Posted on August 31st, 2009 by William McGeveran
I still subscribe to my local newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, in dead-tree form. One evening in early August, just before my vacation, as I perused the ever-shrinking opinion page, my eye ran across this headline: “MEDIA, OLD AND NEW ‘FREE-RIDING’ AND COPYRIGHT.” The authors, Dan and David Marburger, argue that news [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Copyright, Court Decisions, Digital Media, First Amendment, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Minnesota
Posted on July 17th, 2009 by William McGeveran
My school, the University of Minnesota, is seeking applicants for a very cool job that mixes expertise in law, policy, technology, medicine, and ethics. You can check out the full job announcement; a taste follows:
The Associate Director of Research & Education for the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life [...]
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Filed under: Health Law, Minnesota, Scholarship
Posted on June 18th, 2009 by Tim Armstrong
Last year, the trial judge who presided over the trial of accused file-sharer Jammie Thomas suggested that the jury’s award of $222,000 in statutory damages in the first trial may have been excessive.
So it’s interesting to speculate what the judge might make of the damages a jury just awarded to the record label plaintiffs in [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Court Decisions, Digital Media, Internet & Society, Media, Minnesota, Music, RIAA
Posted on June 9th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety has withdrawn its effort to compel the state’s ISPs to filter ~200 gambling Web sites, in the face of a lawsuit filed by iMEGA. State officials are maintaining a brave (poker) face, along with some bad analogies – they claim not to have “folded their hand.” John Willems – the [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Court Decisions, Digital Media, First Amendment, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Minnesota, civil procedure
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety has instructed the state’s ISPs to block access by state residents to a list of gambling sites, claiming authority under the Wire Act (18 U.S.C. 1084). The Department’s theory is that 1) gambling is illegal in Minnesota, and 2) the Wire Act requires common carriers to stop furnishing services to [...]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Filtering, First Amendment, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota
Posted on September 26th, 2008 by William McGeveran
The other day I had the pleasure of attending a faculty workshop here at the University of Minnesota Law School where Chris Sprigman from the University of Virginia Law School presented a paper he coauthored with his colleague Dotan Oliar entitled “The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy.” The paper and talk [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Law School, Minnesota, Scholarship
Posted on September 15th, 2008 by William McGeveran
I often find these chain-letter memes annoying, but this one is on such a valuable topic I am happy to participate: Mike Madison tags me to name five favorite non-legal blogs. It’s hard to pick just five, and some of my favorites are so obscure that I won’t subject you to them. But [...]
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Filed under: Berkman, Blogging, Internet & Society, Minnesota
Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by William McGeveran
The New Jersey Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision on Monday ruling that the state’s constitution goes further than the United States Constitution by requiring a warrant before the government can obtain subscriber information from an information service provider (such as linking a name to an IP address). Under controlling Fourth Amendment precedent, individuals [...]
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Filed under: Anonymity, Court Decisions, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Privacy
Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by William McGeveran
The Minnesota State House has passed the “Hannah Montana bill”, 119-12. The proposed legislation, which I discussed last month, bans software that jumps the queue at Ticketmaster and other sites that sell event tickets. The state Senate passed a slightly different version of the bill easrlier this month, and now must consider the [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Music, Software, badware
Posted on March 12th, 2008 by William McGeveran
The Minnesota Legislature is considering a proposed bill aimed at an important and very large constituency: fans of tween-pop sensation Hannah Montana who couldn’t get tickets to her, like, totally sold-out show here a few months ago (and their frustrated parents). The same phenomenon occurred nationwide as ticket brokers swooped in to buy up [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Software, badware