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| Dec 19, 2018 | German City Wants Names And Addresses Of Airbnb Hosts; Chinese Province Demands Full Details Of Every Guest Too | Online services like Airbnb and Uber like to style themselves as part of the “sharing economy”. In truth, they are just new twists on the rental sector, taking advantage of the Internet’s widespread availability to broaden participation and... |
| Nov 26, 2018 | French Tax Officials To Start Digging Through Social Media Posts For Expensive Cars It Thinks You Can't Afford | In a weird announcement threatening the commencement of pointless government monitoring, a French official says tax cheats will now be outed by their own selfies. (via Reason) |
| Nov 3, 2017 | Amazon’s ‘1-Click’ patent just expired: What this means for other e-commerce sites | E-commerce is about to get significantly better at saving the consumer loads of time and automating our basic purchasing needs. I believe this is the start of an unprecedented wave of exciting innovation, with artificial intelligence (AI) a... |
| May 25, 2017 | IoT data threats and other issues global companies face as GDPR nears | While the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) won’t take full effect until May 25 2018, multi-national companies do need to take thoughtful action now to be certain their E.U.-based operations will be fully compliant when the t... |
| Feb 15, 2017 | Scottish Sheriff Awards Couple Compensation For 'Distress' Caused By Neighbor's Use Of CCTV | We’ve written plenty about CCTV here on Techdirt, and its creeping normalization around the world, but particularly in the UK. So it’s good to read a story on the legal news site outlaw.com about a rather unusual ruling from a Scottish cour... |
| Jan 6, 2017 | FACT Lawyer Reveals Challenges of Kodi Box Seller Prosecutions | Yesterday an interesting discussion took place on the BBC’s Radio Five. It involved the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), who are the main driving force behind Kodi and IPTV prosecutions in the UK.
As always, it’s worth pointing ou... |
| Oct 26, 2016 | The Importance of Applying Data Protection Policies to Sensitive Data. | Share
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Sensitive Data must be safeguarded from unauthorized access to protect the security or privacy of an organization or individual. This is what data protection policies are set for. There are three types of sensi... |
| Sep 19, 2016 | Революция или эволюция: смогут ли финтех-стартапы заменить банки?
Скованные одной цепью
Не всё то революция, что digital
Развитие инфраструктуры как драйвер роста финтеха... | Материалы рубрики FIN(TECH) создаются в партнёрстве с компанией exp(capital)
Валентин Лопан FIN(TECH) 19 сентября 2016, 15:05 Революция или эволюция: смогут ли финтех-стартапы заменить банки?
Оставить комментарий... |
| Apr 13, 2016 | Pfizer fined by UK regulator amid pricing probe | The UK antitrust regulator has fined Pfizer roughly $14,000 for a “flagrant” violation of rules in connection with a probe into the pricing of an epilepsy medicine.
The move, announced on Tuesday, comes amid a heated squabble between Pfizer... |
| Jul 8, 2015 | China Surprises No One By Passing Cybersecurity Law That Gives It More Control Of The Internet | It appears the Chinese government is concerned it doesn’t censor the internet enough already. |
| Aug 7, 2014 | UK Finally Changes Copyright Law To Allow Private Copies, But Music Industry Says It May Challenge Move In The Courts | Three years ago, the UK government published the Hargreaves review of copyright laws in the digital age. As Mike wrote at the time, one of the key recommendations was the introduction of an exception to UK copyright law to allow people to m... |
| Jul 10, 2014 | UK Lawmakers Favor Legalization of MP3 and DVD Copying | To most consumers it’s common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this is currently illegal.
Earlier this year the UK Intellectual Property Office proudly announced that these restrictions would be lifted... |
| Mar 26, 2014 | UK Court Says Information Stored Electronically Is Not 'Property' | More and more of our activities take place in the digital rather than analog realm. But what exactly is the legal status of that digital stuff as it flows around the Internet, or sits inside databases? A recent judgment in the UK provides i... |
| Dec 5, 2013 | UK Court Rules That Software Functionality Is Not Subject To Copyright | Yesterday, Mike wrote about some worrying indications that the US Appeals Court may be considering overturning a ruling that APIs aren’t covered by copyright. Happily, over in Europe, there’s better news. The long-running battle between SAS... |
| Nov 27, 2013 | Post-Snowden, European Commission Sets Out Actions Needed To Restore Trust In E.U.-U.S. Data Flows | The European Commission has today detailed the actions it believes are required to restore trust in data-sharing agreements between the European Union and the U.S. following revelations of surveillance dragnets operated by U.S. intelligence... |
| Oct 16, 2013 | EU plan to account for mobile payments may not help consumers | A European Commission proposal to change how the payments industry is regulated will alter the payment processing landscape but may not help consumers, accordingto the Out-Law legal blog.
