Thursday, January 23, 2003

Check this site out. < www.greaterdemocracy.org > 11:29:20 PM    comment []

Thanks to Marylaine Block for this: http://www.perkinscoie.com/casedigest/default.cfm "a compilation of cases designed to bookmark, collate and monitor important developments in Internet law, including cases that have significant implications for Internet legal issues even if they are not directly related to the Internet." Searchable and browsable. Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies. http://marylaine.com/exlibris/ 11:22:40 PM    comment []

Thanks to Marylaine Block: http://www.llrx.com/columns/reference44.htm A guide to the primary finding tools for tracking old documents, and a warning about the limitations of their coverage. 11:21:40 PM    comment []

http://www.epa.gov/echo/ Enter a zip code or city and state to find out about EPA inspections and violations in your town. Ho does Marylaine find these things? 11:20:56 PM    comment []

I'm eager to try this out. Thanks to Marylaine Block http://www.istl.org/02-fall/internet.html "a selected list of sites that cover the basic issues of computer security and which provide useful information for the non-expert" prepared by Purdue librarian Jane F. Kinkus. 11:19:38 PM    comment []

Litigation grows more expensive as the need for computer experts arises in more contexts involving managing and finding evidence that exists in electronic form. Throw away what you don't need. Have a policy about document retentiona nd stick to it. We all need to learn more about erasing files. http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1039054556527 "Processing electronic information during discovery can be extraordinarily expensive. The cost can become case-determinative -- at some point, clients will settle rather than pay for a team of high-paid computer experts to search for every discoverable piece of data at a company. It's evolving to where companies won't have a choice of simply turning over paper copies. To do so will be to risk sanctions. "Still to this day, because of the momentum of the market, people like to look at paper," Jessen said. "That is simply a relic and will be going away because people will not be able to defend it" as a diligent discovery process." 11:17:32 PM    comment []

This suit against the Gator pop up window advertising includes interesting claims. The underlying message or meta message is that the advertiseers have a right to control what the viewer sees. This assumption underlies what the TV people say about Tivo and Replay. The purveyor of the content has a right to control the viewing of it and to prevent people from skipping or ignoring or displacing the advertising. On the one hand, advertising is important because it makes lots of things possible that wouldn't otherwise happen. On the other hand, advertising was not formerly considered a property right that the advertiser could control. http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1039054570236 11:11:33 PM    comment []

The Rosetta Books decision, now going on two years old, brought back to mind why people need contract drafters with some imagination. We need definitions in contracts. Most people don't like to read lengthy contracts, but Random House would have been better off with more imaginative contracts. People don't like thorough contracts, but the Rosetta Books decision shows the importance of a vision for the future. There was a lot of money at stake. http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1042568650535 "Random House's own expert concludes that the media are distinct because information stored digitally can be manipulated in ways that analog information cannot," he said. "E-books take advantage of the digital medium's ability to manipulate data by allowing e-book users to electronically search the text for specific words and phrases, change the font size and style, type notes into the text and electronically organize them, highlight and bookmark, hyperlink to specific parts of the text, and, in the future, to other sites on related topics as well, and access a dictionary that pronounces words in the book aloud." 11:03:15 PM    comment []

Please, Mr. Congressman, stop trying to fix what ain't broke. As Bob Dylan taught us, "Don't stand in the doorway. Don't block up the hall." Lawyers are trying to use the existing statutes in ways that are beneficial to their clients. That's what lawyers are supposed to do. Congress didn't intend the kinds of outcomes described in these links, I'm sure. But the DMCA is likely to develop many pernicious unintended consequences. The DMCA is likely to stifle economic growth and innovation. Just as China and India are about to assume dominant positions in the world economy, the US should be doing what it can to foster innovation, not stifle it. These two cases remind us that many products contain software, and the DMCA covers them, even when they are far afield from the entertainment-relaed digital files that Congress presumably had in mind. It's not far from these cases to auto parts cases, for example. The DMCA was intended to enrich copyright holders and diminish the leverage of latecomers. These cases show that the statute is being applied to carry out Congress's intent. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,842083,00.asp http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57268,00.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57268,00.html 10:49:45 PM    comment []

SCO is apparently trying to determine whether some people running Linux or Unix versions infringe patent clims held by SCO. SCO hired high-profile litigator David Boies to pursue any such claiims, although Boies's firm is not particularly known for patent work. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,841250,00.asp http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,841441,00.asp What the Linux community doesn't need is claims about patents bumping up against open-source software. One of the biggest obstacles to open source software would be proliferation of patents. Patents have an important characteristic that differs from copyright. Under copyright, two expressions of an idea can coexist when the underlying idea is the same but the expressions are different. On the other hand, a patent owner often possesses the right to stop others from doing the same thing that the patent claim covers, even if the language of the code, for example, is different. The "doctrine of equivalents" often makes a particular process or method off limits to the unlicensed throughout the term of the patent, regardless of how the method or process is expressed. On the one hand, a Linux company has to survive and find revenue wherever it can. On the other hand, a Linux company may be straying from the spirit of open source if, as a patentholder, the company seeks to stop others from writing software for the open source movement without a license. I find this very controversial. 10:29:27 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Noel D. Humphreys.