Lex Ferenda

Intellectual Property: The easyGroup of companies has built up a significant reputation in the name “easy” and has a number of trademark applications and registrations in many countries. easyGroup cannot permit others to use the “easy” name without the group’s rights being prejudiced. It follows that no use should be made of the name “easy” (or anything similar to it) without our consent.

Spotted this in the footer of an email I received yesterday. Are they for real?  It’s the broadest statement of the obligation to defend a trademark I’ve ever seen…

Tags: cyberlaw

Much as it is further evidence of why it’s never a good idea to assume that corporations and freedom of expression go together, I’m not too sure on the link between the AT&T/Pearl Jam fuss and the net neutrality question. As far as I can see, what AT&T did (in changing/filtering/censoring/sanitising the performance) was nothing to do with any of their telecom/carrier functions, but was more along the lines of what broadcasters have been doing for years. Sure, AT&T is not a broadcaster, but in this case they were acting 100% ‘as a broadcaster’ - it wasn’t that they were using their power as ISP/telco to carry out censorship functions.

The question is this. Would any of the proposals for legislative or regulatory reform have prevented this? If not (and I do suspect the answer is no), then it is an issue that highlights the bad faith and you’re-all-the-same-evil-corporation-nature of AT&T, rather than something that will actually prove the case for action on neutrality. Indeed, I’d worry that overstating the case in this fashion may confuse the matter. I am extremely concerned about the power of corporations like AT&T and their ability to control expression and culture, and I’m also interested in the legal and political issues surrounding net neutrality - but I’m sceptical of an automatic link.

On the other hand, I do see some interesting neutrality issues on the horizon emerging from the shape-throwing over the BBC iPlayer, and more specifically the desire of ISPs to shake down the BBC for the added traffic. If they follow through on this, I think the core fears of the US net neutrality lobbyists will be an active part of the British debate, in a much more significant fashion than to date.

Pamela Samuelson’s paper on the future of copyright law, Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform has been stirring up a gentle buzz. Here is is on Google Blog Search, for example. I do think she makes some very sensible points, although I’m wary of *any* copyright reform in the present (especially the US) political climate, where there is such an advantage enjoyed by the management side of the media industries. Put simply, I’m inclined not to favour big-picture legislative reform as the process would (I suspect) be captured within moments by copyright maximisers and the ‘reform’ would just be further entrenchment of the right to monopolise and control. I’m not saying that those of us who favour moderate copyright laws should be afraid to debate - far from it - but that a full-scale project carries with it added dangers, and I’m not convinced that the forces of light, truth and all that is good in this world can come out of it with any significant victories. I suspect that for now, the best tactic is piece-by-piece while simultaneously challenging the lobbying and institutional power of the maximisers, building towards future wholesale reform…

That said, the paper and the vision are both very compelling.

The Library of Congress (the law library bit of it, or indeed the Global Legal Information Network project in the law library) has a lovely report (PDF) on recent (international) legal developments. The link is to the July issue, but there’s an issue once a month. Lex Ferenda readers will make a beeline for the ‘Communications and Electronic Information’ section but it’s a good general read too.

The Guardian’s technology writers have put together a feature on the “top ten” cases about technology. Running from newest (Grokster) to the Statute of Anne (oldest), it may be useful to all the law teachers out there.

For some reason that I cannot understand, the articles on the website include no links to the *actual* cases. So I’ve collected them, and reproduced them below. Feel free to use/reuse if they’re useful!

• MGM v Grokster: Supreme Court opinions
• Sklyarov: EFF index (contains filings, news reports etc - this was a jury case)
• Demon v Godfrey: the pre-trial motion decision that is the important bit (the case itself was settled out of court)
• US v Microsoft: Index of decisions, filings etc from the Dept. of Justice.
• Sony v Universal (’the Betamax case’): Supreme Court opinions
• Apple v Apple: the 2006 case (High Court, England), the 1991 settlement
• Apple v Franklin: Circuit Court opinions
• Marconi v US: Supreme Court opinions
• Bell v Western Union (1879: I don’t believe this is online)
• Statute of Anne (Copyright)

Actually, I think that inclusion of some of the tech-free speech cases (e.g. ACLU v Reno) would have been a good idea - I actually don’t think Apple v Apple really belongs in there, and I don’t think it has much value outside of conventional trademark law analysis. But quibbles aside, it’s useful. What would you change?

Bonus ideas-for-teaching link: Peter Yu on Teaching International IP Law via SSRN.

What links the US and Zimbabwe?

Government plans for enhanced ability to intercept Net etc: “Postal, telecommunications and internet service providers will be required to ensure that their ’systems are technically capable of supporting lawful interceptions at all times’”.

Government wants Net etc technology to be redesigned by regulator to provide for easy blocking, including systems that “operate independently of ratings pre-assigned by the creator of such video or audio programming”.

Which one is which?

Does it really matter? I mean, the teachers have called (also: here, here) for the closing down of GooTube and similar websites. If they get their way (and who ignores an angry teacher?), Zimbabwe and the US will have less to shut the gates on. Maybe they could get together and, y’know, talk? (By carrier pigeon, of course).

Stanley Fish (no, seriously) discusses the problems of complicated cappuccino-speak and different types of sugar-substitute. In the New York Times. Read it here (ahem).

Is this thing on?

My stats show an interesting pattern - on the day I closed the shutters, I got more hits than ever before. This wasn’t due to a celebration of my absence, but a nice mention on the Berkman Buzz newsletter. I’ve also received some incoming traffic via Doc Searls and (weirdly) a comment to a Guardian blog piece on low-cost travel.

Anyway, if you’re here through any of the above, or came for the Summer Doctoral Programme traffic in general, you’re very welcome. I’m back in Dublin and will be here for what’s left of the wet summer, with a couple of occasional excursions for conferences etc.

Speaking of conferences…Ethan Zuckerman published a comprehensive post on live blogging on his blog last month, and highlighted a lot of good ideas about conference blogging. My efforts at the SDP (from the now-immortalised square metre (or meter), were somewhat more amateur, but very useful from my point of view, in terms of keeping focused, taking notes, sharing information and more . Indeed, I did test Ethan’s theory about the links between live blogging and baseball scorekeeping by giving the latter a shot at the weekend - I can see how the obsessive mind can be put to good use in both ‘arts’, and it’s a good comparison to make as in both cases, there is often an ‘official’ record, but there is still a difference between it and the self-blogged/self-scored version! (If you’ve never seen a scorecard, by the way, here’s an example (taken from the useful baseballscorecard.com site)).

It will be a little quieter now, though, with a couple of posts a day. You can subscribe to the feed or if you want to avoid tangents (like this post), you can take a look at the cyberlaw-only feed.