Information Law Possum (discontinued)

As David Weinberger reports, the company behind the German blog autoregional.de is being sued by a Chinese bus manufacturer for unfair competition:  A couple of months ago, the Spiegel magazine and many other German-speaking media reported that the Chinese automotive group Zonda has stolen the design of the “Starliner”, a futuristic luxury bus developed by the German manufacturer Neoplan. (Here are some pics of the corpus delicti.)   The German blog autoregional.de quoted the Spiegel article and added the sentence: “This example shows how fast and ruthless Chinese are when it comes to copying.” Now, Zonda has sued the owner of autoregional.de for unfair competition.

What’s interesting about this case isn’t only the issue of jurisdiction (think of Dow Jones v. Gutnick and Bangoura v. Washington Post), but also the apparent chilling effect of the lawsuit: The author added three statements (in a very formal language, but not legalese) to his post that are worth translating (I’m trying to stay as close to the original text as possible):

„Statement, 01/05/2007: Given the tight economic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Germany, I–as the author of the post–would like to point out that in order to draft the text, I performed due research on the internet in October 2006. The German press only featured information that contained the situation described [in the posting, ed.]. Our Google Analytics analysis has revealed that the article actually has not been read. Probably, only a handful of Google visitors from Beijing read this post. It is not in my interest as a blogger to interfere with the relations between these two states. I myself have given a keynote on an Online Marketing Conference in Shanghai in summer 2006 and enjoyed the hospitability of the country. Therefore, I would also like to retract my „harsh wording“. I am also happy to report on it if the legal situation is different. [meaning of that sentence unclear in the original text, ed.] Should the legal situation be different, I formally apologize to the Chinese bus manufacturers. But for this purpose, I need sufficient information and detailed facts.“

„Statement, 01/07/2007: Thanks much for your comments. Unfortunately, many of them are solely libelous against China and against the Chinese bus manufacturer. In view of the pending litigation in China, I am unfortunately unable to clear them for publishing. Thank you for your understanding.“

„Statement, 01/08/2007: The post has been changed–the disputed sentence has been deleted. However, it has been cited sufficiently in the press.“

Zonda’s legal department might want to read Urs Gasser’s post on the effects of the Tron lawsuit.

[Oops, this post from two weeks ago got stuck in my drafts folder.]

The Student Union of the University of St.Gallen has a long tradition in community-related work. It all began in fall 1956 when the Student Union was in the front rank of the massive effort of St. Gallen’s citizens to accomodate a large portion of the 14′000 Hungarian refugees who had fled from the Red Army, and especially the fifty refugee students the University of St. Gallen admitted at that time. (The number sounds ridiculous, but school enrollment was about 500 at that time.)

In 2000, the Student Union granted the crucial seed money for what has become toxic.fm, the first radio station in the country to offer on-the-job training for students and other young people and vibrant news hub for St. Gallen’s young and young-at-heart.

Last Thursday, the city council of St. Gallen announced that the city is going to install the first city-wide wireless mesh network in Switzerland. (Yes, we’re lagging a bit behind the U.S. in this respect, which may be partially due to better broadband access and connectivity.) In order to implement the project as fast as possible, the city’s IT department has teamed up with a number of organizations, including our Student Union, which is in charge of the administrative, organizational and legal aspects of the project. Currently, a few dozen students are test-running the network, and early in 2007, the network will be open to the public.

Needless to say that I love the project! (Note to self: check security issues before terminating broadband subscription next November …)

(Disclosure: Like every postgraduate student, I am a member of the Student Union and affiliated with toxic.fm as one of its founders.)

As you might know–or certainly guess–, the Swiss TV landscape is heavily regulated: On a national level, private TV stations usually cannot compete against public TV for more than a couple of years. Regional stations are typically owned by large publishing houses and are being subsidized for their “service public”, i.e. local coverage.

The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) regulates this “market” and assigns terrestrial frequencies. In its recent newsletter, it makes an interesting statement:

“In the regional TV market, competition, and thus the inefficient use of subsidies, should be avoided.”

I don’t feel like being sarcastic now, and accordingly, I abstain from any comment.