Eric Goldman points us to a new lawsuit filed by a law student against Google over allegedly defamatory blog posts. The student also sues the individual who made the posts, but the inclusion of Google in the lawsuit is the odd part:
Filed Under: blog, defamation, law student, section 230
Companies: google
The latest news in the ongoing effort by the EFF to invalidate ten awful patents looks good, as the Patent Office has given an initial rejection of C2’s VoIP patent, claiming that it qualifies as “obvious.” The incredibly broad patent (6,243,373) basically covers all VoIP implementations. Of course, this is just the “first office action,” which rarely means very much, since the company still has the ability to come back and beg and plead for the USPTO to keep the patent alive (which happens often enough).
Still, it does make you wonder, since it certainly does seem like it was an abundantly obvious patent (yes, even back when it was filed — someone should talk to Jeff Pulver for some prior art), why it’s taken this long for the USPTO to begin to correct its error. While we continue to applaud the EFF for working to get these patents busted, as we mentioned recently, the real travesty is that it’s been six years since the EFF began busting patents, and while there’s progress on nearly all of the patents, it’s an incredible slog — and these are for the worst of the worst patents. Invalidating bad patents is a ridiculously difficult process. That’s really bad, considering all the harm they can do in the meantime.
Filed Under: obviousness, patents, voip
Companies: eff
Rose M. Welch was the first of a few of you to send in the news that librarians have realized that Netflix is a great way to expand the catalog of DVDs that can be loaned out, even though it violates Netflix’s terms of service. Netflix seems a bit ambivalent about the whole thing, saying that they don’t like it, and they would expect librarians would obey the terms of service (which this does not), but that they really don’t want to sue libraries — perhaps recognizing how awful that would look from a PR standpoint. While I applaud Netflix not going straight to the lawyers, is it really that big of a deal that libraries are using Netflix in this manner?
Filed Under: dvds, libraries, sharing, terms of service
Companies: netflix
Back in August, we wrote about the (somewhat surprising) appeals court ruling in the District of Columbia circuit saying that longterm GPS tracking of someone by law enforcement required a warrant. The issues at play here certainly aren’t entirely clearcut. After all, it does make sense that when you’re in a public space, you have little expectation of privacy. But is that true when it comes to tracking everywhere you go in public? That seems a little more questionable, and it’s clearly the part that the court had trouble with, noting that short bursts of surveillance don’t require a warrant, but sustained surveillance gets past the expectation of privacy barrier and requires a warrant. While some worry that this is too vague, it does have a certain amount of logic to it.
Either way, the Justice Department wants none of that, and is asking the full circuit to rehear the case and reverse the original ruling, saying that it should not require a warrant, suggesting that the sum of all our public travel does not deserve any privacy. While I do agree that the initial “rules” are vague, I have to agree that sustained, long-term tracking through a secretly installed GPS devices does seem to cross a line on the “expectation of privacy” spectrum.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, gps, privacy, surveillance
Earlier this year, we discussed the absolutely ridiculous lawsuit that Lindsay Lohan filed against ETrade, because one of its commercials involving babies talking to each other mentioned another baby, named Lindsay, who is referred to as a “milkaholic.” There’s nothing in that commercial that implies the “Lindsay” in question is Lindsay Lohan. The name itself is quite popular, with approximately 250,000 Lindsays around these days. But, still, Lohan’s lawyers claimed that it was a right of publicity violation. And, while we were looking forward to the trial, it appears Lohan has some bigger issues to deal with, and somehow has worked out a “settlement” with ETrade on the case, with the report being that E*Trade actually paid up some money. If that’s true, it would almost certainly be for a tiny amount (less than what it would cost the lawyers if the lawsuit were to move forward). Perhaps she can put that spare change to use by paying for some new lawyers.
Filed Under: babies, lawsuits, lindsay lohan, milkaholic
Companies: etrade
Dante Cullari made an observation on the Music Think Tank Open blog last month that seems to have gone unnoticed: Grooveshark’s privacy policy has a “soul” clause. Unlike other “immortal soul” clauses, I don’t think Grooveshark’s is intentional.
