Godfread Law Firm - Intellectual Property and Business Law » e-commerce

FTC Moves Towards “Do Not Track” List

Paul — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:49:58 +0000

The FTC recently testified before Congress that there should be a function in browsers to allow a “Do Not Track” option. I am a bit cynical about how effective this might be considering I get robo-calls offering to lower my interest despite the “Do Not Call” list and I still get spam despite CAN-SPAM and other legislation. But as always, details matter. Is this going to work or cripple the free ad-supported Internet we have grown to love and loathe? I offer for your consideration a links:

FTC’s Statement
CNN’s “Do Not Track Would Cripple Web Giants”
Statement from the EFF
How Would Do Not Track Work?

Is Libel Online Going Away?

Paul — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:11:08 +0000

I found two interesting articles this weekend on the topic of libel online. The first is a post by Daniel Solove talking about the slow demise of privacy torts as well as libel and slander. The most interesting point to me was that the New York Times currently does not have any libel cases pending right now, whereas they used to have several at any given time.

Is Libel really going away? The next post made me think not. This one is a story of police officer is suing YouTube over parody videos of him. Apparently he was caught on video being particularly aggressive with a protester armed with bubbles. Yes, bubbles. He isn’t a public figure, but I don’t think any of the videos were doing anything beyond commenting on the reasonableness of his behavior.

I won’t comment on the merits of the case but I think its probably more representative of a growing type of libel case and why the lack of libel suits against the NYT probably doesn’t mean that libel is going away. With more people publishing there is more nasty stuff published, and probably more lawsuits. Professor Solove’s broader point was that we still should have access to justice for libel. I think we will, but the nature of the likely defendant is probably changing.

Wall Street Journal Adds Digital Privacy Series

Paul — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:31:32 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has added a investigative series to their blog titled What They Know. Sounds sufficiently scary.

I think this is noteworthy for two reasons. First, its a sign that the intersection of privacy and marketing is no longer an issue just for law geeks. Second, the blog seems to have done a fairly good job of visualizing how data is used by third parties.

It will probably surprise many to see that something as seemingly innocuous as online dictionaries can be used to collect so much information about people.

Dot Anything?

Paul — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:18:55 +0000

Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) are .com, .edu, .org and so forth. There have been proposals before ICANN for a few years now to allow new gTLDs to be just about anything people want, such as .godfread. There are of course trademark and other intellectual property concerns and its not entirely clear how ICANN will address resolving the disputes that might arise when two parties both claim rights in a new gTLD. Nevertheless, it seems as though sometime in the not to distant future, we may see a whole new universe of domain names.
http://www.comlaude.com/new-gtlds-for-2010.html
ICANN New gTLD Information Page

HT to Martin Schwimmer at the Trademark Blog

Yelp! sued in class action over extortion

Paul — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:48:15 +0000

There’s even a blog about it. I use Yelp! only occasionally but I do rely on reviews on Google and elsewhere. This can be a touchy subject for many small business owners as they can and do find customers through online reviews.I found my barber through those reviews and I know he takes those online reviews pretty seriously. Its also ripe for abuse as small businesses may be tempted to put as many five star reviews up as the can. What this lawsuit alleges though is that Yelp! asked for money to make the bad reviews go away. Yelp! denies this and states that they only remove reviews that they believe are illegitimate.

http://yelpclassaction.wordpress.com/