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: Internet & Society, Minnesota, badware, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Software, Music
Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
The Ninth Circuit has just ruled (en banc) that the Roommates.com Web site is not entitled to immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. (Props to Eric Goldman for the link!) The opinion, by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, is typically lucid and holds, essentially, that Roommates falls outside the safe harbor because it […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Court Decisions, Social Networking, Digital Media, Software, Peer Production, Intermediaries, Filtering, Search Engines
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: Internet & Society, Minnesota, badware, Digital Media, Software, Intermediaries
Posted on February 14th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
At Lotusphere 2008, IBM announced that Lotus Notes 8.5 will run on Ubuntu Linux 7.0. This shows IBM’s ongoing commitment to Linux - even on the desktop. And any Linux desktop users help IBM in its ongoing competition with Microsoft. (Domino, the server side to Notes, runs on virtually everything. I remember testing it on […]
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Filed under: Microsoft, Internet & Society, Digital Media, Open Standards, Peer Production, Software, Notes
Posted on December 14th, 2007 by Derek Bambauer
My former employer Lotus has (re)-launched Symphony, an office applications suite that competes with Microsoft Office. (Yes, I know this is like sending Elmo to take on Darth Vader.) Symphony uses Open Document Format, an open standard for application files.
The fun part is that this is the sequel to Symphony - the original, released in […]
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Filed under: Microsoft, Open Standards, Software, Trademarks, Notes
Posted on October 12th, 2007 by Tim Armstrong
I gave a short talk earlier today to my colleagues about the open access movement in legal scholarship, about which the three of us here at Info/Law have blogged from time to time (check out our open access tag for more). I used the occasion to go public with my own minor contribution to improving […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Cincinnati, Open Access, Software, Peer Production, Copyright, Law School
Posted on June 26th, 2007 by Tim Armstrong
Rob Curley’s keynote speech from Day 2 of the recently concluded 2007 CALI Conference for Law School Computing has not yet been posted to his page at the conference wiki as I write this, which is a shame — keep checking back to see it when it eventually goes up, it’ll be worth your time. […]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Internet & Society, Open Access, Software
Posted on June 19th, 2007 by William McGeveran
At the risk of appearing, inaccurately, to be some kind of an expert in video game law, here is my third post on the subject this month.
Earlier, I noted lawsuit threats by the Church of England against the maker of a video game with a gun battle set in Manchester Cathedral. Today, in research […]
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Filed under: Virtual Worlds, Court Decisions, Digital Media, Software, Scholarship, Trademarks, Media
Posted on June 18th, 2007 by William McGeveran
In a sure sign that gaming has moved closer to the center of the media universe, a number of nonprofit advocacy groups have devoted significant effort to creating online games that promote their messages. I’ve been hearing this assertion for a while — and a quick web search uncovers MSM coverage (such as this) […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Virtual Worlds, Digital Media, Software, Voting, Media
Posted on June 11th, 2007 by William McGeveran
These are the kinds of stories that make me pull my hair out in despair at the way in which people toss around nonexistent intellectual property rights when they dislike someone else’s portrayal of them. It shows why robust trademark fair use rights are so important (which, no coincidence, is the topic of my […]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Virtual Worlds, Software, Trademarks, Media