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January 31, 2006
42, 121, hut, hut
Blawg Review #42 is up at Kevin A. Thompson's Cyberlaw Central. [Blawg Review]
Carnival of the Capitalists #121 is up at Phosita.
* Cache is King, Cache is Fair Use [Lessig, EFF, Patry, InternetCases]
* ICLE and iTunes: that's why i started Blawgcast, but I ran out of energy...
* Google wants to stop spyware
* If blogs are not worthy legal scholarship, what motivates the authors of LawCulture to blog?
* "Economics of Digital Content and Online Illegal Filesharing: Legal Issues" (SSRN) [via]
* Top patent law and policy story of 2005 [pdf]
* In opposition papers [pdf] served yesterday in Elektra v. Barker in Manhattan federal court, the RIAA has argued that merely making files "available for distribution" is in and of itself a copyright violation. [Thank you to Life of a Law Student for hosting the pdf.]
* Rim job [via Phosita]
* MPAA violates copyright of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" [is this tacit approval of copying for fair use purposes even though our old buddy Jack Valenti says it doesn't exist?]
* Tech Law Advisor available in China. [there's a link to the censored Google in China tussle under Marvin the Paranoid Android in #42]
* IP Funny
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 24, 2006
A Million Little Bits of Information
I want to recommend that you focus on the following for one day:
The Broadcast Flag - EFF, Public Knowledge, boingboing
Government Domestic Spying Program - (see e.g. DOJ wants your search records, NYT, EFF)
Related: Boycott DRM, Legislating Decency
Previously: Google v. the DOJ, Congress could care less about its constituents
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 23, 2006
Thank you for your continued support
I didn't really expect that anyone was still reading the blog after my extended hiatus and so I would like to thank everyone in sticking with me and continuing to tune in.
For anyone interested you can take a peek under the hood after the jump.
I was spurred to look at my dreamhost web stats (for the first time since April 2005) by this businesswire release re Howard Bashman's recent moves (Congrats btw), and was staggered that more people and less bots (I hope) are reading the site than ever before.
On a typical day in January 2006, there are
9,000 page views
4,100 feed (rss, rdf, xml) hits
6 podcasts downloaded
Posted by Kevin Heller | Comments (0)
Carnival of the Blawgers
Whether you call it a a blawg, a legal blog or a law-related weblog -- people willing to spend $100,000 for a Juris Doctor make good web content providers and even decent journalists.
Witness for example Jonathan Wilson's Blawg Review #41 and the Patent Baristas grande-sized Carnival of the Capitalists #120.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Defamation Trumps Anonymity
Shannon P. Duffy at The Legal Intelligencer reports that "a Philadelphia judge has ruled that a valid defamation claim trumps any right to speak anonymously [... and] ordered the operator of two now-defunct Web sites to turn over the identities of the anonymous authors of comments on the sites that allegedly defamed [Klehr Harrison] a Philadelphia law firm." [Law Firm's Defamation Claim Found to Trump Critics' Internet Anonymity]
[Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg & Ellers v. JPA Development Inc. (Common Pleas) (Sheppard, J.)]
More on anonymity: Anonymous Blogging and Employment [via Rob Hyndman]
(tags: anonymity; free speech; media law)
Posted by Kevin Heller
Congress could care less about its constituents
Professor Ed Felten on the Analog Hole bill: "I can know the contents of the bill Congress is debating, but only if I pay $10k to a private party, and only if I promise not to tell anybody what is in the bill or engage in public debate about it." [Analog Hole Bill Would Impose a Secret Law]
Fred von Lohmann on Broadcast Flag: "Now the RIAA and MPAA want to betray that legacy by passing laws that will regulate new technologies in advance and freeze fair use forever." [New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill Would Freeze Fair Use]
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 22, 2006
Offline for the Weekend
It's always nice when you get a chance to take a break from the kids (for a weekend - thanks to grandparents working round the clock) amd head to the city for eats and to watch the Bus roll into town. Strange though when all you talk about is what's going on online.
Here were the two big topics of interest:
ipods, podcasts and video (see e.g. NPR, Zoe, watching tv shows at work, amateur web content, vlogging) Related: Plugging The Analog Hole Really A Plan To Kill Amateur Content?