The Commission has proposed a maximum interchange fe... |
| Aug 5, 2013 | Details On Upcoming Police Torrent Site Crackdown Revealed | Early June, City of London Police informed TorrentFreak that they had begun targeting sites that provide access to unauthorized content for “criminal gain.”
The ongoing initiative is part of a collaboration with Hollywood studios represente... |
| May 15, 2013 | Copyright Holders Will Define Details Of UK's Orphan Works Bill, But Not The Public | The UK’s new orphan works legislation allows works to be classed as orphans only after a “diligent search” has been conducted to find the owner. The fear expressed by some is that this “diligent” search won’t be very diligent, allowing publ... |
| Apr 30, 2013 | No, The UK Did Not Just Abolish Copyright, Despite What Photographers Seem To Think | The photographers are freaking out again. After last year’s excitement with Instagram’s changes to its terms of service, now it’s the UK’s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Act that’s getting people worked up. Here, for example, is a p... |
| Nov 28, 2012 | Google Asks Germans To Protest 'Pay To Link' Proposal As It Comes Close To Becoming Law | For a few years now, we’ve been following attempts in Germany — mainly driven by newspaper publishers — to create a bizarre new copyright-like right (specifically a “neighbor right”) in “linking” such that a site like Google would have to p... |
| Nov 27, 2012 | Google’s ‘Defend Your Net’ Campaign Implies That All Of The Internet Is ‘Fair Use’ | Does the Internet exist to inspire and inform society and therefore limits copyright holders ability to block information? Hidden between the lines of Google’s otherwise predictable “Defend Your Net” campaign in Germany, where the legislatu... |
| Oct 4, 2012 | UK Kicks Off Small Claims Court For 'Small Scale' Copyright Claims | It’s no secret that one of the significant problems with copyright law today are the ridiculous statutory damages, set by Congress, which have absolutely no reasonable connection to the “harm” being done. The idea that you could owe $150,00... |
| Jul 30, 2012 | UK Politicians Don't Seem To Mind That Every Web Page You Load Is Copyright Infringement Under Current Law | Last year Techdirt wrote about the almost unbelievable Meltwater decision in the UK, where the courts said that viewing a Web page without the owner’s permission was copyright infringement. In November last year, leave was granted to Meltwa... |
| Jul 13, 2012 | UK Government Wants To Give Itself Power To Change Copyright Law Without Full Parliamentary Scrutiny | A common feature of democracies is that new laws are scrutinized and debated by representatives of the people before they are passed — the hope being that bad proposals can be amended or discarded. Laws giving governments the power to chang... |
| May 28, 2012 | EU Privacy Directive: Why All The Fuss? Just Be Open With Users | EU Cookie legislation is now in force across Europe, but in a last minute change on Friday, the UK’s information commissioner amended the way it will be implemented in the UK. It’s now the case that sites will only have to obtain ‘implied c... |
| Apr 4, 2012 | EU Cybercrime Bill Targets Anonymous: Makes It A Criminal Offense To Conduct 'Cyber Attack' | While we’re still sorting through the crazy cybersecurity bill proposals in the US, it appears that some in the EU are going through a similar process. The EU Parliament’s “Civil Liberties Committee” has approved a legislative proposal conc... |
| Nov 1, 2011 | Judge: “Real Prospect of Success” For Digital Economy Act Challenge | According to details just released, a Judge has said that two ISPs have a “real prospect of success” in their challenge of the UK’s Digital Economy Act.
