Domino’s has just started a new ad that makes fun of Papa John’s for its defense in a false advertising case: challenged by Pizza Hut over its claim that “Better Ingredients” mean Papa John’s has “Better Pizza,” PJ responded that the statements were “puffery.” Puffery sounds like something related to the Big Bad Wolf, but [...]
The class action lawsuit against the Google Books program has receded from its former prominence in news reports, but there has still been a lot of activity. The parties retreated into seclusion to negotiate a settlement last fall and then, faced with objections from the Department of Justice, negotiated some more and reached a new [...]
An anonymous student at BLS has started a great blog, You Can Wordify Anything If You Just Verb It. It collects the more… interesting… things said by both profs and students. I’m already spending significant cycles trying to guess the provenance of some of these quotes. Given that certain of them mention Internet Law, I [...]
The Harvard Crimson’s Xi Yu has a good article today about the Tenenbaum case and its prospects on appeal. She kindly asked me for my thoughts on the case’s future. I want to expand a bit on how I see fair use. (Ah, yes, a “clarification” – I haven’t felt so much like a politician [...]
The Joel Tenenbaum – RIAA case has produced a terrific opinion by Judge Nancy Gertner of the District of Massachusetts. (Hat tip: Ray Beckerman.) This is the most thoughtful, balanced, and insightful copyright opinion I’ve read in years. Its treatment of fair use is nuanced and careful, and it is required reading for anyone who [...]
The net neutrality fight is on, as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal for new rules moved on to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Now, the two sides are digging in: AT&T, telcos, and unions on one side; Google and content providers on the other.
I tend to favor protecting end-to-end in the Internet context, but I’m [...]
My former ONI colleague Rafal Rohozinski, now of Information Warfare Monitor, has a great interview where he discusses methodology and findings for both projects. Well worth a read!
New FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski threw down the network neutrality gauntlet in a speech today [PDF] [HTML] at the Brookings Institution, announcing his intention to start a formal process that would result in adoption of binding regulations. [There is good news and blog coverage from AP, Wired, and Washington Post.] His proposal would turn [...]
From blog post to journal article! I am pleased to report that the new issue of the University of Illinois Law Review includes my article, Disclosure, Endorsement, and Identity in Social Marketing. The ideas for the article began in posts on this blog, starting here and continuing here.
Here’s the full abstract of the new article:
Social [...]
I still subscribe to my local newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, in dead-tree form. One evening in early August, just before my vacation, as I perused the ever-shrinking opinion page, my eye ran across this headline: “MEDIA, OLD AND NEW ‘FREE-RIDING’ AND COPYRIGHT.” The authors, Dan and David Marburger, argue that news [...]