derivative work

I just got a call from someone claiming to be a “domain notification server”. They had pulled our contact information off our domain record, and had a highly deceptive pitch, something like: We are calling you to alert you that you will be receiving a notification regarding your domain, blah blah blah information from our [...]

linkblogging: A while back there was flurry of discussion about possible applications to help you tell if your ISP was throttling, shaping, filtering or in some other way being non-neutral about the Internet access you’re paying them for. See * Mathew Honan series in Macworld, Feb 2008: parts 1, 2, 3) * azureuswiki includes a [...]

Just saw that the 9th Circuit has issued its en banc opinion finding that Roommates.com is not eligible for Section 230 immunity for discriminatory postings. Haven’t read it yet. Decision at

* Judge White withdrew his order requiring the shutdown of wikileaks.org. See also 3/1 bits blog. (NYT 3/1) * The music industry has yet to pay artists any of the money it has received in settlements and lawsuits; the artists are pissed. NY Post 2/27) * The owners of the game scrabble are pissed off [...]

The WSJ editorial page is not something I ordinarily frequent, but they recently wrote an editorial on the DMCA. Aside from a reflexive and simplistic “intellectual property is good so don’t bother me with nuance or details” attitude, this paragraph struck me: Google claims “a legal safe harbor” from copyright infringement under the 1998 Digital [...]

From my perspective, the Section 230 (qualified by dicta) victory in Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law v. Craigslist (PDF), is fine, unsurprising, but a relief. But more importantly, to me, the case demonstrates a significant and ongoing failure of the public interest tech law community: Explaining to people outside our community why [...]

we knew this, right? that legislative attempts to do something positive for consumers were likely doomed? [nyt 6/9] consumers, if you get Internet service from a phone or cable company, do you think you pay enough to have service already? do you think your broadband provider ought to be able to charge you more for [...]

I’ve changed hosts for this website & blog, to dreamhost. We’ll see how it goes. It can’t be any worse than my former server, with its outsourced-to-a-FSU* tech support and its 90% uptime. Already I like the way dreamhost sets up administration for multiple domains. It seems very logical & straightforward to me. It’s open [...]