In reaction to claims that copyright exists to protect creators because of the effort they’ve put into their work, Techdirt points us to a Supreme Court case that clearly says otherwise. History and precedent back it up.
Feb 062010
The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years.
A federal trial court in Oregon ruled that a suspect’s rights were not violated when police — tipped by a neighbor — accessed his unprotected WiFi network and saw child pornography shared via his iTunes library.
Jan 222010
A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails.
In a Note called Defogging the Cloud: Applying Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing, David A. Couillard explores the potential applicability of the Fourth Amendment to data stored in offsite servers: spreadsheets in Google Docs, accounting data hosted on FreshBooks, and pretty much everything synced through DropBox, just to name three example services.
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.
The Supreme Court has accepted a new case on to its docket concerning the constitutionality of a Washington State law being used as the basis to publish the names of signers of a petition to restrict gay rights.
The TSA issued a directive aimed at instituting new security measures. After two bloggers published it, the TSA issued subpoenas that sought to compel them to reveal their sources. Why did the TSA think they could do this, and did they have the power to enforce their request?
There has always been an exception to search and seizure law at border crossings. In theory, this is nothing new — attorneys traveling with confidential paper files could also have them searched. But the ease of carrying vast numbers of confidential documents in electronic form raises the bar on this.
Aug 292009
Should a court reporter own the copyright on his or her work product, and be able to force everyone to pay for it into the future. “No,” says an appeals court, overruling a lower court decision to the contrary.
Aug 262009
Sometimes I feel that I spend an inordinate amount of time attacking copyright, as if I wished to eliminate it. I do not. But I do feel the balance is off. But how should we find the proper balance?
If the real purpose of copyright law is to “promote the progress,” then why not make sure [...]
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