Gawker: Blind Item Guessing Game
Posted by Kevin Heller
Blawg Review
Past Issues
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 21, 2006
Government Google Search Saga...
* Letter from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [pdf] (Senator demands info on search engine subpoena) (recently added)
* Court Documents & Summary Of United States Versus Google Over Search Data
* Google Resists U.S. Subpoena of Search Data
* AOL denies it complied with DOJ search subpoena
* Do No Evil and Perhaps Do Some Good: Google, Privacy, and Business Records
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 20, 2006
Slander Litigation Run Amok
Julie Hilden's article The Slipperiness of Slander: The Suit Against Paris Hilton, in this week's Writ, illustrates some of the First Amendment problems with a slander lawsuit as well as contrasts the way slander and libel litigation proceed in practice.
Available online are copies of the complaint, her former publicist's depo, her depo, emails between her and her publicist and the NY Post Story [pdf] that started it all. [related: Paris Hilton Stars in ‘To Kill a Page Six Item’]
Previously: Paris apparently says "that's hot" so often that she filed a trademark application for it. [related] | All Over Paris | Paris and Rick | Paris Hilton, Director?
Bonus: MP3 of first chapter of Julie Hilden's most recent novel: 3.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Collections of Knowledge
I love learning knew things. That's one of the reasons I find blogging so addicting. That constant thirst for knowledge gets quenched and then a new day begins.
Today I learned that the IRS operating budget is over $10 billion dollars per year.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget request for FY 2006 is $10,679,261,000, a $443,174,088 increase, or 4.3 percent, over the FY 2005 enacted budget of $10,236,086,912. This represents a 1 percent decrease in Taxpayer Service and a 2 percent decrease in Business Systems Modernization, respectively, and an 8 percent increase in Enforcement.[link to pdf] Simply staggering. Hat tip to Do I Contradict Myself.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Search Subpoena Compliance
Techdirt reports that Yahoo, MSN and AOL were all asked to produce search records and complied.
Previous Posts:
Gonzalez v. Google Subpoena [jpg]
Bush asks for Google Search Data
Posted by Kevin Heller
Support DMCA Reform - Help Pass HR 1201!
EFF: HR 1201 would give citizens the right to circumvent copy-protection measures as long as what they're doing is otherwise legal. [via]
Posted by Kevin Heller
Audio Recordings by Persons with Law Degrees
Andrew Raff of IPTAblog discusses the Senate Indecency Hearings, where indecency trumps the First Amendment, in his IPtelligentsia Podcast: Senate Indecency Hearings (Part 1 of 3).
MadKane goes Alito crazy in If Not Now, Then When? -- Sam Alito In Verse.
Professor Bill Childs, TortsProf Blog, is podcasting his products liability lectures, which are available to anyone who wants them. [via]
This week's New Jersey Legal Update podcast, by the NJ Law Blog, discusses the NJ Appellate Court's decision in Doe v. XYC Corporation which found that employers can be liable for civil damages when their employees use the company’s computers for illegal acts such as viewing child pornography. [see also]
Also of note: Apple's how to podcast series. [via]
Posted by Kevin Heller
Image Hyperlinked to © Notice is not Copyright Management Information
as that term is used in the DMCA says the District of New Jersey.
The decision appears to be the first judicial interpretation of the term "copyright management information." IQ Group Ltd. d/b/a Insurance IQ v. Wiesner Publishing LLC [pdf] [via BNA's Internet Law News and Pike & Fischer's FREE Internet Law & Regulation Weekly Alert]
Posted by Kevin Heller
43(B)log: False advertising and more
I've read two thought provoking posts at Georgetown Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log.
2) Discussing the hypothetical about whether taping lectures infringed on rights in the prof's notes?
Posted by Kevin Heller
Previous Legal Podcast Entries
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 19, 2006
Gonzalez v. Google
January 18, 2006
View the Government's Motion to Compel Google to comply with the Subpoena
Download the Declaration of Joel McElvain.
