Technically Legal

Technology and the law. Done right.

Episode 60: Thesis, Introduction, Conclusion

Thesis v. WordPress and the GPL, Massachusetts and the Right to Repair, Facebook and the CFAA.

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Thesis v. WordPress and the GPL

Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis
Syn-thesis
Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress
An analysis of GPL’ed code in Thesis
The GPL

Right to Repair

Mass. considers landmark auto-repair legislation

Facebook v. Power.com, and the CFAA

Facebook Doesn’t Violate Competition Laws, Court Rules In Power.com Lawsuit

Posted in: Podcast by Ben Snitkoff. Tags: , , , , , ,
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Librarian of Congress Eases DMCA Restrictions

The Librarian of Congress has the power to create certain excemptions from the DMCA. Some exemptions were released today, and they are doozies.

Among the things that are no longer violations of the DMCA:


  • Circumventing CSS for fair-use, critical, and educational purposes

  • Jailbreaking phones to obtain software interoperability for legally obtained software

  • Unlocking your phone to work on another network

  • Breaking game security for educational or security research purposes

  • Getting around obsolete computer dongles

  • Reading aloud eBooks for visually impaired people, even if the eBook says that feature is disabled


Now, none of this means that Apple has to make it easier to jailbreak or unlock the phone, it just means that actually jailbreaking or unlocking it is no longer punishable criminally or through a civil lawsuit.

Posted in: Analysis, Links by Ben Snitkoff.
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RIAA Appeals Tenenbaum Ruling

The RIAA has officially filed a notice of appeal, challenging Judge Gertner’s ruling that the $675,000 award in the case was unconstitutional. We discussed the opinion in Podcast 58. Briefs won’t be filed for several months, but we will cover the case as it moves through the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Posted in: Links by Ben Snitkoff.
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Plaintiff Drops Scribd Suit

We mentioned before that a children’s book author was suing Scribd for copyright infringement. The suit was novel in that it claimed that Scribd’s filtering mechanism to keep copyrighted works off the site violated copyright law itself. The filtering software would store a copy of each file that was taken down subject to a DMCA notice so that the filter could then block anyone who tried to re-upload the same document.

The plaintiff has dropped the suit. While the use was probably a fair use under the Copyright Act, it’s good that the plaintiff’s dropped it. I’d rather have no law in this area than risk a court getting it wrong. We went into a little more detail about the fair use defense in this post.

Posted in: Links by Ben Snitkoff. Tags: , ,
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Episode 59: You May Not Patent this Program

First Post-Bilski Decision from BPAI, Gov’t Prompts Takedown of 73k Blogs, Man Claims 84% Ownership in Facebook.

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In re: Proudler

Sanity From the 1st Post-Bilski Decision from BPAI: In Re Proudler
The opinion

Gov’t gets Takedown of 73k Blogs

US Gov’t Orders 73,000 Private Websites Offline
U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs

Man Claims 84% Interest in Facebook

NY Man Claims 84% of Facebook, Gets Order Blocking Assets

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US Copyright Group Enters Phase Two

The US Copyright Group has moved into the individual lawsuit stage of their Hurt Locker campaign. It looks like they are about to file suits against people who declined to settle after being notified that they were targets of the campaign.

This is following the same progression that the RIAA lawsuits followed. First, large John Doe suits, to identify individual infringers, then settlement demands, and finally individual suits. We’ll keep tabs on this as the lawsuits are filed and as the suits progress.

Posted in: Links by Ben Snitkoff.
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Episode 58: Judge Gertner and Joel

Joel gets a break, Amazon wins a patent on eBook Readers with two screens, and the Creative Commons gets a day in court.

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Joel Tenenbaum Gets a Break

Judge Reduces Award in Tenenbaum Case
The Opinion

Creative Commons At Issue in Lawsuit

New copyright lawsuit involves Creative Commons
Another Lawsuit Involving Creative Commons

Kindle Patent May Threaten eBook Readers

Amazon’s original Kindle patent could spell trouble for competitors

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Class Action Against Apple and AT&T Gets Certified

One of the many suits filed against Apple and AT&T recently has gotten the go-ahead from a California judge to proceed as a class action.

The suit alleges that Apple and AT&T conspired to lock people in to their AT&T contracts for more than two years because, two years after the iPhone was released, AT&T is still the only provider of service in the US. This suit was combined with another that alleges that Apple’s gatekeeper function with regard to the App Store is illegal.

I don’t expect these suits to get very far, but if Apple or AT&T want to settle, the class action certification just made the settlement a lot more expensive.

Posted in: Links by Ben Snitkoff.
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Judge Reduces Award in Tenenbaum Case

Judge Gertner of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts has released an opinion in which she found that the jury’s verdict of $675,000 to the RIAA violated Due Process, and reduced the award to $67,500, or $2,250 per song.

It’s a 64-page opinion. So, more to come.

Posted in: Links by Ben Snitkoff. Tags: , , ,
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Men At Work Slapped with 5% Royalty on “Down Under”

The case in one of our most popular posts has finally come to some resolution. The band will have to pay 5% of their royalties from the song “Down Under” to the copyright holder on the famous song “Kookaburra,” going back to 2002. The Men at Work song borrows a few bars from the folk classic, which was enough for the Australian court to slap the 80s one hit wonders.

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