Podcasts

Software contractor not bound by EULA it clicked on behalf of client

Posted on September 07, 2010
BMMSOFT, Inc. v. White Oaks Technology, Inc., 2010 WL 3340555 (N.D.Cal. August 25, 2010) Plaintiff, a software development company, sued defendant, a company that was performing software installation services for it client, the U.S. Air Force. Plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the End User License Agreement (“EULA”) for the software by copying and distributing the [...

Righthaven seeks domain name transfer ? relief that is not called for under the Copyright Act

Posted on September 07, 2010
Tactics suggest overreaching on more than just copyright grounds. News broke over the Labor Day weekend that Righthaven, that enterprise set up to file copyright lawsuits over alleged infringements of articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, sued Nevada senate candidate Sharron Angle...

Judge should have let lawyer Google potential jurors during jury selection

Posted on September 05, 2010
Carino v. Muenzen, 2010 WL 3448071 (N.J.Super.A.D. August 30, 2010) The courthouse in Morris County, New Jersey provides wi-fi access. As jury selection began in a medical malpractice case, the plaintiff’s lawyer used his laptop to do some real time research on the members of the jury pool...

New copyright lawsuits go after porn on Bittorrent

Posted on September 03, 2010
Three adult media entertainment producers filed suit yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging copyright infringement against hundreds of anonymous defendants accused of trading videos using Bittorrent. This kind of action resembles the much-criticized mass litigation undertaken by the U...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Was on Fox News Chicago talking about defamation and anonymity

Posted on September 02, 2010
I enjoyed talking with Anna Devlantes and Corey McPherrin this morning on our local Fox affiliate’s morning program about defamation online and the challenging problem of unmasking anonymous defendants. The video is embedded below, or you can go here if it’s not showing up in the RSS feed.

New Jersey court gives a boon to local printed newspapers

Posted on August 20, 2010
Online edition of out-of-state newspaper not “printed and published” in state for purposes of providing legal notice. Courier-Post v. County of Camden, — A.2d —, 2010 WL 3025108 (N.J.Super.A.D. August 4, 2010) Like probably every other state, New Jersey has a statute that requires certain notices (like those for sheriff’s sales) to be published in [...

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, and unauthorized access

Posted on August 19, 2010
Monson v. The Whitby School, Inc., No. 09-1096, 2010 WL 3023873 (D.Conn. August 2, 2010) Plaintiff Monson sued her former employer (a private school) for sex discrimination and related claims. The school filed counterclaims against Monson for, among other things, violation of (1) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and (2) the Stored Communications [...

State law claims against Turnitin fail

Posted on August 09, 2010
Christen v. Iparadigms, LLC, No. 10-620, 2010 WL 3063137 (E.D.Va. Aug. 4, 2010) Plaintiff was a graduate student and one of her professors uploaded a couple of plaintiff’s papers to the web-based plagiarism detection service Turnitin. You may remember how the Fourth Circuit held last year that this uploading and use of students’ papers is [...

Communications Decency Act immunizes hosting provider from defamation liability

Posted on August 06, 2010
Johnson v. Arden, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3023660 (8th Cir. August 4, 2010) The Johnsons sell exotic cats. They filed a defamation lawsuit after discovering that some other cat-fanciers said mean things about them on Complaintsboard.com. Among the defendants was the company that hosted Complaintsboard...

Forum selection clause in clickwrap agreement enforceable

Posted on July 26, 2010
Meier v. Midwest Recreational Clearninghouse, LLC, 2010 WL 2738921 (E.D. Cal. July 12, 2010) Plaintiffs live in California and bought an RV online from a vendor in Minnesota. The vendor’s website terms of service had a provision requiring that all disputes “arising out of or related to the use” of the website be brought in [...

State law spam claim in federal court not pled with required particularity

Posted on July 13, 2010
Hypertouch, Inc. v. Azoogle.com, Inc., 2010 WL 2712217 (9th Cir. July 9, 2010) Pleading in federal court is generally a straightforward matter. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 requires only that the plaintiff set forth a short and plain statement as to why that party is entitled to relief...

Ninth Circuit orders anonymous internet speakers be identified

Posted on July 13, 2010
In re Anonymous Online Speakers, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 2721490 (9th Cir. July 12, 2010) Quixtar (which used to be Amway) sued Signature Management TEAM (“TEAM”) for tortious interference and other claims, alleging that TEAM engaged in a smear campaign against Quixtar on the internet...

Use of name and image in YouTube clip did not support right of publicity claim

Posted on July 07, 2010
Fuentes v. Mega Media Holdings, Inc. 2010 WL 2634512 (S.D. Fla. June 30, 2010) Plaintiff is a famous Cuban author who has written extensively about Raul Castro and other members of the Castro regime. The producers of the Maria Elvira Live show used plaintiff’s name and image in the content of one of the show’s [...

New copyright lawsuit involves Creative Commons

Posted on July 02, 2010
GateHouse Media, Inc. v. That’s Great News, LLC, No. 10-50164 (N.D. Ill. filed 6/30/2010) A lawsuit filed this past week in the Northern District of Illinois includes a claim that the defendant violated the terms of a Creative Commons license covering the plaintiff’s copyrighted works...

Portability policies are an intriguing innovation

Posted on June 25, 2010
One of the fundamental and inherent technical shifts that are happening as computing moves to the cloud — for enterprise functioning and for more personal things like enjoyment of social media — pertains to the location of the user data being acted upon...