Download the Declaration of Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Stark said in a statement that analysing information from Google would let him "estimate the prevalence of harmful-to-minors" and the "effectiveness of content filters" in blocking it. [Google fights US gov't request for search data]
Posted by Kevin Heller
Bush asks for Google Search Data
The Bush administration has asked a California district court judge to order Google to turn over 1 million random web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The government argues that it needs the information as it prepares to once again defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act in a federal court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck down in 2004 because it was too broad and could prevent adults from accessing legal porn sites.Google, to its credit has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year and says that releasing the information would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort vigorously: "Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching."[paraphrased and quoted from Feds after Google data By Howard Mintz in the Mercury News] [via Techdirt]
The Case: Ashcroft v. ACLU, No. 03-218 (U.S.S.C. June 29, 2004) A divided (5-4) U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2004 barred enforcement of a 1998 federal law designed to keep Internet pornography away from minors because it likely violates constitutional free-speech rights.
Links:
* internet privacy decisions roundup
* Ashcroft v. ACLU link roundup
* Free porn, Google, spam, Internet censorship, and the Supreme Court
(tags: free speech internet regulation copa google privacy)
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 18, 2006
weighing in on important legal issues of our day
The Supreme Court claims "that facts are not copyrightable" (Feist), but that compilations of facts may be.
However, I will argue that if the facts at issue are Chuck Norris Facts then each individual fact is indeed copyrightable and each author should be able to make a claim of ownership, and neither chucknorrisfacts.com or www.4q.cc/chuck may make a legit claim of ownership to each fact unless they receive a copyright release or license from each owner.
Disclaimer: The facts about Chuck Norris Facts are open to debate and as such this information is provided with the understanding gleaned from reader comments in two http://www.boingboing.net/ posts. Please note that the basis for my argument is that the Chuck Norris Facts aren't actually true facts but rather made up facts. Finally, please note that this is an attempt at humor and should not be considered actual legal advice.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Lawyer Coloring Book
This is my suit. Color it gray or I will lose my job.
Hilarity ensues. Lawyer Coloring Book [via email] as PDF or on Flickr [via LawGeek]
Either way make sure you print it out and bring it home for the kids.
Also, if anyone knows the source for this please let me know. thanks.
Posted by Kevin Heller | Comments (0)
RSS & Copyright Battle Continues
John Palfrey offers his take on RSS and Copyright, circa 2006.
My views on this are expressed here and here.
update: my consolidated view on RSS and Copyright, Circa 2006 is expressed here.
Posted by Kevin Heller
I coulda been anonymous
I realize that my two worst mistakes in starting this blog while I was an associate at a NYC trademark litigation firm was:
1. 2002 was too early to start blogging - late 2004 or early 2005 was definitely the time to start and
2. I should've maintained it anonymously.
Oh well.
If you're unsure of what I'm talking about then you can look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 17, 2006
P2P Indemnity
"In an unusual twist in the fight over online file sharing, several college students who have been sued by the recording industry are asking the creator of a file-swapping service to pay to settle the charges against them." [Students Want File-Sharing Site To Pay for RIAA Settlements]
Posted by
Do Fantasy Stats Violate Copyright?
CNN - Baseball statistics: history or property?, January 15, 2006: "Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to "commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles" of big league players."
"One problem MLB will face is that facts are not copyrightable." from Tech Law Advisor - Does Fantasy Baseball Violate Copyright? March 9, 2005.
A copy of the complaint can be found here.
Posted by Kevin Heller
tagsquatting
If Steve Rubel is right about Tagvertising then you can bet that tagsquatting* will follow closely behind.
In fact it's already happening on the Blawgcast tag at del.icio.us.
(tags: tagvertising tagsquatting)
* attributed to who else: Denise Howell.
Posted by Kevin Heller | Comments (0)
Screening of After Innocence
Open to Cardozo Alum:
Monday, January 23, 2006
6:30-9:00 p.m., Jacob Burns Moot Court Room
Join us at the Law School for a screening of the award-winning documentary After Innocence, written and produced by Marc Simon '97. Discussion with special guests and reception to follow.
RSVP in advance to the Office of Alumni Affairs.
Plot Outline: A gripping, emotionally charged film that follows wrongfully convicted men freed by DNA evidence after decades in prison as they struggle to transition back into society.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Subscribe to Tech Law Advisor
via email with Feedblitz!
Former bloglet and email subscribers should note that I am now using Feedblitz (via Rethink(IP) for email subscription services. you can click the link above or visit the site: http://techlawadvisor.com/blog to subscribe.
