the commission of direct infringement when millions of files each month were transferred through Napster.

2003-04-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

Preliminary Reviews on Firebird Browser Are Impressive. Firebird, Mozilla.org's next-generation browser, is smaller, faster, and more reliable than the Mozilla Navigator, the current underpinning of all Netscape 6.0 and 7.0 releases. Although Firebird is still in early development, it has already kindled a cult following, and not just among Linux and open-source aficionados. It can be downloaded in Windows, Linux, and OS/2 variants. Like many other popular browsers (except Internet Explorer), it employs a "tabbed browser" user interface, which means it provides multiple browser windows within a single instance of the browser. There were lots of complaints with Navigator, and it looks like Mozilla has responded impressively with Firebird.

2003-04-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

An Audi for the Geek in All of Us. The 2004 Audi A8 L looks like a typical yuppie-mobile, but it boasts computer gadgetry, smart sensors and video displays that will dazzle even the geekiest of nerds. The car, shown at the New York Auto Show, has solar panels installed on the roof that -- appropriately enough -- power the sunroof, and enable you to preset the temperature of your car before you get behind the wheel. It also has an electronic rear-window shade and the heated door locks to prevent freezing. The A8 L's air conditioning system factors in the direction of the sun, lowering the temperature a few degrees if you're driving into glare. It's a nice set of wheels, but it will set you back about $68k.

2003-04-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

Is Amazon's Web Site Really A Violation of COPPA? The Washington Post reports that several privacy and consumer activist groups say the online retail giant lets children post online product reviews, which often include their names, e-mail addresses and other personal data. There seems to be a disagreement over whether Amazon's site is intended for children. In any case, this doesn't seem like it is the kind of activity that the Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act was intended to ban.

2003-04-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

Gadgets Galore!! For anyone that wants to see a great gadget blog dedicated to everything related to gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer electronics, checkout Gizmodo.com. If you are a gadget freak it's a must have bookmark. For example, checkout the unusual keyboards and mice over at ExtremeTech - a vertical keyboard from SafeType, where the two halves of the keyboard are set perpendicular rather than parallel.

2003-04-22T08:25:00.000-05:00

Outing Spammers - An alternative to filing suit
The Washington Post reports on another way to fight spam: publicizing the names, addresses and phone numbers of spammers. One targeted spammer is suing the public-spirited person who "outed" him. This may be an enticing way to intimidate spammers but we need to be careful. It could just as easily be used to harass people with viewpoints opposed to the major media.

2003-04-22T00:54:00.000-05:00

Students Safely Surf to Avoid SARS. After the deadly SARS outbreak, Hong Kong schools were ordered shut last month. But technologies provided by Bay Area firms have kept many classes in session. From the comfort of their home computers, students can see their teachers live via a Web cam image on the screen. If the students have a Web cam themselves, they can also be seen by the teacher and other students. Students may also type in questions or comments, as they would during an online chat, and view materials hand-written or posted by the teacher in the classroom on a white board.

2003-04-22T00:35:00.000-05:00

Madonna Plants P2P Decoys. Madonna has reportedly uploaded "decoy" files to peer-to-peer networks, in order to discourage piracy. Users who believe that they are downloading Madonna's new album receive instead a recorded admonition from Madonna herself advising the user to respect the copyright in her work (not precisely in those words). Those who download tracks are greeted by the voice of Madonna asking, "What the (expletive) do you think you're doing?" And, of course, there is a backlash against Madonna. For example, here's a thread filled with threats never to buy her records again. Also, I hear her website has been hacked.

2003-04-21T23:07:00.000-05:00

This is the first of many posts to the iLaw Blog. Contrary to what the name may suggest, the discussion will not be entirely devoted to legal topics. I'll add stories about the Internet, new gadgets, new artists and other stories of interest to those of you with an interest in the Internet. Enjoy the Blog!!!