Category: Uncategorized
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This Week in Copyright – SOPA, Golan, and Megaupload
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 was the battle over SOPA and PIPA — the twin proposed…
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RECAP Featured in XRDS Magazine
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 records. Using PACER is the only way for citizens to obtain electronic records from…
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Wikipedia Banner Challenge
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 banners, and that’s why my research group is launching the Wikipedia Banner Challenge, a…
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Governor Genro tops President Obama on Citizen Feedback: "The Governer Asks" vs. "Open for Questions"
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 is how those constituents were selected. They are not the ones with the…
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CITP Call for 2012-2013 Visiting Fellows and Postdocs
The Center for Information Technology Policy is an interdisciplinary research center at Princeton University that studies the intersection of digital technologies and society. Each academic year, CITP issues a call for visiting fellows and postdoctoral researchers. Applications for the 2012-2013 academic year are due by February 1st, 2012. CITP seeks candidates for Fellows positions from…
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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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Is Insurance Regulation the Next Frontier in Open Government Data?
My friend Ray Lehman points to an intriguing opportunity to expand public access to government data: insurance regulation. The United States has a decentralized, state-based system for regulating the insurance industry. Insurance companies are required to disclose data on their premiums, claims, assets, and many other topics, to state regulators for each state in which…
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The Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine
The legal media’s attention has been focused this past week on Supreme Court oral arguments in Golan v. Holder, an important copyright case involving the power of Congress to “restore” private rights in creative works that are already in the public domain. In this post, I’d like to focus on an important copyright case that…
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Decrees and Buses: How the Open Government Partnership Translates into Action in Brazil
The U.S. and Brazil teamed up to form an important global initiative, the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The project was launched by President Obama and President Dilma Rousseff right before the General Assembly of the United Nations this year (which by the way, was opened for the first time by a woman, President Rousseff). The…