Month: November 2011
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The Latest in Nationwide Internet User Identification – Part 1 (The Ancient State Law "Pure Bill of Discovery")
Plaintiffs are engaging in aggressive and questionable new tactics in a growing wave of federal copyright “John Doe” lawsuits. In those lawsuits, the obvious objective of the plaintiffs is to discover from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) the personal identities of many of the ISPs’ subscribers. The plaintiffs typically present the ISPs with long lists of…
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A Possible Constitutional Caveat to SOPA
Tomorrow, a hearing in the House will consider H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). There are many frustrating and concerning aspects of this bill. Perhaps most troubling, the current proposed text would undermine the existing safe harbor regime that gives online service providers clear, predictable, and reasonable obligations with respect to their users’…
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Don't Regulate the Internet. No, Wait. Regulate the Internet.
When Congress considered net neutrality legislation in the form of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353), representatives of corporate copyright owners weighed in to oppose government regulation of the Internet. They feared that such regulation might inhibit their private efforts to convince ISPs to help them enforce copyrights online through various forms…