Last month via the Court of Appeal, BT and TalkTalk obtained permission to appeal a Hig... |
| Sep 29, 2011 | EU, Mexico & Switzerland Will Not Sign ACTA This Weekend, Despite The 'Signing Ceremony' | With Japan announcing a signing ceremony this Saturday for those who negotiated ACTA, it seemed reasonable to think that most of those listed as planning to attend would be signing. Of course, we wondered about the US, the EU and Mexico — a... |
| Apr 12, 2011 | The UK Startup Visa: Only Halfway There | This is a guest post by Danvers Baillieu and Emma Peacock who are both senior associates at international law firm Pinsent Masons LLP. Danvers is the co-founder of Bootlaw.com, the legal meetup for tech start-ups and entrepreneurs and he sp... |
| Oct 18, 2010 | Guy Who Runs Anti-Ryanair Website Forced To Hand Over The Domain Because He Made A Little Money | For many years, we’ve discussed the legality of so-called “sucks sites.” These are, generally speaking, sites that people put up about a brand that they’ve had a bad experience with, that goes by something along the lines of brandsucks.com.... |
| Aug 25, 2010 | Take Two Told To Take A Hike In Its Attempt To Get Bioshock.com | It often seems like big companies tend to win domain dispute rulings over companies that just squat on various domains — and perhaps that makes sense. So it’s a bit of a surprise to find out that Take-Two Interactive has lost its bid to get... |
| Aug 5, 2010 | In e-reader accessibility race, new Kindle, iPad in front | reader comments 37 with 28 posters participating
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E-readers are becoming increasingly popular, due in part to plummeting prices and the growing availability of books in vari... |
| Jun 21, 2010 | European Advocate General Says Copyright Levy Should Only Be Charged If There's Actual Content Copying | The US doesn’t have a blank media levy on things like blank CDs, but many other countries do, including Canada and throughout Europe. We’ve always considered this a “you must be a criminal” tax. It’s gotten to the point where the cost of so... |
| Jun 21, 2010 | UK Libel Suit Tossed Because Any Actual Harm Would Have Been Tiny | While there still are all sorts of problems with UK libel law, a recent ruling in the UK’s High Court tossed out a lawsuit because the potential damages were way too small to merit a trial. Specifically, someone charged a blogger with defam... |
| Jun 7, 2010 | New Libel Law Proposed In The UK; Gives ISPs Two Weeks To Respond | It’s no secret that the UK’s defamation laws are extremely problematic. They’ve longed been used for “libel tourism” as well as to silence critics. There’s been a lot of talk in the UK about fixing those issues, but little action. Now it ap... |
| May 13, 2010 | UK Court Says Software Company Can Be Liable For Buggy Software | For many, many years the debate has raged on whether or not software developers should be liable for bugs in software. Plenty of companies, sick of dealing with buggy software, have felt that developers should be legally liable, just as any... |
| May 11, 2010 | EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Admits That 'Piracy' Has Created The Market That Legislators Did Not | I’ve been reading the excellent book, Property Outlaws, which I’ll write more about when I’m done, but it’s main thesis is that oftentimes, people violating certain restrictions — such as on copyright or civil rights — actually are helping ... |
| Apr 30, 2010 | Legal Analysis Of Italian Criminal Conviction Of Google Execs Says Judge Made A Big Legal Error | We were among those amazed back in February, when an Italian court ruled that three Google execs were criminally liable for a video posted on Google Video, and were sentenced to six months suspended sentences. The video in question involved... |
| Mar 31, 2010 | No Surprise: If You Actively Promote The Fact That You Lead People To Infringing Content, Courts Will Smack You Down | I’d been avoiding writing about the Newzbin case, because, honestly, I didn’t have much to say about it — but people keep submitting it, so here’s a very quick post. Newzbin, one of a bunch of Usenet aggregators, was found liable for copyri... |
| Mar 5, 2010 | Will Google's Italy Conviction Stick… Or Is The Problem In The Law? | Most of the discussion around the conviction of three Google execs on criminal charges over a video uploaded to Google video (which none of those execs had anything to do with), rightly focused on the assault on basic common sense that the ... |
| Feb 17, 2010 | UK Court Says It Has Jurisdiction Over Racist Material Stored On California Server… If Content Created In The UK | We’ve had numerous posts lately about jurisdiction questions raised online, and PRK alerts us to a case in the UK where two men were convicted for publishing racist information online. The jurisdictional question came in because the content... |
| Jan 18, 2010 | UK ISPs Get Tiny Safe Harbor For Hate Speech… Why Not Full Safe Harbors? | We’ve spent plenty of time discussing the importance of Section 230 in properly applying liability, and avoiding situations where angry individuals or organizations sue a third party service provider because they have deeper pockets and are... |
| Dec 8, 2009 | Tech Law: Facebook, Apple Face TOC Challenges, Nokia Sues LCD Makers, Apple Loses Suit, More | A look at highlights of last week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits.
