Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the federal government, naming the DOJ and the Copyright Office as defendants. The EFF filed on behalf of plaintiffs Dr. Mitchell Green, a computer scientist and researcher at Johns Hopkins; Andrew Huang, an engineer and inventor; and Huang’s company Alphamax LLC. The crux of the suit argues that Section 1201 of ...
Andrew Orlowski reports at The Register that last week Google quietly suspended its legal action to “muzzle” an investigation by Mississippi Attorney General Hood into whether or not the search giant was abiding by the terms of its 2012, non-prosecutorial settlement with the government over illegal online sales of prescription drugs. Any explanation of Google’s change in strategy or the ...
Last week, Cory Doctorow reported on Boing Boing that Amazon has a growing counterfeit products problem on its hands due to a change in company policy that allows Chinese suppliers to sell direct on the platform, bypassing domestic importers. If accurate, the issue itself is not very surprising. What is surprising is that Doctorow does not acknowledge—at least not in this ...
After a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a number of blogs and articles appeared with headlines announcing that it is now a federal crime if, for instance, your kid uses your Netflix password. While that kind of headline is good for traffic and buzz, it’s also typically exaggerated and misleading—at least insofar as this recent decision is concerned. ...
“… last week a former Google lawyer at the DOJ anti-trust division against the recommendation of the US Copyright Office rammed through a 100% licensing rule that effectively brings the last of the “free” songwriters under the consent decree.” — David Lowery at The Trichordist — “The Department of Justice’s position is arrogance at its worst. The decision fails ...
