law

6:21 am on April 20, 2012 · activism (2), innovate activate (1), IP (7), law (47), net freedom (7)

Webcast today: Innovate / Activate 2.0 @ UC Berkeley #innact #netfreedom

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Innovate / Activate 2.0

Innovate / Activate 2.0
The second Innovate / Activate Conference will start today April 20 2012 at the University of California’s Berkeley Law School. The conference’s purpose is “improving global welfare by diagnosing new and existing Intellectual Property-related challenges to activism, developing strategies for overcoming IP obstacles, and delivering practical solutions.” ISOC-NY participated in last year’s inaugural event at New York Law School. reddit co-Founder Alexis Ohanian is giving the opening keynote at 2.15pm PDT (5.15pm EDT | 2115 UTC) today. Other participants include Parker Higgins, James Grimmelmann, and Elizabeth Stark. The event will be webcast live and archived. It will be directly followed by the Students for Free Culture Summit on Sunday April 22.

What: Innovate / Activate 2.0
Where: University of California’s Berkeley Law School
When: April 20-21 2012 (Fri 2-6.15pm | Sat 9.45am-5.30pm)
Program: http://www.innovateactivate.org/program
Webcast: http://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast (windows media)
Twitter: #innact |

4:07 pm on April 12, 2012 · BLIP (6), brooklyn (13), hackathon (18), law (47)

Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic Legal Hackathon

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BLIP Legal Hackathon

BLIP Legal HackathonOn April 15, 2012, the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted their first-ever Legal Hackathon. An all-day event, the Hackathon explorde how technology can improve the law and vice versa.

Homepage: http://legalhackathon.johnrandall.com/wordpress/
Twitter : @BLIPClinic | #LegalHack
Questions : http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/ Instance: NYCHack
Webcast: http://legalhackathon.blipclinic.org/live-stream/

KEYNOTES

Andrew Raziej

Tim Wu

Nina Paley

Nick Allard

Tim Hwang

PANELS

Hacking the Act: Why Do SOPA and PIPA Matter? Speakers: Lon Jacobs (News Corp), Derek Bambauer (BLS Professor), Robert Levine (Journalist/Author), and Amyt Eckstein (Moses & Singer)

Government 2.0: A Primer on Crowdsourced Policymaking and Fostering Civic Engagement Through Technology.
Speakers: Art Chang (Tipping Point), Sherwin Siy (Public Knowledge), John Bergmayer (Public Knowledge)

Plus Andrew McLaughin (Tumblr), Tim Wu (FTC), Nina Paley (Question Copyright), Tim Hwang (Robot Robot and Hwang), and Jonathan Askin (BLS Professor and director of the BLIP Clinic)

HACK THE ACT

A week-long competition beginning the day of the Hackathon, interested teams will tackle a discreet issue of IP policy and collaboratively propose a new policy reform through online collaboration tool Docracy.

WORKSHOPS

Docracy is challenging participants to use their service to translate a legalese agreement into plain English using their service.

PriView is hacking an assessment standard to help people better understand the privacy policies they deal with every day.

Wikipedia will discuss the role of crowdsourcing in legal research

WhyNot is brainstorming how to create a platform that will crowdsource the next Mayor of NYC.

The Calyx Institute is challenging participants to hack a model privacy policy for Internet service providers.

Creative Rights for Creative Children (CREATE) is hacking a new IP curriculum for students that properly accounts for creative privileges like fair use.

4:43 am on February 27, 2012 · copyright (81), law (47), patry (1), policy (40), webcast (110)

Video: Bill Patry “How to Fix Copyright” @dmwnews #DMFE12 Social Music Summit

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Cory Doctorow has described Bill Patry’s book ‘How to Fix Copyright’ as “incandescent”. He also suggests that Bill is angry, something Bill himself denies. In this Social Music Summit ‘fireside chat’, in which Jim Griffin digs into Patry’s background, one can discern just how laid back – considering the cultural bomb he has just dropped – he really is.

4:02 am on December 13, 2011 · CIS Stanford (4), copyright (81), DNS (37), internet freedom (81), law (47), netfreedom (8), open internet (25), paul vixie (1), PIPA (5), SOPA (14), stanford (12)

Video: What’s wrong with SOPA @StanfordCIS #SOPA #PIPA #netfreedom

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On December 7 2011 the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School hosted a panel discussion – What’s Wrong With SOPA? – on the evils of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently before Congress.

Panelists:

  • Mark Lemley – William H. Neukom Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
  • Josh Mendelsohn – Partner, Hattery
  • David Ulevitch – Founder & CEO, OpenDNS
  • Paul Vixie – Chairman and Chief Scientist, Internet Systems Consortium
  • Fred von Lohmann – Senior Copyright Counsel, Google
  • Albert Wenger – Partner, Union Square Ventures

Moderator:

* Anthony Falzone – Executive Director, Fair Use Project at the Center for Internet and Society

1:18 am on April 20, 2011 · copyright (81), email (2), law (47)

Judge rules non-creative email not copyrightable #freeculture

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OUTLAW.COM reports a recent court decision in Los Angeles where one Kenneth Stern had sued for copyright infringement after an allegedly libelous email to a listserv was leaked to its subject.