Companies challenged in Europe over terms of use -- A consumer group in Norway says that Facebook's privacy policies and terms and conditions ... |
| Nov 23, 2009 | Tech Law: Vonage To Pay, T-Mobile Customer Records, Chinese Copyright Trouble for Google, More | A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits.
Vonage will pay to extricate itself from legal woes -- VoIP provider Vonage (VG) will pay a total of $3 million to 32 states to settle an ... |
| Nov 16, 2009 | Libel Tourism Case Dismissed Because Little Evidence Of UK Visitors Seeing The Article | We’ve discussed how the UK is used for “libel tourism” quite frequently, since its libel laws are more draconian than elsewhere. Thus, if someone is upset about what someone else has said about them, they’ll often file a lawsuit in the UK, ... |
| Nov 13, 2009 | EU's Cookie Law Should Crumble | A bunch of folks have been sending in versions of this story about new EU cookie rules that will require anyone placing cookies on your computer to first get consent. This is the sort of law that is passed by people who don’t understand the... |
| Nov 11, 2009 | New EU telecoms framework mandates user consent before getting cookies | The heads of state and high ministers of Europe's 27 member nations are now putting the finishing touches on a sweeping new telecommunications regulatory framework, some of whose provisions would go into effect as soon as the first quarter ... |
| Sep 29, 2009 | EU Worried About IP Harming Innovation… But Gets It Backwards | Rob H alerts us to an article that starts out sounding reasonable… pointing out that politicians in the EU are meeting because they’re worried about intellectual property laws holding back innovation in Europe… but then it goes off the rail... |
| Sep 11, 2009 | Disney Sued For Selling The Pixar Lamp… And The Lawsuit Makes Sense | We usually focus on trademark lawsuits that make no sense at all… but effective trademark law exists to prevent confusion among consumers (i.e., it’s really more of a consumer protection law, rather than an “intellectual property” law) and ... |
| Sep 2, 2009 | Careful What You Ask For: China's Patent System Causing Trouble | We’ve been running Kevin’s excellent series of posts on the push to put in place stronger patent and copyright laws in China and India, showing why that’s probably shortsighted and likely will do more harm than good. China’s example is inst... |
| Sep 2, 2009 | Trying To Apply Rules Designed For Publications To… Coffee Cans? | One of the common problems that we run into all the time is seeing courts trying to apply laws that were meant for a specific scenario to a totally different scenario. Take, for example, the question of the use of a photo on a coffee can. L... |
| Aug 7, 2009 | ICANN Can't Find Evidence Of Domain Front Running | There have been plenty of stories over the years of domain name registrars “front running” domain names, whereby they take domains that people do a search on, and then register themselves, hoping to sell it to the person who searched later ... |
| Jul 28, 2009 | Did European Court Just Make Search Engines Illegal? 11-Word Snippet Can Be Copyright Infringement | With the AP being out there claiming that fair use only covers snippets fewer than five words, there are some questions about where the boundaries for “fair use” of “snippets” lies. Unfortunately, a new ruling in Europe seems to be pretty e... |
| Jul 17, 2009 | Google Not Liable For 'Defamatory' Search Result Snippets In The UK | For many years there have been legal disputes over the way that Google shows a short “snippet” of a page in its search results. Some have charged that the results themselves may be libelous. In fact, in a bizarre recent Dutch court ruling, ... |
| Jun 4, 2009 | Is The BSA Purposely Promoting Open Source Alternatives? | The BSA’s actions often seem so short-sighted that it makes you wonder if the organization is actually working against the interests of its membership on purpose. We’ve detailed in the past how the BSA loves to trot out bogus stats to suppo... |
| Jun 1, 2009 | Tech Law: eBay Wins, No Apt Cable Exclusives, Psystar Files Bankruptcy, More | A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits.
