Cyberlaw – Page 4

Last Friday morning, I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (Irish Times | SiliconRepublic here and here). It was hosted by Google Ireland and co-sponsored the by Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA); and the morning was very ably chaired by TJ McIntyre (blog | Chair, Digital Rights Ireland | Consultant, Merrion Legal | UCD). There were five presentations; in this post, I’ll deal with the first two; in ~~the next~~ tomorrow’s post, I’ll deal with the remaining three; and in a third post, I’ll add a few comments of my own on some of the issues raised by the seminar.

First up was Johnny Ryan (IIEA | author A History of the Internet and the Digital Future) speaking on “A hinge in history: the conditions of the digital future and the need of rights reform”, and setting the scene for the debates that would follow. (Update: Johnny comments below that video of his presentation is now available). For him, we live in the age of the perpetual beta. Before Gutenberg‘s printing press, hand-transcribed manuscripts made information fluid. By contrast, after Gutenberg, the printed book fixed information in static form.…

Trouble in the Blog O’Sphere

3 February, 201022 March, 2010

| 1 Comment

| Cyberlaw, Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, Freedom of Expression, Irish cases, Irish Law, Irish Society

It all began innocently enough: just before Christmas, Sunday Times journalist John Burns wrote a piece lamenting the shortcomings of blogging in Ireland. Leading bloggers naturally begged to differ. A month later, the spat was picked up by Trevor Butterworth writing on Forbes.com, who noted that “it’s hard to think of a free country more suited to blogging than Ireland”. By the same token, it’s at least as hard to think of a country more given to litigation; and the point was illustrated by a story retailed almost en passant in Butterworth’s piece:

As one journalist told me, Ireland’s media is currently abuzz over a “confidential” legal settlement against a blogger, who allegedly had to pay almost $140,000 in damages for a libelous post, seen by few, swiftly purged from the site, and readily apologized for.

This was intriguing. By the end of the week, John Burns in the Sunday Times had the full story:

A blogger has agreed a €100,000 settlement after libelling Niall Ó Donnchú, a senior civil servant, and his girlfriend Laura Barnes. It is the first time in Ireland that defamatory material on a blog has resulted in a pay-out. … In December 1, 2006, a blogger who styles himself as Ardmayle posted a comment about the couple … Following a legal complaint, he took down the blog and in February 2007 he posted an apology which had been supplied by Ó Donnchú’s and Barnes’ lawyer … However, the pair subsequently issued separate proceedings.

…

Updates: Joyce, hecklers and broadcasting

2 October, 20091 January, 2012

| 1 Comment

| Academic Freedom, Blogging, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Censorship, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, James Joyce, journalism, Media and Communications, Regulation, Universities

I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).

First, I had noted the proclivity of the estate of James Joyce to be vigorous in defence of its copyrights; but it lost a recent case and now has agreed to pay quite substantial costs as a consequence:

Joyce estate settles copyright dispute with US academic

The James Joyce Estate has agreed to pay $240,000 (€164,000) in legal costs incurred by an American academic following a long-running copyright dispute between the two sides. The settlement brings to an end a legal saga that pre-dates the publication in 2003 of a controversial biography of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, written by Stanford University academic Carol Shloss. …

Website disclaimers

4 August, 20094 August, 2009

| 1 Comment

| Contract, Cyberlaw

Following on from my comments about email disclaimers, via TJ and OUT-LAW.com here and here, I learn of the decision of the Court of Appeal in England and Wales in Patchett v Swimming Pool & Allied Trades Association Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 717 (15 July 2009) on the efficacy of website disclaimers. The plaintiffs asserted that they had suffered financial loss by relying on a mistaken statement on the defendants’ website, and the defendants countered that that clause on the site which urged visitors to the site to make further enquiries effectively disclaimed liability. In the Court of Appeal, Lord Clarke MR for the majority (Scott Baker LJ concurring, Smith LJ dissenting) held, at pargarph 39:

… I do not think that it can fairly be held that [the defendants] assumed a legal responsibility to the [plaintiffs] for the accuracy of the statements in the website without the further enquiry which the website itself urged.

And, in the next paragraph, he concluded:

When application was being made for permission to appeal it was suggested that special considerations apply to representations on websites. I do not think that the mere fact that the representations were contained on a website supports the conclusion that a duty of care is owed.