Court rejects RIAA?s arguments against 24 cent ringtone royalty rate

Posted on June 23, 2010
Recording Industry Ass’n of America, Inc. v. Librarian of Congress, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 2487842 (D.C. Cir. June 22, 2010) Recorded music is usually subject to copyright protection in two ways — the musical composition (think sheet music and lyrics) is protected by one copyright, and the actual sound recording is protected by another copyright...

YouTube victorious in copyright case brought by Viacom

Posted on June 23, 2010
District court grants summary judgment, finding YouTube protected by DMCA safe harbor. Viacom v. YouTube, No. 07-2103, (S.D.N.Y. June 23, 2010) The question of whether and to what extent a website operator should be liable for the copyright infringement occasioned by the content uploaded by the site’s users is one of the central problems of internet law...

Illinois court sets standard for unmasking anonymous commenters

Posted on June 17, 2010
Maxon v. Ottawa Pub. Co., — N.E.2d —, 2010 WL 2245065 (Ill.App. 3 Dist. June 1, 2010) The rules of civil procedure in Illinois permit an aggrieved party to file a petition with the court asking for an order requiring unknown potential defendants to be identified...

Access to private email server supports Stored Communications Act claims

Posted on June 15, 2010
Devine v. Kapasi, 2010 WL 2293461 (N.D. Ill. June 7, 2010) Kapasi and Devine were equal shareholders in a corporation. In August 2009, the two decided to part ways. The corporation transferred one of its servers to Devine, and he immediately put it into the service of his new company...

Court scales back Zynga?s attempts to learn about anonymous Mafia Wars infringers

Posted on June 02, 2010
Zynga Game Network Inc. v. Williams, 2010 WL 2077191 (N.D.Cal. May 20, 2010) Zynga (you know, the creator of Farmville and Mafia Wars) has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of websites that sell virtual currency and goods for use in Mafia Wars...

Court refuses to keep train wreck video confidential

Posted on June 01, 2010
Maldonado v. UPRR, No. 09-1187, 2010 WL 1980318 (D.Kan. May 18, 2010) Even the fear of social media won’t keep some things under wraps. The video camera onboard a locomotive captured the moments before the train struck a car at a railroad crossing, killing one of the occupants...

That bogus social networking profile can send you to jail

Posted on May 29, 2010
Clear v. Superior Court, 2010 WL 2029016 (Cal.App. 4 Dist. May 24, 2010) The California Court of Appeal has held that a man who set up a bogus MySpace profile of his former church pastor can stand trial for criminal “personation.” The defendant’s alleged conduct that might really put him on the hook is what he did [...

Anonymous accused Bittorrent user moves to quash subpoena using real name

Posted on May 25, 2010
Worldwide Film Entertainment, LLC v. Does 1-749, 2010 WL 2011306 (D.D.C. May 20, 2009) Some have already commented on their scruples arising from the large economies of scale approach to copyright litigation that’s being undertaken by lawyers with the U...

Video of This Week in Law Episode 61

Posted on May 24, 2010
Most Friday afternoons you can find me on This Week in Law. We record at 1pm Central and the video is available live here, archived here, and audio is available here. This past week was lots of fun talking with Fred von Lohmann from the EFF. Host Denise Howell always does a great job, and [...

Can a robot perform a valid marriage ceremony?

Posted on May 17, 2010
Mashable has this little story and video of a couple in Japan getting married in a ceremony performed by a robot. Looks like it went off without a hitch. But it’s an interesting harbinger of some of the legal questions that will arise as intelligence based on nonbiological substrates gets more human-like...

Troubling decision in matter involving anonymous bloggers

Posted on May 15, 2010
20/20 Financial Consulting, Inc. v. Does 1-5, 2010 WL 1904530 (D.Colo. May 11, 2010) [Opinion embedded below.] A financial consulting company has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Colorado alleging that certain anonymous web users have posted defamatory statements about the plaintiff on blogs and in message forums...

Trademark holder not entitled to domain name registered years before

Posted on May 12, 2010
Arizona State Trailer Sales, Inc. d/b/a Little Dealer Little Prices RV v. World Wide RV, No. FA1003001315658 (Nat’l Arb. Forum, May 7, 2010) Startups in the process of selecting a company or product name are often frustrated to see that someone else, years ago, registered the ...

Judge: the concept of internet privacy is a fallacy upon which no one should rely

Posted on May 04, 2010
People v. Klapper, — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 1704796 (N.Y.City Crim.Ct., April 28, 2010) Let’s hope that’s an overstatement. A recent case from a criminal court in New York dealt with whether an employer violated the state’s law prohibiting unauthorized use of a computer (Penal Law 156...

Pro-DRM decision under DMCA

Posted on April 22, 2010
Actuate Corp. v. IBM Corp., No. 09-5892 (N.D. Cal. April 5, 2010) [Scroll down for opinion] Distribution of software license keys on the internet may constitute trafficking in circumvention technology, which is prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) Plaintiff software licensor sued defendant for, among other things, violation of the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA [...

Ohio internet obscenity statute constitutional

Posted on April 20, 2010
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 1488123 (6th Cir. April 15, 2010) Court holds that statute prohibiting distribution of material harmful to minors directly via the internet is not overly broad and therefore not unconstitutional...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.