Recent Articles

What does “search incident to arrest” mean today?

Kevin Thompson
October 30, 2008 18:28

A good article over at the Wall Street Journal on the recent controversy over warrantless searches of laptops was pointed out to me by Venkat Balasubramani. Thanks, Venkat! The article is worth reading as it discusses the recent cases involving searches of electronic items at the border (based...

10 years of the DMCA

Kevin Thompson
October 28, 2008 13:58

It’s been 10 years today since President Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law. Wired has put together a nice retrospective, available here. They call it a misunderstood law that created the Internet commerce as we know it today. Public Knowledge’s take on the...

McCain campaign finding unsympathetic ear from YouTube

Kevin Thompson
October 15, 2008 22:45

The McCain campaign’s efforts to have YouTube deal with DMCA takedown notices directed to its commercials uploaded to the video sharing site differently from other content owners have been rebuffed. Recent commercials have featured clips taken from CBS News and other news sources, which the...

Professor Lessig on copyright reform

Kevin Thompson
October 13, 2008 23:26

Here’s a link to a great article by Professor Lessig on the need for copyright reform. Despite the article’s title, he’s really not defending piracy per se, but merely noting that the law criminalizes certain behaviors that he believes should instead be encouraged. It’s...

Guest on Lawyer 2 Lawyer Podcast: “Privacy and Piracy: Viacom v. YouTube”

Kevin Thompson
July 25, 2008 13:44

I was honored to be asked to participate on the excellent Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast on the topic of the recent stipulation entered into between Viacom and YouTube (Google) over user data that the Judge in that case ordered to be turned over to Viacom. My fellow guest was Lauren Gelman, the Executive...

Top level domain expansion coming in 2009

Kevin Thompson
June 26, 2008 22:59

ICANN has today approved an expansion of the top level Internet domains from the familiar ones (.com, .net, .org, etc) to an unlimited array of choices. All that will be required is a showing of technical ability to manage the requested domains. Details are currently sketchy regarding the...

Quick Link - Protecting your identity online

Kevin Thompson
June 16, 2008 18:32

Hat tip to BeSpacific for the link to this article posted at PC World by Rosemark Haworth entitled “A Guide to Protecting Your Identity Online.” Among the tips include: - Letting people within your networks search your profile in Facebook may not be such a good idea. - Know who your...

YouTomb: A Study of Copyright Infringement on YouTube

Kevin Thompson
May 29, 2008 13:44

Be sure to check out YouTomb, a research project of MIT Free Culture. It monitors YouTube for videos that are taken down pursuant to DMCA takedown notices. The site shows a screenshot of the video and information about the takedown. You can sort by the entity providing the notice, for example...

The future of DRM

Kevin Thompson
May 16, 2008 05:09

Over lunch today, I had a nice chat with a fellow lawyer about digital rights management (DRM), among other topics. Then, later on, I came across this nice article from The Guardian entitled “How Apple is Changing DRM.” DRM is a way for copyright owners to get around the rights the...

Jonathan Zittrain’s new book is out

Kevin Thompson
May 02, 2008 17:59

I am excitedly planning to read Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. It’s out in a free Creative Commons licensed version, linked above, as well as one you can buy through places like Amazon. If you don’t recognize Jonathan’s name,...