The Florida State College of Law Research Center Blog

What the US Media Shield Bill Means for Bloggers & Citizen Journalists

From Mashable, here's an excerpt:

The Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 (also known as the Media Shield Bill) recently passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning that the bill has been placed on the official calendar of business and could be considered and voted upon by the entire Senate soon. If the bill passes in the Senate, it will still need to be reconciled with a different version that passed in the House earlier this year.

What is the Media Shield Bill? It offers a “shield” to protect those who provide news from potential legal action, like subpoenas requesting access to protected sources or documents. More importantly, perhaps, the bill seeks to define the very act of journalism itself, and who can be called a journalist. This could have profound implications for bloggers and citizen journalists.

Read more here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Suit Claims Search Engine’s ‘Bing’ Name Infringes Trademark

From the ABAJournal Law News Now a St. louis desing company claims in a lawsuit that Microsoft infringed it's trademark by using the name Bing. Here's an excerpt:

The suit was filed in St. Louis circuit court this week by Bing! Information Design, according to Ars Technica, IDG News Service and a press release. The company, which creates computer graphics and illustrations, claims Microsoft was aware of its name before it launched Bing.

Read more here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Free App Offers iPhone CLE Courses

The iPhone is now offering a free app for CLE courses, the ABA Journal Law News Now reports. Here's an excerpt:

Lawyers looking for continuing legal education credit can download a new app that allows them to find courses, listen to audio programs and access materials on their iPhone and iPod touch.

Users can set up a free account at West LegalEdcenter to buy programs that can be downloaded using the free app, known as CLE Mobile, according to a Thomson Reuters press release. More than 2,000 audio courses are available.

But don’t think that you can get credit just by downloading CLE programs. The app tracks and ensures that the program has played, and randomly verifies interaction in states that require the feature...

Read more here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

News Corp Considering Blocking Google

News Corp. is considering blocking Google's search engine as reported by Bloomberg.com.  Here's an excerpt:

News Corp. is considering blocking Google’s search engine from displaying its news articles and is talking to Microsoft Corp. about displaying stories on its Bing site, people familiar with the situation said yesterday.

Read the Bloomberg article here.

Read a cnet news article here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Viruses Can Infect Computers with Child Porn

According to a recent ABAJournal Law News Now article computer viruses can infect users computers with child pornography.  Here's and excerpt:

An infected computer may be the least of your problems, the Associated Press reports. “An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus,” the story says. “It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence."

Read the article here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Trade Talks Hone in on Internet Abuse and ISP Liability

Interesting review in PC World of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement meeting in South Korea.  Here's an excerpt:

ISPs around the world may be forced to snoop on their subscribers and cut them off if they are found to have shared copyright-protected music on the Internet, under an international agreement being promoted by the U.S.

Countries including Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as the European Union and U.S. have been negotiating an anticounterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) over the past two years to combat the growing problem of counterfeit products ranging from designer clothes to downloadable music.

The countries are due to discuss the ACTA at a meeting in South Korea on Wednesday, focusing specifically on the issue of Internet piracy. The U.S. has drafted the text of the chapter on the Internet.

Read more here.  

Posted by Jon Lutz

Broadband Internet is Now a Legal Right in Finland

Finland has become the first country to declare Internet access a legal right.  Here's an excerpt from Mashable:

The EU Parliament has on several occasions stated that access to the Internet is one of basic human rights. Now, Finland has become the first country to actually declare fast (broadband) Internet access a legal right.

In practice, this means that telecom companies in Finland will be required to provide all Finnish citizens – all 5.3 million of them – with broaband Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps, starting in July.

Read more here.  

Posted by Jon Lutz

Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist

The Whitehouse is attempting to archive its social media content.  Here's an excerpt describing what they are trying to do:

“In order to comply with the Presidential Records Act, the White House New Media team is looking for a non personal service contractor to crawl and archive PRA content on all third party sites where the EOP has a presence (i.e. Facebook.com/whitehouse, Twitter.com/whitehouse). Currently, the Government team is capturing the data and content both programmatically (via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from social networks) and manually (through daily screen shots). EOP requires a provider to ensure we automatically capture this content in a scalable, efficient and reliable manner.”

Read more here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Appeals Court Throws Out $358 Million Verdict in Microsoft Case

A federal appeals court on Friday affirmed a jury verdict that Microsoft, with their Outlook calendar function, infringed an Alcatel-Lucent patent, but ruled that the $358 million dollars awarded to the software company was excessive.

Read more about the case:
From : WSJ | Bloomberg | PCWorld

Posted by Jon Lutz

Hackers Routinely Sell E-Mail Passwords

From the ABAJournal Law News Now Hackers Routinely Sell E-Mail Passwords with Virtual Impunity; here's an excerpt:

Think you're personal e-mail's secure? Think again.

Hackers can obtain virtually anyone's password, experts say, and the penalties for doing so, in the rare cases that are prosecuted, ordinarily provide little or no protection, according to the Washington Post.

Those who wish to obtain someone else's e-mail password can purchase it through a variety of online services that advertise openly on the Internet, the newspaper states.

Posted by Jon Lutz