Recent Articles

The Internet Archive Protects Privacy for Libraries

May 08, 2008 16:44

Wired reports that the FBI subpoenaed the Internet Archive and demanded that Brewster Kahle (the Archive’s founder) provide records about one of the library’s registered users, asking for the user’s name, address and activity on the site. The FBI used a National Security Letter...

Harvard, Fair Harvard

May 08, 2008 15:10

Via Tim Armstrong at Info/Law, I learned today that the Harvard Law School faculty voted to create an online open access repository of their scholarship. To me, the vastly more interesting and provocative part of Tim’s post is a news item that I missed 10 days ago:  Berkman Center...

Don’t Even Think About It: Negative Ad Words and Trademark Injunctions

May 06, 2008 16:42

A U.S. District Judge has enjoined a defendant from using a term for its business. That is not an unusual result. The one part of the order that may be of note is that the defendant is not allowed to purchase ad words using the plaintiff’s mark and the defendant must use negative adwords...

Showdown at West Virginia University

May 06, 2008 14:58

When the national press focuses on academic questions at universities these days, the spotlight often shines on plagiarism.  But there is a genuine academic scandal brewing in Morgantown, at West Virginia University, and the national media has only barely noticed.  What’s worse,...

IP Without IP?

May 05, 2008 17:18

Rebecca Tushnet’s report on the recent IP Without IP Colloquium (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV) is as interesting for its method as for its content.  The Colloquium itself was a non-public affair at the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study.  It was described at...

Computer History Museum and the Babbage Engine

May 05, 2008 16:45

The Computer History Museum “is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history.” A current exhibit is a working version of Charles Babbage’s difference engine which is seen as a 19th Century computer design that was never built for a host of reasons from...

JZ’s New Book on SSRN

May 01, 2008 14:30

Personally, I bought the hard copy (I like bound books more than stacks of copy paper), but kudos go out to Jon Zittrain for putting his brand new hot-off-the-press book on SSRN. I’ve made the point before that many authors like reaching the public as much as making money- and often these...

Technology Policy ‘08

April 30, 2008 22:56

I just wanted to announce that the preliminary program for the 2008 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference (in New Haven, CT) has been announced. The theme this year is “Technology Policy ‘08,” and it includes several topical panels for the election year: Presidential...

Noted Elsewhere

April 30, 2008 22:02

Posts by others that caught my eye recently: Rebecca Tushnet summarizes a very interesting public discussion on Bridgeman v. Corel, the district court opinion by Judge Kaplan, now nine years old, that holds that copyright does not attach to especially good photographic reproductions of public...

Equitable Servitudes in Packaging

April 30, 2008 18:33

With so many interesting information law and policy topics floating around the blogosphere, you would think that something more, well, substantial, would catch my eye.  But instead I’ve been hooked by cardboard boxes. Out of Denver yesterday came the news that a man was threatened with a...