Internet and e-mail policy and practice including Notes on Internet E-mail

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Home 14 Sep 2020 Brewster and Ed Copyright Law The Internet Archive scans paper books and lets people borrow the scans. In what they call Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), scans of books still in copyright are limited to one person at a time per physical copy, analogous to the one person at a time who can borrow a physical book from a library. For books not in copyright, there's no limit on how many people can use the scans at once. Earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they turned CDL into a National Emergency Library that let multiple people borrow the in-copyright scans as well, saying this was a temporary replacement while local libraries were closed, and indeed they want back to the one-borrower CDL policy in mid-June. The publishing industry has never liked CDL, and the expanded access was for them the last straw, leading four large publishers to sue the Archive in early June to make them stop. The suit is moving very slowly, with the current schedule running through at least September 2021 before a trial could start, but in the meantime, lots of people have opinions about the suit, such as a recent article in The Nation. The public face of the Archive's CDL is Brewster Kahle, who started the Archive and still leads it. Since those publishers are pretty faceless, the most visible public face of opposition to the CDL has been Ed Hasbrouck, one of the leaders of the National Writers Union (to which I belong so he's sort of my shop steward.) Ed's written a lot about CDL, such as this FAQ on the NWU web site. I happen to know and like both Brewster and Ed, each of whom has been kind enough to invite me to dinner at their respective houses when I was in town. So which one is right? See more ... posted at: 15:11 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Copyright_Law/cdl.html 01 Jul 2020 Is Booking.com a generic term? Internet A fundamental rule of trademarks is that they have to be distinctive, and that nobody can register a trademark on a generic term like "wine" or "plastic." In a case decided today by the U.S. Supreme Court, the court decided 8-1 that online travel agent Booking.com could register its domain name as a trademark. In this case, I think the majority got it wrong, and Justice Breyer's lone dissent is correct. See more ... posted at: 00:21 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/booking.html 17 Jun 2020 Once again, why Internet voting doesn't work Internet An acqaintances said "We trust our electronic systems to transfer millions of dollars of value; I suspect we will eventually develop schemes we will trust to record and count votes." This is, unfortunately, one of the chronic fallacies that make voting security experts tear their remaining hair out. The security models are completely different so what banks do is completely irrelevant to voting. See more ... posted at: 19:09 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/novote.html 15 May 2020 One last try to fix the Malwarebytes decision Internet Back in 2017, Enigma Software sued competitor Malwarebytes claiming that Malwarebytes flagged Enigma's software as "Potentially Unwanted Programs" for anticomptitive reasons. (I gather Malwarebytes had good reasons to flag it but they're not relevant here.) The district court dismissed the suit on section 230 grounds that Malwarebytes found the Enigma software "otherwise objectionable" and the law gave Malwarebytes immunity from being sued. See more ... posted at: 22:42 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/mbappeal.html 10 May 2020 In Australia, Google might be defaming everyone Internet In a widely reported decision last week, a court in Melbourne, Australia held that Google defamed someone merely for including in its index three web pages it did not create, including an article from a major newspaper and a Wikipedia article. The plaintiff, George Defteros, is a lawyer who defended gangsters in 2004, and was arrested for murder of one of them. The charges were dropped in 2005. In recent years he has had an uncontroversial legal career. This case is somewhat similar to right to be forgotten cases in Europe. According to the 100 page decision, Defteros sued Google in 2016 about four links, one to a 2004 opinion piece about the arrest in the Age, a Melbourne newspaper, the second to another Age article linked from the first but not directly from Google, the third to a vulgar private site with some comments about him, and the fourth to a Wikipedia article about the Melbourne gang wars which had a footnote that linked to the first Age article. See more ... posted at: 22:08 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/ausdef.html

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