Internet Law Commons^™

Online Fantasy Sports Litigation And The Need For A Federal Right Of Publicity Statute, Risa J. Weaver

Duke Law & Technology Review

The right of publicity is currently a jumble of state common law and state statutes, but the online fantasy sports industry crosses state lines with ease. Having witnessed the great revenue potential of online fantasy sports, professional sports leagues are trying to strong-arm independent fantasy sports providers out of the business by using the right of publicity to assert property interests in the statistics generated by professional players, and used by fantasy sports providers to run their online games. The first such attempt--by Major League Baseball--failed. However, the state law nature of the right of publicity prevents any single court …

Vol. Xx, Tab 57 - Ex. 1 - Transcript Of Motions Hearing, United States District Court For The Eastern District Of Virginia

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Hybrid Vigor: Mashups, Cyborgs, And Other Necessary Monsters, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does remix matter? This brief comment addresses the critique of importance, arguing that remix culture as well as the popular/mass culture from which it springs are of vital importance to human flourishing, invoking Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg to investigate the fluidity, dynamism, and monstrousness of remixes and remixers.

Vol. Viii, Tab 39 - Ex. 3 - Google's Trademark Complaint Policy, Google

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Vol. Viii, Tab 38 - Ex. 75 - Van Liere Deposition (Expert - Statistical Surveys), Kent Van Liere

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Vol. Ix, Tab 46 - Ex. 70 - Deposition Of Kent Van Liere (Nera Expert - Statistical Analysis), Kent Van Liere

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Section 230 Of The Cda: Internet Exceptionalism As A Statutory Construct, H. Brian Holland

Faculty Scholarship

Since its enactment in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become perhaps the most significant statute in the regulation of online content, and one of the most intensely scrutinized.

The essay begins with a brief introduction to Section 230. As interpreted and applied by the judiciary, this statute is now conceived as a broad grant of immunity from tort liability.—broad not only in terms of those who can claim its protection but also in terms of predicate acts and causes of action to which such immunity extends.

Working from this foundation, I then seek to position the …

Remixing Lessig (Reviewing Lawrence Lessig, Remix (2008)), Edward Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This book review analyzes - and remixes - Lawrence Lessig's last copyright-related book, "Remix." It takes the central ideas, including some quotations, from Remix, and transforms them with some new examples and commentary of my own. Part I summarizes and critiques Lessig’s discussion of (1) the remix and read-write (RW) culture, and (2) its relationship to the sharing, commercial, and hybrid economies. Part II discusses some of Lessig’s reform proposals for our copyright system to foster a remix culture.

Fulfilling Government 2.0'S Promise With Robust Privacy Protections, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

The public can now “friend” the White House and scores of agencies on social networks, virtual worlds, and video-sharing sites. The Obama Administration sees this trend as crucial to enhancing governmental transparency, public participation, and collaboration. As the President has underscored, government needs to tap into the public’s expertise because it doesn’t have all of the answers. To be sure, Government 2.0 might improve civic engagement. But it also might produce privacy vulnerabilities because agencies often gain access to individuals’ social network profiles, photographs, videos, and contact lists when interacting with individuals online. Little would prevent agencies from using and …

Visionary Pragmatism And The Value Of Privacy In The Twenty-First Century, Danielle Keats Citron, Leslie Meltzer Henry

Faculty Scholarship

Despite extensive scholarly, legislative, and judicial attention to privacy, our understanding of privacy and the interests it protects remains inadequate. At the crux of this problem is privacy’s protean nature: it means “so many different things to so many different people” that attempts to articulate just what it is, or why it is important, generally have failed or become unwieldy. As a result, important privacy problems remain unaddressed, often to society’s detriment.