UK Court takes eBay side over L'Oréal -- French cosmetics company L'Oréal has undertaken a hundred lawsuits against eBay in Europe over ... |
| May 13, 2009 | iPod Designer Jonathan Ive Too Private To Deserve JonathanIve.com | The domain name dispute process has always been a bit of a crapshoot, as it often depends on who hears the case, but it’s still a bit strange to find out that famed Apple designer Jonathan Ive was told he does not have a right to a variety ... |
| May 11, 2009 | Tech Law: Sun Suits, Former EMCer Barred from HP, UK Software Patent, More | A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits. And a busy week it has been.
Sun may have broken bribery laws -- In a regulatory filing, Sun Microsystems said that it found "potenti... |
| May 7, 2009 | UK Patent Office Approves Software Patent… Rationalizes The Decision | The UK has held out against the idea of software patents for a while, but with Nokia pushing hard to get a patent on a piece of software related to the Symbian mobile operating system (which, ironically, Nokia has agreed to open source), la... |
| May 6, 2009 | EU Says No To Three Strikes On Accusation Only; Requires Court Order | One of the biggest problems with most of the proposed “three strikes” laws out there (the entertainment industry likes to call them “graduated response laws,” but I prefer Bill Patry’s recent description of calling them “the digital guillot... |
| May 6, 2009 | UK Looks To Increase Fines For Copyright Infringement By 10X | Just as many in the US are arguing that ridiculously high statutory fines for copyright infringement are at odds with any sense of fairness, it looks like the UK may be going in the other direction. Specifically, it’s set to increase fines ... |
| Apr 27, 2009 | Taiwan Bans Torrent Sites, Brings in 3 Strikes for File-Sharers | Yesterday Taiwan passed revisions to its copyright laws which hit file-sharing pretty hard. The amendment makes it a crime to use P2P technology to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted works online, which sounds like pretty bad news f... |
| Apr 16, 2009 | UK Found To Be The Worst At Balancing Consumer Rights In Copyright Law | As we’ve pointed out recently, the industries that rely on copyright have a habit of claiming that copyright is solely about protecting the interests and rights of copyright holders, leaving out the equally as important rights of the public... |
| Apr 6, 2009 | UK Musicians: Extend Copyright, But Give The Copyright Back To The Musicians | It seems like a lot of musicians really do think of copyright as a welfare system. Recently, in the UK, there was a launch of a new lobbying group, the Featured Artists Coalition, who we had mentioned last year, when it was first announced.... |
| Mar 26, 2009 | Are A Quarter Of The UK Government's Databases Illegal? | Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases — and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK — and a... |
| Mar 20, 2009 | UK Privacy Activist Claims Google Maps Is Illegal | We’ve seen some silly claims about Google Maps/Google Earth lately, and they just keep coming. The latest is that a privacy activist in the UK is going to issue a legal challenge against Google’s Street View offering in the UK, claiming tha... |
| Mar 13, 2009 | UK Says Every Website Visit Is Another Potential Defamation | In the past, we’ve noted that laws covering defamation have a much lower barrier in the UK, leading to what appear to be many more questionable defamation lawsuits there. It’s now getting even more ridiculous. A court in the UK, basing its ... |
| Mar 12, 2009 | Did The BBC Break The Law By Exposing Botnets? | A TV show on the BBC is highlighting the ongoing problem of botnets — by acquiring one of its own and using other people’s computers in it to mount a DDOS attack on a security company’s web site. The BBC says it had the security company’s a... |
| Mar 6, 2009 | UK Says No Copyright Exception For Mashups | Larry Lessig’s most recent book, Remix, focuses on just how common it is for people today to take existing content and “remix” it in new, useful and creative means. The problem, however, is that in almost every case this violates some aspec... |
| Feb 17, 2009 | People Don't Read Privacy Policies… But Want Them To Be Clearer | We already know that people don’t read online privacy policies and often (falsely) assume that if there’s any such privacy policy it means their data is safe. There are, of course, even questions as to whether or not a privacy policy is eve... |
