http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog Musings of a techie lawyer Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:30:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yesterday, while hundreds of sites (including this one, along with Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit) were going black to protest SOPA and PIPA, the Supreme Court released its own copyright blackout, Golan v. Holder (PDF). Justice Ginsburg's majority opinion held that the First Amendment did not prohibit reclaiming works from the ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2012/01/19/copyright-in-congress-court-and-public.html As I wrote over on the Tor Project blog, SOPA and PIPA (the House's "Stop Online Piracy Act" and the Senate's "Protect-IP Act") go beyond enforcement of copyright. These copyright bills would strain the infrastructure of the Internet, on which many free communications -- anonymous or identified -- depend. ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2012/01/18/keep-copyright-balance-stop-sopa-and-pipa.html 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. Darrell Issa's proposed OPEN Act points out, by contrast, some of the procedural problems. Here, I ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/12/15/stopping-sopas-anti-circumvention.html Law enforcement demands to domain name registrars were a recurring theme of the 42d ICANN public meeting, concluded last week in Dakar. The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) took every opportunity at its public meetings with GNSO and Board, and in its Communique to express dismay, disappointment, and demands for ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/11/04/icann-the-stakes-in-registrar-accreditation.html I'm speaking at the beginning of next week at O'Reilly's Android Open conference. I'll be talking on "Leveraging Openness," strategic considerations for developers and users of the platform to use openness in their favor, supporting user autonomy rather than lock-in. More on that later. I also appreciate Android's openness ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/10/03/keeping-android-open.html Google's announcement this morning that it had agreed to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5Billion sent MMI's stock price soaring and set off another conversation about software patents and the smart-phone ecosystem. Larry Page himself emphasized the patent angle of the merger in the corporate blog post: We recently explained how companies ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/08/15/googlemotorola-software-patent-indictment.html Earlier this week, Facebook expanded the roll-out of its facial recognition software to tag people in photos uploaded to the social networking site. Many observers and regulators responded with privacy concerns; EFF offered a video showing users how to opt-out. Tim O'Reilly, however, takes a different tack: Face ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/06/10/deceptive-assurances-of-privacy.html "[D]ue to the unique characteristics of the Internet, regulations or restrictions which may be deemed legitimate and proportionate for traditional media are often not so with regard to the Internet." This statement of Internet exceptionalism comes not from the fringes of online debate, but from the UN Human Rights Council's Special ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/06/09/un-rapporteur-on-free-expression-on-the-internet.html First the Los Angeles Times, now the New York Times have both printed editorials critical of the PROTECT-IP bill. Both the LAT and NYT support copyright -- and announce as much in their opening sentences. That doesn't mean we should sacrifice Internet security and stability for legitimate DNS users, ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/06/09/editorials-against-protect-ip.html In the ferment of ideas from PLSC, and the lead-up to Berkman's HyperPublic I wanted to get back to my draft paper on “Privacy, Attention, and Political Community” (PDF) Privacy scholarship is expanding its concept of what we’re trying to protect when we protect “privacy.” In the ... http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2011/06/08/privacy-attention-and-political-community.html