“This [personally identifiable] information may also be kept longer than 6 months by EMG if a user is found by EMG’s soul judgment to be suspect of carrying out illegal, unlawful, or dangerous actions with or in this service. Prior to keeping IP address information for more than 6 months, the user will be notified via email about their suspect status.”
The privacy policy still says that, though Dante also grabbed a screenshot.
Somehow, I don’t think Grooveshark actually intends to judge a person’s immaterial soul for evidence of suspicious activity. But, lest you think it’s a lone typo, the phrase “soul purpose” also appears later in the policy.
“EMG may allow 3d parties to place cookies and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons, clear GIFs, web bugs, tracking pixels on the Site for the soul purpose of allowing that 3d party to record that a User has visited the Site and/or used the Service.”
I think they meant “sole.” Somewhere, in the depths of my own soul, it feels like somebody was relying on spell check a bit too much…
Filed Under: souls, typos
Companies: grooveshark
Just a few weeks after a German court ruled that YouTube was somehow responsible for copyright infringement done by users, a Spanish court has ruled in the exact opposite manner. Basically, the court properly recognized that Google is the tool that is used, and that it should not be responsible for the infringing behavior of its users. The court also properly notes that YouTube makes it easy (I’d argue, perhaps too easy) to remove content that a copyright holder believes is infringing. This is, of course, similar to the Viacom ruling here in the US.
It’s also no surprise that a Spanish court has ruled this way. Spanish courts have ruled over and over and over and over again that liability should be applied towards the actual infringer, rather than the third party tool provider. This is basic common sense, but it’s resulted in a misleading media campaign by the entertainment industry falsely claiming that Spain is somehow weak on copyright.
Properly applying liability to the party actually responsible is not being “weak,” it’s being accurate and fair. It’s nice to see Spain recognize this. Hopefully, Germany figures this out at some point as well.
Filed Under: liability, spain, videos
Companies: google, youtube
AppleInsider has the details of yet another patent infringement lawsuit filed by Apple, who has become a lot more aggressive on the patent front lately. This lawsuit is against Sanho, a company that makes a variety of external batteries for Apple products. There are six patents listed in the lawsuit, but two are design patents, which are pretty narrow. The four (really three) utility patents are
All of them, obviously, have to do with the connectors Apple uses to charge its various products, including the famed “MagSafe” charger found on Apple laptops that connect via a magnet, which break away easily (such as if someone trips over the cord). I do remember when this first came out, that Apple indicated it had patented up the technology and would block others from using it.
However, where this gets interesting is that, according to Sanho’s website, it doesn’t make its own magnetic connectors, but simply recycles official Apple connectors:
“Our charging cables use original Apple MagSafe connectors for maximum compatibility,”
If that’s the case, it seems to raise some questions about patent exhaustion, where a company can’t license a patent for one player in a supply chain, but then claim that later buyers, who are buying from the original licensee need to re-license the patent. Think of it as being similar to the principle of “first sale” in copyright. I would think that, on those connectors at the very least, Sanho could make a case for patent exhaustion if it really is just buying up official Apple MagSafe connectors and repurposing them.
Filed Under: first sale, magsafe, patent exhaustion, patents
Companies: apple, sanho
This is unfortunate. Nearly two years ago, we wrote about the indie music label Asthmatic Kitty, which seemed to take a really forward looking attitude towards the new music market. In that interview, the label noted the reality of the new world, and why it was important to focus on reasons to buy, rather than assuming that people would just pay to hear music. This is what was said at the time:
I operate under the conviction that people buy records because they want to own them, not because they want to hear them. It is too easy these days to hear a record without having to buy it. I don’t resent that fact, rather I feel we at Asthmatic Kitty embrace it through streaming albums and offering several free mp3s (even whole free albums). And why do they want to own it? They want it to illustrate to others their taste and identify who they are as a person. I also believe they want to be part of something bigger than themselves, they want to belong.
Our job is no longer to sell folks things they want to hear. They want an experience and to identify themselves as part of a community. Ownership then becomes a way of them supporting your community through investing in that community. Fostering that in an honest, transparent and “non-gross” way takes a combination of gracefulness, creativity and not taking oneself too seriously, while still taking art and music seriously.