In his newest book, Understanding Privacy, Daniel J. Solove aims to reverse this state of affairs with a pluralistic conception of privacy that recognizes the societal value …

What's Software Got To Do With It? The Ali Principles Of The Law Of Software Contracting, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

In May, 2009, the American Law Institute (“ALI”) approved its Principles of the Law of Software Contracts (“Principles”). The attempt to codify, or at least unify, the law of software contracts has a long and contentious history, the roots of which can be found in the attempt to add an Article 2B to the Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) in the mid-1990s. Article 2B became the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (“UCITA”) when the ALI withdrew from the project in 1999, and UCITA became the law in only two states, Virginia and Maryland. UCITA became a dirty word, with several states …

Government Speech 2.0, Helen L. Norton, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

New expressive technologies continue to transform the ways in which members of the public speak to one another. Not surprisingly, emerging technologies have changed the ways in which government speaks as well. Despite substantial shifts in how the government and other parties actually communicate, however, the Supreme Court to date has developed its government speech doctrine – which recognizes “government speech” as a defense to First Amendment challenges by plaintiffs who claim that the government has impermissibly excluded their expression based on viewpoint – only in the context of disputes involving fairly traditional forms of expression. In none of these …

Mainstreaming Privacy Torts, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis proposed a privacy tort and seventy years later, William Prosser conceived it as four wrongs. In both eras, privacy invasions primarily caused psychic and reputational wounds of a particular sort. Courts insisted upon significant proof due to those injuries’ alleged ethereal nature. Digital networks alter this calculus by exacerbating the injuries inflicted. Because humiliating personal information posted online has no expiration date, neither does individual suffering. Leaking databases of personal information and postings that encourage assaults invade privacy in ways that exact significant financial and physical harm. This dispels concerns that plaintiffs might …

Cyber Civil Rights: Looking Forward, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

The Cyber Civil Rights conference raised many important questions about the practical and normative value of seeing online harassment as a discrimination problem. In these remarks, I highlight and address two important issues that must be tackled before moving forward with a cyber civil rights agenda. The first concerns the practical—whether we, in fact, have useful antidiscrimination tools at the state and federal level and, if not, how we might conceive of new ones. The second involves the normative—whether we should invoke technological solutions, such as traceability anonymity, as part of a cyber civil rights agenda given their potential risks.

Legal Implications Of The Use Of Social Media: Minimizing The Legal Risks For Employers And Employees, Damian R. Laplaca, Noah Winkeller

Proxy

No abstract provided.

Cyberspace Property Rights: Private Property Interests In The Context Of Internet Webpages, Taylor E. White

Proxy

No abstract provided.

Trusting (And Verifying) Online Intermediaries' Policing, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

All is not well in the land of online self-regulation. However competently internet intermediaries police their sites, nagging questions will remain about their fairness and objectivity in doing so. Is Comcast blocking BitTorrent to stop infringement, to manage traffic, or to decrease access to content that competes with its own for viewers? How much digital due process does Google need to give a site it accuses of harboring malware? If Facebook censors a video of war carnage, is that a token of respect for the wounded or one more reflexive effort of a major company to ingratiate itself with the …

Privacy As Product Safety, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

Online social media confound many of our familiar expectaitons about privacy. Contrary to popular myth, users of social software like Facebook do care about privacy, deserve it, and have trouble securing it for themselves. Moreover, traditional database-focused privacy regulations on the Fair Information Practices model, while often worthwhile, fail to engage with the distinctively social aspects of these online services.

Instead, online privacy law should take inspiration from a perhaps surprising quarter: product-safety law. A web site that directs users' personal information in ways they don't expect is a defectively designed product, and many concepts from products liability law could …

Advancing Consumer Interests Through Ubiquitous Broadband: The Need For A New Spectrum, Meredith Attwell Baker

Federal Communications Law Journal

Comprehensive and long-term spectrum reform can play a critical role in the FCC's development of a National Broadband Plan and in its consideration of Open Internet rules. More efficient and intensive use of the nation's spectrum resources would help provide a path to greater broadband deployment, competition and innovation for all consumers. Wireless and mobile technologies hold great promise to offer consumers new services to complement, extend, or even replace existing broadband offerings. A comprehensive review of the nation's spectrum policy is, therefore, necessary to ensure that wireless and mobile broadband services are not hamstrung by outdated rules or command-and-control …

Communication Indecency: Why The Communications Decency Act, And The Judicial Interpretation Of It, Has Led To A Lawless Internet In The Area Of Defamation, Colby Ferris

Barry Law Review

First, this article explores how law of defamation has been applied in the brick and mortar world, and how those same principles were applied to the cyber world. Next it looks at Congress’s legislation of defamation law on the Internet, and how that legislation has been applied in court. Finally, it evaluates the changing attitude toward that legislation, and changes Congress should consider making.