California SB 976, “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act,” is one of the multitudinous laws that pretextually claim to protect kids online. Like many such laws nowadays, it’s a gish-gallop compendium of online censorship ideas: Age authentication! Parental consent! Overrides of publishers’ editorial decisions! Mandatory transparency! The censorial intent and effect is obvious, […]
I’ve posted several year-in-reviews of Canadian digital policy (blogs, podcasts, Substacks), but the most important story this year for me and the Jewish community was the relentless rise of antisemitism in Canada. Over the course of the year, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to emphasize the chilling effect of antisemitism, wrote […]
Originally posted 2015-06-19 15:13:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter The approved and publishable amicus briefs in the appeal regarding the trademark registration of THE SLANTS are trickling in. Certainly interesting to see who is saying what. So far, they all seem to be on the side of The Slants, though interestingly the INTA amicus brief […]
People are trying to make a quick buck flogging domains matching the names of suspects in recent terrorist atrocities, but they’re stopping short of including the hyphens. The 2024 Christmas-New Year period was marked by two vehicular terrorist incidents on either side of the Atlantic: the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg, Germany on December 20 […]
The topic of electronic signatures seems cursed to eternal life. In the blue corner we have the established liberal English law approach to signatures, which eschews formality and emphasises intention to authenticate. In the red corner we have preoccupation with verifying identity of the signatory, with technically engineered digital signatures and with the EU’s eIDAS hierarchy […]
Stephanie Reveron sued multiple companies, including Zumiez, New Balance, Amazon, Etsy, Zazzle, and Redbubble, for trademark infringement. Plaintiff claimed that her trademarks, such as LES NYC and LOWER EAST SIDE were being improperly used on clothing and other products. She argued that defendants’ use of these marks created consumer confusion and amounted to unfair competition. […]
A few years ago, I summarized Keith Bell’s copyright enforcement efforts: Bell published a short book in 1982. It contained a passage that has become a meme in the sports community. Bell has separately registered a copyright in the passage. Bell has filed at least 25 copyright lawsuits. Two prior blog posts on Bell’s litigation […]
Number10 Downing Street by Defence Imagery © Crown Copyright 2013 Photographer: Sergeant Tom Robinson RLC Image 45155520.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk subject to the terms and conditions of the Open Government License at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/. The final Law Bytes podcast of 2024 released last week took a look back at the year in digital policy. With the podcast […]
Originally posted 2014-12-09 11:06:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter McDermott Will & Emery has published an article on the Mondaq website (registration required) about a Seventh Circuit decision in which a losing party was required to pay the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees because of gross misbehavior during the litigation. According to the piece, and confirmed […]
Julie Smith As the 2020 presidential campaign ramps up, so does the threat of disinformation on the internet. A recent report from the University of Oxford called the creation of disinformation and manipulated media a “common communications strategy” by cyber troops worldwide. As I did last year, I’ve turned to a media literacy expert for advice […]