| Feb 13, 2009 | Software Industry Slams Digital Britain Report For Protecting Music Industry Interests | At first, this sounded like a good thing: a software industry group slammed the Digital Britain report that came out recently for basically caving to recording industry interests, noting that it was just that industry using its lobbying pow... |
| Feb 9, 2009 | Tech Legal Week: French Slap Apple, Google, Rambus Losing to Micron, More | French court slaps Google -- A French court is fining Google €350,000 for infringing on the trademarks of two companies by letting its ad clients specify the marks as search terms. [Source: Out-Law.com]
French court takes bite out of Appl... |
| Feb 6, 2009 | EU Court Says Simply Taking Someone's Photo Can Violate Their Civil Rights | I’m definitely a big supporter of privacy rights, but sometimes it seems that big time privacy rights supporters go too far. The latest is that an EU court on human rights has declared that simply taking someone’s photograph can be a violat... |
| Feb 5, 2009 | Is It Defamation If A Commenter Libels The Owner Of A Blog In That Blog's Comments? | Well, here’s an interesting legal question brought about by modern technology. If a commenter on a blog “defames” the owner of that blog, and the blogger does not delete those comments, is it still defamation? According to a court in the UK... |
| Feb 5, 2009 | Another Bad French Ruling Against Google Over Trademarked Adwords | It’s amazing that after all these years, we’re still seeing these types of lawsuits — with these types of results. It involves the question of whether or not a company can buy an AdWords advertisement on Google using keywords that are trade... |
| Jan 29, 2009 | Digital Britain Report: Blank Promises, Vague Statements And Everything Is Hedged… | The long awaited (and somewhat delayed) Digital Britain interim report has been released, and, like the Gowers Report on intellectual property before it, this one seems way too “balanced” for its own good. That is, it seems to avoid taking ... |
| Jan 29, 2009 | Search Engine Ditches All Log Files | There’s been a silly, and mostly meaningless, one-upmanship lately in the search engine world, concerning how long the search engines retain log file info on things like the IP address of searchers. Some privacy advocates have claimed that ... |
| Jan 26, 2009 | Tech Legal Week: IBM's EU Complaint, Apple Hat Trick, Plots Against Google, More | IBM Might Face EU Investigation -- Florida-based mainframe vendor T3 has filed a complaint in the EU against IBM for refusing to sell its z/OS operating system to companies using T3 hardware. [Source: Computerworld]
The plot to kill Google ... |
| Jan 20, 2009 | IP Litigation Falls In The US… But Someone Is Confused As To Why | There’s a new report out that highlights that there were fewer IP related lawsuits in the US in 2008 than in 2007. The drop was about 10%: from 10,276 to 9,210. However, the reasoning given in the report for the decline is difficult to squa... |
| Jan 19, 2009 | Behavioral Advertisers Try To Come Up With Code Of Conduct Before FTC Writes One For Them | While the US Congress came down hard on NebuAd for its “behavioral targeting” ad program that would be used by ISPs to track everywhere you surfed and toss up relevant ads based on overall surfing activity, the FTC was a lot more hands-off.... |
| Dec 19, 2008 | Spoof Elton John Diary Not Libelous | The UK has much stricter libel laws than in the US, but at least there are some reasonable limitations. Elton John has lost a libel case against the Guardian newspaper for publishing a spoof diary from John that mocked his White Tie and Tia... |
| Dec 12, 2008 | Woman Sues TV Station For Featuring Her In A Film About Obesity | A UK woman is apparently suing a Croatian TV station for filming her walking in public and including the clip in a documentary about obesity. The woman never knew she was being filmed, and claims that this is “an attack on human dignity.” T... |
| Dec 4, 2008 | EU Catches On: Drug Companies Abuse Patent System To Block Competition | I’m long overdue on some promised posts concerning the patent system and the harm it does for the healthcare field, but it’s going to have to wait a little while longer. In the meantime, it’s good to see that more people (including those in... |
| Dec 1, 2008 | Guns N' Roses' Lawyer Says Dr. Pepper Giveaway Was Fraud… Even Though Axl Rose Liked It | Ben S. writes in to let us know that the lawyer for Guns N’ Roses is now accusing Dr. Pepper of fraud for its well publicized give-away of free bottles of the soft drink along with the release of GNR’s Chinese Democracy album. As you’re pro... |
| Nov 21, 2008 | Three Strikes Rule May Sneak Into EU Law, Despite Earlier Rejection | We’ve talked in the past about how the entertainment industry never gives up trying to push through its legislative agenda — even after it is dealt setbacks. You may recall that the EU Parliament rejected a proposal to institute a “three st... |