Judge Dolly Gee said Stern’s email lacked originality and a copyright certificate he had obtained from the US Copyright Office was invalid as a consequence. The reproduction of Stern’s email was legitimate as it was in order to represent what Stern had written and not because it was a creative expression.

” [Stern’s] listserv post … displays no creativity whatsoever – its content is dictated solely by functional considerations. As [Stern] expression of his idea is indistinguishable from the idea itself, it is not entitled to copyright protection.” judge Dolly Gee said.

Stern argued that he had considered alternatives to the email’s wording, but the judge said that “trivial” alternatives did not show that the finished email merited copyright protection.

Judge Dee, stating that Stern had sought litigation in bad faith, awarded summary judgement for the defendants, and costs to be assessed.

* The decision

11:57 pm on March 7, 2011 · domain seizures (1), ICE (4), law (47), USG (40)

Video: Rep. Zoe Lofgren vs Victoria Espinel on domain takedowns

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On Mar 1 2011 the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet held a hearing “Oversight of the Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator” wherein they grilled U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, aka White House ‘IP Czar’. In the course of the proceedings Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D – CA) took Espinel to task on several counts concerning the recent ICE “Operation In Our Sites” domain seizures – due process; ignoring DMCA provisions; first amendment rights; fair use considerations; plus bumbled operations, receiving little more than platitudes in response. Video is here or below.

2:47 am on February 16, 2011 · COICA (1), copyright (81), DHS (2), ICE (4), law (47), us senate (3), USG (40)

U.S. Senate Hearing on seizing websites – 2/16

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In contrast to Feb 15’s Hillary Clinton speech about Internet Freedom on Feb. 16 2011,  the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing entitled “Targeting Websites Dedicated To Stealing American Intellectual Property“. This was a followup to last year’s shelving of the COICA Act and the recent DHS-ICE site seizures – which some consider to be of dubious legality. Witnesses include representatives of the Authors Guild, Go Daddy, Verizon, and Visa. There was be a webcast.

Witness Statements

Tom Adams – Rosetta Stone Inc
Scott Turow – Authors Guild
Christine Jones – Go Daddy
Thomas Dailey – Verizon
Denise Yee – Visa

Member Statements
Patrick Leahy Chair
Chuck Grassley
Al Franken

8:57 am on January 12, 2011 · copyright (81), DNS (37), ICE (4), law (47)

Is there such a thing as “criminal contributory infringement”? #ICE #copyright #dns #freeculture

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Mike Masnick of techdirt argues that recent seizures of domain names by Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) group have dubious legal validity. Even the Supreme Court’s embrace of the concept of “inducement as contributory infringement” in the Grokster case didn’t contemplate it as criminal activity.

The actual seizure itself was handled clumsily, using outside contractors. The tracking of visitors to the seized sites contrary to government policy led many observers to initially conclude the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. This was compounded by the ICE delaying public statements so they could make a splash on “Black Monday”. Techdirt further noted in December just how inept and flimsy the case against one site – torrent-finder – was. If the standard – commercial sites that link to web items that advocate or facilitate filesharing – was applied across the board, the ICE would have to seize a large portion of the entire web!

4:02 am on December 15, 2010 · eff (15), law (47), privacy (69)

EFF: Appeals Court Holds that Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment #privacy

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EFF

EFFKevin Bankston of the EFF reports a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

The court held,

Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication [like postal mail and telephone calls], it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection…. It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve…. [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call–unless they get a warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber’s emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement..

The decision essentially invalidates the Stored Communications Act, so it will either be appealed up to the Supreme Court, or Congress shall have to do some fixing.

*  Decision pdf

2:53 pm on December 8, 2010 · fcc (92), genachowski (2), law (47), net neutrality (39)

CommLawBlog: Genachowski between rock and hard place on Net Neutrality #fcc #netneutrality

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As the FCC’s vote on Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposed Open Internet order approaches on Dec 21, Christine E. Goepp of CommLawBlog has written a brief analysis that concludes he and his staff’s options are very narrow, with opposing forces on either side that are unlikely to compromise. Even if Commissioners Copps and Clyburn compromise on Title II and go along, congressional support and judicial validation are a remote prospect.

She concludes:

.. the future of the agency’s regulatory clout looks very different depending on whether it can or can’t regulate IP-based communications. Clearly, the FCC’s practical ability to regulate services that perform telecommunications (Title II) and television (Title III) functions is likely to shrink as these types of services become increasingly delivered over IP connections. The Chairman’s legal staff is working hard to frame a case for delegated authority over ISPs that doesn’t rely on reclassification or Congress; but it doesn’t have a lot to work with.