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Friday 4 December 2009
Information Ownership - final paper
My paper on this topic is complete, and is here. It's definitely a preliminary report, because the consumer issues (in particular) need more work, and an expanded version will appear in due course.
Thursday 26 November 2009
How to Make Bad Law (Part Two)
My next seminar is on Monday 30 November, and I've produced the slides and uploaded the complete paper (part 2 starts at heading 3).
Wednesday 11 November 2009
How to Make Bad Law
The overriding theme of my research project is the mistakes we have made in the law covering online activities, and how to fix them. I'm currently working on the idea that one reason for our mistakes is a desire for excessive precision in the law. I presented the first part of this work in a seminar earlier this week, and the slides (http://www.box.net/shared/erda6g0tmc) and written paper (http://www.box.net/shared/fz57jie7kl) are now available - these are very much discussion drafts, not my definitive thoughts.
Part 2 will appear in early December.
Some of my earlier work on other aspects of this issue is available online:
“The Law of Unintended Consequences – embedded business models in IT regulation”, (2007) 2 JILT http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2007_2/reed
“Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality”, (2007) 4:3 SCRIPT-ed 263 http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/reed.asp
Part 2 will appear in early December.
Some of my earlier work on other aspects of this issue is available online:
“The Law of Unintended Consequences – embedded business models in IT regulation”, (2007) 2 JILT http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2007_2/reed
“Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality”, (2007) 4:3 SCRIPT-ed 263 http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/reed.asp
Wednesday 21 October 2009
Where does publishing online take place
Today's find is the decision of the District Court for Delaware in Moberg v 33T (available from the Loeb & Loeb LLP website).
Everybody "knows", following Gutnick v Dow Jones in Australia, that information on the Web and other internet sites is published wherever someone reads it. It's therefore easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this reasoning applies to all fields of law, and not just defamation.
In Moberg the problem was that digital photographs had been made available via a German website, but copied by the defendants and placed on their own US websites. The photographer sued in Delaware, and was met by the defence that any work first published in the US (which could include simultaneous publication in the US and other jurisdictions) needs to be registered with the US Copyright Office.
To avoid the application of this rule, which would make a nonsense of the Berne Convention, the court held that publication occurred only at the place of the German website, and not in the US.
We now have two possible rules:
1. Publication via internet postings takes place everywhere; or
2. Publication only takes place where the website is located (wherever that is - the court did not need to decide this question, merely that publication had not occurred in the US at the moment of uploading/making available).
There may be others to come!
Perhaps the most useful lesson from this judgment is that a purposive, rather than merely technical, analysis is required for legal analysis. It is quite conceivable that future litigation might decide that an image on a German website, which was downloaded by a US resident, would be published in the US for the purpose of an infringement action against the German website (but not for the purpose of imposing the US Copyright Act's registration requirements).
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Quite so.
Everybody "knows", following Gutnick v Dow Jones in Australia, that information on the Web and other internet sites is published wherever someone reads it. It's therefore easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this reasoning applies to all fields of law, and not just defamation.
In Moberg the problem was that digital photographs had been made available via a German website, but copied by the defendants and placed on their own US websites. The photographer sued in Delaware, and was met by the defence that any work first published in the US (which could include simultaneous publication in the US and other jurisdictions) needs to be registered with the US Copyright Office.
To avoid the application of this rule, which would make a nonsense of the Berne Convention, the court held that publication occurred only at the place of the German website, and not in the US.
We now have two possible rules:
1. Publication via internet postings takes place everywhere; or
2. Publication only takes place where the website is located (wherever that is - the court did not need to decide this question, merely that publication had not occurred in the US at the moment of uploading/making available).
There may be others to come!
Perhaps the most useful lesson from this judgment is that a purposive, rather than merely technical, analysis is required for legal analysis. It is quite conceivable that future litigation might decide that an image on a German website, which was downloaded by a US resident, would be published in the US for the purpose of an infringement action against the German website (but not for the purpose of imposing the US Copyright Act's registration requirements).
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Quite so.
Information Ownership in the Cloud - slides and audio clip
On Monday 19 October I gave the first in my seminar series for Queen Mary students and staff - "Information 'Ownership' in the Cloud". Slides are available here, as is an audio clip for the 1930s Thought Experiment which doesn't work as slides.
Monday 14 September 2009
What this blog is about
My first audio posting http://www.box.net/shared/3kc0rppb5j, and a link to the .pdf of my research project description http://www.box.net/shared/xx01gps8ir have been uploaded. These describe what I'm trying to investigate, and the first sub-projects which I'm working on.
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