Apparently, however, they do resent Amazon for making music available cheaply. Reader Colin points us to a recent article about how Asthmatic Kitty has sent out a letter to fans of artist Sufjan Stevens, complaining that Amazon’s pricing is too low and asking people to go to Bandcamp and pay more instead. They do admit to being somewhat conflicted about this, at least:
“We have mixed feelings about discounted pricing,” the label explained.
“Like we said, we love getting good music into the hands of good people, and when a price is low, more people buy. A low price will introduce a lot of people to Sufjan’s music and to this wonderful album. For that, we’re grateful.
But we also feel like the work that our artists produce is worth more than a cost of a latte. We value the skill, love, and time they’ve put into making their records. And we feel that our work too, in promotion and distribution, is also valuable and worthwhile.”
While they’re certainly not attacking Amazon or fans, the whole email does feel a little off. The simple fact is, if people want the music (as the label seemed to recognize last year), they can find it somewhere for free. Amazon’s prices are meaningless when it comes to the “value” of the music. Price and value are not the same thing. Rather than complaining about the price that Amazon sets on the album, why not give people additional reasons to pay directly at Bandcamp — such as providing valuable extras if they do. Or discounts on other merchandise. There are all sorts of positive ways to get people to find it worthwhile to spend money without making them feel guilty and bad for paying a price that is legitimately offered by a retailer.
Filed Under: business models, labels, music, sufjan stevens, value
Companies: asthmatic kitty
I’ve mentioned in the past that we receive about one legal threat per month around here. However, until last week, we had never (knowingly) received a subpoena for any information on the site. Last week, however, we were emailed a subpoena that had apparently been issued to try to find out some information about commenters on a particular Techdirt blog post, which the lawyer’s clients were claiming were defamatory. We’ve discussed multiple times on the site both the importance of protecting anonymity online, as well as the fact that many US federal courts have recognized that anonymous blog comments are to be judged against the First Amendment when determining if the identity of their author should be revealed.
Since this is something that we certainly believe strongly in, we’re not about to just roll over and give out information on commenters, without a clear legal requirement to do so. Our policy is pretty firm that we believe that it’s proper to protect the interests of our community, within legal boundaries (of course). There were some oddities with this subpoena — issued from a Florida court — including the fact that it had apparently initially been issued way back in January and sent to a random law firm in Philadelphia that I’ve never heard of, which has never represented Techdirt/Floor64 and certainly is not authorized to accept subpoenas on our behalf. Thus, we never received it when it was first sent out — but were finally emailed a copy last week.
The actual subpoena came from a lawyer representing John Maragoudakis, who goes by the name John Markis, and runs a company called Trusted Traditions, which sells stuff on eBay. The blog post in question was from way back in 2002, and was about some people who were arrested for “shill bidding” on eBay. In 2009, someone posted a comment, making certain allegations about Maragoudakis/Markis and Trusted Traditions that he claims are false and defamatory, and he has already taken legal action against the individual he believes was making such posts around the web.
After looking over the details, and trying (and failing) to get the lawyer who issued the subpoena on the phone, Paul Alan Levy from Public Citizen Litigation Group helped us respond in writing to the subpoena, pointing out some of the basic procedural errors, but also (more importantly) highlighting the key First Amendment issues raised, along with the associated case law, to make it clear that we don’t take such requests lightly, and don’t just hand over information because something official-looking shows up demanding it.
What’s even odder, in this case, is that there’s already a lawsuit going on by Maragoudakis/Markis against the person who he believes posted the content in question. In other words, he’s already pretty sure he knows who wrote the content in question — meaning that they already have a perfectly acceptable means of using the discovery process with that individual to find out if he made the comments on Techdirt. So, they don’t need us to say if it’s him. And, if it’s not him, then not only is the subpoena almost certainly past the statute of limitations on defamation, but it’s highly questionable that we should just reveal information on a commenter because someone hopes that it’s another person they already sued. Either way, it comes across as a fishing expedition, based on the hopes that sites won’t protect the rights of their community, and will just hand over the information. We’re not about to just hand such information over without a real legal basis (even if some publications out there apparently don’t protect their community’s anonymity).
You can read our entire response below. None of this means, of course, that commenters are immune from having their info subpoenaed, but we will satisfy ourselves that there is a legal basis for the request before handing over any information.
Filed Under: anonymity, comments, free speech, subpoena