…

New Open Source Law Journal

15 July, 20098 August, 2009

| 3 Comments

| Cyberlaw, Legal Journals and Law Reviews, open access

The European Legal Network, a professional network of legal experts facilitated by the Freedom Task Force which promotes free software licensing as part of the work of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has just announced the launch of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review. It is a peer reviewed biannual journal for high-level analysis and debate about Free and Open Source Software legal issues, and it will receive financial and administrative support from the NLNet Foundation, which supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. Edited by Andrew Katz and Amanda Brock, its focus includes copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes. Unsurprisingly, it operates a strong Open Access Policy, providing immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Given recent developments relating to Creative Commons licences for Ireland, I was particularly taken by two pieces in the first issue discussing Jacobsen v Katzer and Kamind Associates 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed.Cir.2008) (pdf), in which the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted a preliminary injunction to enforce the terms of the OSI‘s open source Artistic Licence (see JOLT | Lessig | OSI | Stanford CIS; Brian F Fitzgerald and Rami Olwan “The legality of free and open source software licences: the case of Jacobsen v.…

Google, Amazon, Citron

21 April, 200917 April, 2016

| 2 Comments

| Cyberlaw

If you liked my posts about the gatekeeper responsibilities of search engines, then you’ll have loved last week’s furore over Amazon’s decision to disable search and sales ranking for “adult” material. I followed the controversy via John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 blog, here, here and here (pointing to his column in last weekend’s Observer). It has long been a source of worry that private actors such as Google and Amazon should retain so much personal data as to raise significant privacy concerns. More recently, the range of worry has broadened, with the realisation that such companies can not only manipulate their databases to target advertising at their users, but they can also manipulate them to prevent the users having access to data. Lawyers notoriously understand very little about internet reserach, and so have great difficulty in addressing the kinds of legal and regulatory issues that such manipulation reveal. I have recently blogged about articles by Oren Bracha and Frank Pasquale and by Emily B Laidlaw, arguing that actors such as Amazon and Google should come under common law duties analagous to those that govern public utilities.

More generally, over on Concurring Opinions, a rolling symposium, starting here, is considering Danielle Citron‘s seminal article “Cyber Civil Rights” 89 Boston University Law Review 61 (2009).…

Who will keep the keepers? II

25 February, 200917 April, 2016

| 5 Comments

| Cyberlaw, Digital Rights

It never rains but it pours. Having recently blogged about about Emily Laidlaw’s article on search engine accountability, I’ve just come across the similarly important article by Oren Bracha and Frank Pasquale on Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness, and Accountability in the Law of Search 93 Cornell Law Review 1149 (2008) (pdf). They robustly argue that general-purpose search engines are better characterized not as media outlets (contrast Finklestein) but as common carriers (quite a common argument in the online context), that they should therefore come under common law duties that govern public utilities (appropriately adapted), and that – by analogy with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – a new regulatory framework (the Federal Search Commission (FSC) of the title) should be established. They conclude:

Search engines, in whatever form they might assume, will continue to be a major part of our informational environment in the foreseeable future. The normative concerns associated with their unique position of power are here to stay. A properly designed regulatory approach may do much to ameliorate these concerns. Courts should not end the debate over the contours of such an approach before it begins.

Hear, hear! However, if online search requires an FSC in the US, then it will require equivalents in other jurisdictions as well.…

Who will keep the keepers?

23 February, 200917 April, 2016

| 5 Comments

| Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Juvenal

Cover of the IJLIT omment on this blog that the Roman poet Juvenal asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who will watch the watchers?). Emily B Laidlaw, in her fascinating article, Private Power, Public Interest: An Examination of Search Engine Accountability, raises the parallel question of who will keep the keepers? In the vast new information age bequeathed to us by the internet and the world wide web, gatekeepers are those who enable – and control – our access to that information. At present, they are all private entities, and even if they wish to do no evil, there is no reason why they should actually do some good, let alone act in the public interest. Laidlaw’s analysis therefore focuses on the important issue, who will keep the (gate)keepers; here’s the abstract:

As information becomes a critical commodity in modern society, the issue is raised whether the entities that manage access to information, that are tools for public discourse and democracy, should be accountable to the public. The Internet has transformed how we communicate, and search engines have emerged as managers of information, organizing and categorizing content in a coherent, accessible manner thereby shaping the Internet user’s experience.

…

cearta.ie

Category: Cyberlaw

Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy – I

Trouble in the Blog O’Sphere

Updates: Joyce, hecklers and broadcasting

Joyce estate settles copyright dispute with US academic

Website disclaimers

New Open Source Law Journal

Google, Amazon, Citron

Who will keep the keepers? II

Who will keep the keepers?