Entries from July 1, 2006 - August 1, 2006
Healthy Grade for Online User Agreements
In a recent 10th Circuit decision, Health Grades, Inc. v. Decatur Memorial Hospital, the court found abuse of discretion in a lower court's failure to entertain evidence of frequent website use and consent to an online user agreement when looking at the issue of personal jurisdiction. This copyright case involved the hospital's refusal to pay license fees with respect to ranking information posted on the Health Grades site. The information was subject to an online user agreement. The 10th Circuit panel ruled that the lower court erred in dismissing the
Steve Cosentino
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Googlebotics - New Technology and Fair Use
The recent decision by the California Central District Court in Perfect 10 v. Google, currently under appeal, illustrates the difficulty courts have in applying decades old copyright law to the current technical environment. In the Perfect 10 case, an on-line purveyor of images of nude models sued Google for its practice of using thumbnails acquired by its Googlebot Web crawler and including them on image search results pages.
Much of the discussion in the case focused on whether Google's use of the thumbnail photos constituted "Fair Use" under US Copyright law. Prior decisions in Field v. Google and Kelly v. Arriba Soft, went Google's way on fair use issues. The Perfect 10 court, however, in part granted a preliminary injunction against Google.
The Switzernet
The concept of Net neutrality has been a hot topic lately, particularly with the recent Senate Commerce Committee failure to approve a Net neutrality amendment. Notwithstanding the excitement generated by the support of actress Alyssa Milano, perhaps this is an issue that needs further study.
On one hand, we haven't yet seen discriminatory practices from those charged with passing information along on the Net. The idea of adding significant regulation to the Internet runs counter to the freedom of exchange that has allowed the Net to prosper.
Security Breach Laws: Disclose and Tell
This is an article from Ingram's, a Kansas City business magazine, treating data disclosure laws. Excerpt:
On the legal front, if your organization is subject to more than a few of these laws (by virtue of having operations or customers in multiple jurisdictions), the wisest strategy probably would be to develop and implement a uniform policy that meets the requirements of the most stringent of the applicable state laws. Ironically, one of the tradeoffs to consider is just how zealous one wants to be in detecting each and every breach, knowing that there is a disclosure obligation for those detected, even if the likelihood of the data being used maliciously is small.
Google's Genericide?
Could Google go the way of Aspirin, Cellophane, Yo-Yo and Escalator? It just might unless it is willing to put the kind of effort forth that Xerox or Rollerblades have done to prevent their names from becoming generic. You see, “google” has officially shown up in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. The meaning of the verb? “to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web”. It may be that the fact the definition uses a reference to “the Google search engine” saves Google for the moment, but I will not be surprised to see significant efforts from Google directed toward preventing total genericide. Do you remember this ad? “When you use ‘xerox’ the way you use ‘aspirin’, we get a headache.”
