http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog Musings of a techie lawyer Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:41:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The French Constitutional Court Wednesday struck down the provisions of the HADOPI "graduated sanction" law that would have required Internet service providers to cut off subscribers access (while continuing to take their payments) after repeat warnings of copyright infringement. The Court's ruling recognizes the importance of Internet access and the necessity ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2009/06/12/hadopi-3-strikes-law-gets-its-own-strike.html Don't believe the anti-hype around Twitter. Twitter hype punctured by study, reports the BBC on a recent Harvard B school finding: The median user has written only one tweet, and "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." As though it sealed Twitter's fate, the ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2009/06/09/dont-believe-the-anti-hype-twitter-succeeds-by-leaving-room-for-failure.html Every three years, as mandated by Congress in Sec. 1201(a)(1)(C) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Librarian of Congress and Register of Copyrights conduct a rulemaking on exemptions from the DMCA's prohibition on circumvention of access controls protecting copyrighted works. This year's revival opened in Stanford, then moved ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2009/05/08/theater-of-the-dmca-anticircumvention-hearings.html Just in time for Ada Lovelace Day comes the news that Susan Crawford is headed to the White House as special assistant to the president for science, technology, and innovation policy. Susan is one of clearest thinkers I know on technology policy -- which is critical to the continued ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2009/03/24/susan-crawford-to-the-white-house-on-ada-lovelace-day.html I'm spending this election season in Cairo, Egypt, attending an ICANN meeting. Thanks to the Internet, that hasn't stopped me from some final get-out-the-vote efforts. The time zones mesh up so that after meetings conclude here, I've been able to log in to my.barackobama.com, find a list of ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/11/03/skype-for-obama-from-cairo-to-colorado.html As I learned via Twitter this morning (thanks, Tim O'Reilly), the Authors' and Publishers' class counsel have reached a proposed settlement of their lawsuits against Google's book scanning program. Early press reports say Google will pay about $125 million. There are some fascinating pieces to the settlement agreement, ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/10/28/google-to-settle-book-scanning-suit-with-publishers-authors.html There's nothing like a misfired copyright claim to make a presidential campaign see the value of fair use. After finding several of its campaign videos removed from YouTube for copyright claims, the McCain-Palin campaign has fired off an eloquent defense of fair use -- and another illustration of where ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/10/14/mccains-youtube-takedown-inspires-fair-use-fervor.html I'm at Berkman for the open meeting of the Internet Technical Safety Task Force, a group convened at the pressing of state attorneys general to address children's safety on social networking sites. The day kicked off with statements from Mass and Conn. attorneys general, to be followed by presentations ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/09/23/internet-technical-safety-task-force.html The Federal Circuit held this week in Jacobsen v. Katzer, that Java Model Railroad Interface author Robert Jacobsen's release of software under the Artistic License gave him the right to sue for copyright infringement those who distributed modified JMRI software without obeying the conditions of its license. The decision ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/08/15/federal-circuit-confirms-key-free-software-licensing-practice.html Students for a Free Tibet posted video of a Free Tibet protest to YouTube. YouTube pulled it, in response to a copyright complaint from the International Olympic Committee. From the copy posted to vimeo (and thence re-posted to YouTube, it appears), it's hard to see a colorable copyright ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/08/12/olympics-youtube-protest-copyright.html