This morning, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case, deciding unanimously that the government violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights when it installed a wireless GPS tracking device on the…
It has been an exceptionally busy week for copyright policy. We heard from all three branches of the US Federal Government in one way or another, while the citizens of the Internet flexed their muscles in response.
The most covered story of the week w…
As Americans know, the 2012 presidential season began “officially” with the Iowa caucuses on January 3. I say “officially”, because caucuses are a strange beast that are a creation of political parties, and not government.
Regardless, the Repu…
The common law tort of “hot news” misappropriation has been dying a slow and justified death. Hot news misappropriation is the legal doctrine on which news outlets like the Associated Press have repeatedly relied over the years to try to prevent third…
A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a piece covering a new report launched by OECD calling member-countries to “promote and protect the global free flow of information”. The article lists three BRIC-members, China, India and Russia, as ex…
Harlan Yu and I recently wrote an article for XRDS Magazine entitled Using Software to Liberate U.S. Case Law. The article describes the motivation behind the CITP project called RECAP, and it outlines the state of public access to electronic court re…
Professor Jonathan Zittrain is well-known for his concern that the general-purpose computer may be disappearing. The recent rise of app stores is putting his fears in a new light. After trading some thoughts about the issues in the blogosphere, he an…
As you can tell from the banners appearing all over Wikipedia, their fundraiser is in full swing. Despite Wikipedia’s importance as a global resource, only about one in a thousand Wikipedia readers donate. One way to improve that would be better b…
The House’s Stop Online Piracy Act is in Judiciary Committee Markup today. As numerous protests, open letters, and advocacy campaigns across the Web, this is a seriously flawed bill. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darell Issa’s proposed OPEN Act points out, …
Something neat is happening in Porto Alegre, Brazil today. Governor Tarso Genro, of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is meeting with some of his constituents. Of course, that’s pretty normal; governors meet with constituents all the time. What is neat i…