Technically Legal

In a bit of a surprise, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Quon today. The case was argued in April, and the court reverses the 9th Circuit. The Supreme Court held that the search of the officer’s text messages was constitutional.

The court realized that there was some significance in the case, but resolved it purely on a whether the search was reasonable. More detailed analysis to come. We last discussed this case in podcast episode 31.

As of writing, we’re still waiting on Bilski, which was argued in November. It’s the only outstanding case from November.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on June 17, 2010

In what is potentially a coup for the defendants in the US Copyright Group’s P2P cases, a Federal District Court ordered the plaintiffs to show cause, essentially, to give the court a good reason not to dismiss all but one plaintiff from each case.

The judge brings up something that has been mentioned before: it’s not proper under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to bring between 2,000 and 5,000 unrelated cases as one giant case. By bringing it all as one case, the US Copyright group cuts down an filing fees, but it looks like this judge caught on. If the US Copyright Group can’t give the judge a good reason to dimiss the rest of the plaintiffs, this prosecution may get too expensive for the US Copyright group to maintan.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on June 9, 2010

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been forbidden from tweeting from his @governorrod account during his trial. He’s free to do whatever he wants once he leaves the courtroom for the day, but Judge Zagel, who is presiding over the criminal trial, said that there would be no tweeting during the day.

In the end this is probably well within the judge’s right to control the courtroom, but all it will do is get the former governor an extra couple of thousand followers on twitter, and several more stories.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on June 8, 2010

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reheard two cases en banc, on June 3rd. The two cases, both of which dealt with students making fake profiles of their principals on MySpace, were covered in Podcast 36, back in February. The Court of Appeals had come to opposite results in the cases, and the full court agreed to rehear them.

It will probably be a few months before the court issues new opinions, but we will report on the new opinions when they are released.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on June 4, 2010

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets program is still in the planning stages, but they haven’t ruled out selling the search term “Nike” to Reebok. Court after court have found that this isn’t trademark infringement, but Google gets sued regularly for selling trademarked terms to competitors. Twitter, if they go down this path, could expect a similar torrent of litigation.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 24, 2010

The FTC announced today that it had approved Google’s acquisition of AdMob, an advertising service for mobile devices. From the FTC’s press release:

[A]lthough the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc. – the maker of the iPhone – to launch its own, competing mobile ad network. In addition, a number of firms appear to be developing or acquiring smartphone platforms to better compete against Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, and these firms would have a strong incentive to facilitate competition among mobile advertising networks.

I can’t recall a time when an announced, but yet unreleased, product or service has stopped the FTC from trying to block an acquisition. But, in reality, by the time this would have been litigated, the market probably would have changed enough to make the antitrust concerns moot.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 21, 2010

According to Groklaw, Psystar has filed their appeal to the Ninth Circuit via mail under seal.

I have to admit, I’m starting to feel a bit lethargic when it comes to the progression of the Apple v. Psystar case(s).   If you’re lost, check out the full docket at Groklaw.  This all relates back to the Psystar’s 2008 sale of non-Apple-labeled computers, fully loaded with Apple’s OS X.  This was brazenly done in (apparent) violation of Apple’s End-User License Agreement (“EULA”) which prohibits third-party installations to non-Apple hardware.  Apple wasn’t as excited as the rest of the technology blogosphere and filed suit in the Northern District of California.

Psystar brought up a number of interesting legal arguments about the enforceability of EULAs, in spite of well established case law contrary to their theories, and took some heavy damage in the District Court.  The result was a partial settlement (for $2.7M), a permanent injunction, and a summary judgment granted in favor of Apple.

Now enters the appeal.  Since the opening brief is filed under seal, we don’t know what they are planning on arguing, and we won’t have any idea if the Ninth Circuit will even hear the case for some period of time.

Hat tips (and belated birthday wishes) go to Groklaw for their extensive coverage on all things Psystar.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 18, 2010

This has been covered well, but it’s worth noting that Limewire, and its owners have been found liable for various forms of secondary copyright infringement. We’ll cover it more once we get a chance to read the opinion.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 12, 2010

You should take everything in this story with a grain of salt. The Merion School District released a report compiled by its own investigators about the alleged spying by the school into the homes of students.

Essentially the school district is saying that, yes, the webcams took upwards of 30,000 pictures and 27,000 screen shots, but all that was a result of failing to deactivate the recovery software after a lost or stolen laptop was recovered.

The school’s explanation for the spying the resulted in the lawsuit:

The report says Robbins turned in his laptop with a broken screen and was issued a loaner on Oct. 20, but school officials quickly moved to retrieve it due to outstanding insurance fees. So the tracking program was activated from Oct. 20 to Nov. 4 and captured 210 webcam photographs and 218 screen shots, the report said.

Although a technician confirmed on the first day of tracking that the laptop was “now currently online at home,” another official in the same department instructed him to keep the tracking on and later told investigators he thought he needed authorization to terminate it, the report said.

On Oct. 30, the report said, a technician saw a computer screen shot that “included an online chat that concerned him.” After consulting with a superior, he allowed school officials to look at the images.

So they loaned him the laptop, activated the software, and read his instant messages? Sure sounds like spying to me. Did anyone try calling the family to get the laptop back?

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 6, 2010

He was convicted of obstruction of justice and misdemeanor computer intrusion. He was acquitted of wire fraud, but the jury dead locked on identity theft. The government may get an opportunity to retry the defendant on the identity theft charge. No word on whether or not they’ll use that opportunity.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 1, 2010