| Nov 21, 2008 | The Inside Story of the TV-Links Bust | When it became apparent that TV-Links.co.uk had been raided by police and the admin arrested, the news was met with some disbelief. TV-Links was a site that linked to videos that were hosted on video sharing sites like YouTube. It carried a... |
| Nov 6, 2008 | Get Ready To Pay Up Just To Let People Know How To Contact Your Company | We’ve been plenty critical of plans to set up new top level domains for URLs. Each time there’s an extension (such as adding .biz, .info, etc.), all it’s really meant is that companies felt forced to cough up more money to secure domains th... |
| Oct 21, 2008 | German Court Rules That IP Addresses Are Not Personal Info | There’s been an ongoing discussion in Europe as to whether or not IP addresses should be considered personal info. The implications have a lot to do with how companies deal with your IP address. If it is considered private info, then they a... |
| Oct 17, 2008 | UK Releases Details, But Delays, Plan To Surveil Every Bit Of Communication | We recently noted that some articles were appearing in the UK about a plan by the government to track all phone calls, emails and internet surfing histories in that country in a giant database. The whole thing sounded so extreme we even dou... |
| Oct 13, 2008 | UK Takes One More Step Towards Software Patents | As we eagerly await the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruling in the Bilski case — which could greatly cut back on the ability of the US Patent Office to grant software and business model patents, it looks Europe may be ... |
| Oct 7, 2008 | Forget Net Neutrality Laws; Just Strengthen Privacy Laws | Here’s an interesting idea from law professor Paul Ohm, suggesting that rather than focusing on net neutrality laws, if we just had stronger privacy laws, ISPs would be barred from doing any kind of deep packet inspection, since it would vi... |
| Oct 6, 2008 | Piracy Is A Part Of The Market | Out-law.com has an interesting discussion with a so-called “anti-piracy expert” where he tries to make the point that pirates are not the “enemy” but are “competition.” This is a step in the right direction — though, one ignored by many ind... |
| Sep 29, 2008 | UK Ad Standards Group Says Publishers Are Still Responsible For Auto Generated Ads | It continues to amaze me how important a law like section 230 of the CDA is to keep ridiculous situations from occurring. Fundamentally, we shouldn’t even need a section 230 — which notes that online service providers aren’t responsible for... |
| Sep 24, 2008 | Don't Say 2012 Olympics Unless You've Paid Your Licensing Fee | The Olympics are notorious for getting local governments to grant them extra special intellectual property rights that go so far beyond what’s reasonable (and local existing laws) that it’s become something of a pure mockery of the concept ... |
| Sep 17, 2008 | UK Court Attacks Cut-And-Paste Boilerplate Lawyering | One of the results of the word processing era is just how easy it is to simply cut-and-paste things, and perhaps no profession has made more use of this than lawyers. We’ve seen it where lawyers include the name of the wrong defendant in a ... |
| Sep 16, 2008 | Football Fans Eye World Cup Piracy Options | Years ago, football fans (that’s soccer to our US readers) in England were pretty much guaranteed to be able to watch their national team play live. With just a handful of terrestrial channels available, anyone with a TV set could see the m... |
| Sep 9, 2008 | Copyright Extension In Europe Will Only Make Musicians A Tiny Amount Of Money; But Will Cost Consumers | When the EU ignored tons of evidence and the very purpose of copyright in announcing plans to extend performance copyrights from 50 to 95 years, the politicians who supported this proposal (of course) insisted that they were doing so to ben... |
| Sep 8, 2008 | EU Academics Pointing Out How Database Copyrights Hinder, Rather Than Help, Businesses | For a long time, Europe has allowed “database rights,” effectively allowing companies to get a copyright of sorts on a collection of factual data. The US has mostly disagreed with this, noting that facts themselves cannot be covered by copy... |
| Sep 5, 2008 | Court Says Employees Have No Expectation Of Privacy For Stuff On Company Owned Computers | A court ruling in New Jersey doesn’t seem all that surprising, but may lead to more legal questions in the future. The case involved an employee who was stealing from his employer. The employee was eventually found guilty of the theft, but ... |