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 15, 2006
Copyright and King
"The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1999 that [Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream"] speech was not "generally published" for purposes of waiver of copyright, and that the King estate had the right to enforce its copyright in the speech." I Have a Dream (C), Likelihood of Confusion, Jan 18, 2005.
[See: Wikipedia entry on the case and the decision]
See also: Martin Luther King Documentary Unavailable Due to Copyright Issues (Jan 17, 2005) ; Martin Luther King, Jr.
(tags: Copyright, Martin Luther King) (Google News: Martin Luther King)
Posted by Kevin Heller
Compilation of Corporate and Employment Related Blogging Articles
* EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
* EFF: How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
* Workplace Fairness provides a detailed overview of your rights under labor law, as does the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center.
* Resources on Corporate and Employee Blogging
* Corporate blogging rules : from Scoble
* FAQ: Blogging on the job
* George's Employment Blawg's Firing Bloggers Series
* Code of Blogging Ethics [pdf]
* Ethics Guidelines For Writers [doc]
* When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?
* 25. dont use your real name. dont write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired.
Posted by
Some Rights Reserved
Everything on techlawadvisor.com, except those items listed below or specifically noted otherwise, is licensed by Kevin Heller under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons license.
This means the written content of each post is covered by the license and you may do with it as you wish as long as you use it for noncommercial purposes, provide credit and release the new work under the same license.
As noted above, some exceptions:
- Site design is Copyright 2006 by Kevin Heller and may not be reproduced without express written consent.
- All comments posted to techlawadvisor.com from people other than myself are copyrighted by the original authors. You need their permission before publishing those comments elsewhere.
- Excerpted passages from materials, which I use to comment or criticize, are subject to the copyright license of their creators or publishers and you should determine what use would constitute fair use before utilizing those materials.
Posted by
Attorney sues ex-firm over namesquatting
Attorney discovers that his old firm still had his name up on the firm web site long after he left which caused legal marketing problems for him: Associate Says Ex-Firm Misused His Name on Web Site.
Posted by | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
From the zero creativity department
Hey Hollywood,
Enough with the remakes already.
William Patry: The Other Munich Movie
Posted by Kevin Heller
Yahoo!, the French and Nazi memorabilia in the 9th
Professor Susan Crawford says that the Yahoo! v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme (9th Cir. Jan 12, 2006) [PDF ] "all boils down to this statement in the majority opinion":
First Amendment issues arising out of international Internet use are new, important and difficult. We should not rush to decide such issues based on an inadequate, incomplete or unclear record. We should proceed carefully, with awareness of the limitations of our judicial competence, in this undeveloped area of the law.You can read the rest of her post here: Prudence on all sides.
Posted by
January 12, 2006
Mac & Cheese Please
Interesting WaPo article via copycense discussing copyright and cooking.
Click through for a Crusty Mac & Cheese Recipe.
This happened to be the first hypo we addressed in Professor Stewart Sterk's copyright class: whether a recipe or a collection of recipes are afforded copyright protection.
Here are someone else's notes from that class:
- Copying one recipe out of a 200 recipe book for your own cookbook is not fair use if there are many ways to express the same idea/dish. There can be a copyright for one recipe and copying of one by another can result in [reduced] value of [the] cookbook (factor #4)
- Teaching a copyrighted recipe is fair use (factor #1 educational and not likely to reduce mkt value – may increase popularity of cookbook!)
Related: The Trademark Blog: Can Recipes Be Copyrighted?
(tags: recipes copyright iplaw)
Posted by
January 09, 2006
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Related: Copyright Basics
Posted by
With Intent to Annoy
This act still seems very unclear to me even after reading the post at Concurring Opinions.
Previously: Declan McCullagh reported that annoying someone via the internet is now a federal crime. [via]
Related: The Erosion of Anonymous Internet Speech: New Federal Law To Prohibit "Cyberstalking" by Eric J. Sinrod: Attorney Eric Sinrod discusses a new federal law prohibiting annoying Internet postings or emails that do not disclose the true identities of the writers. Sinrod argues that this new "Preventing Cyberstalking" law conflicts with the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to speak anonymously.
(tags: free speech anonymous)
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 06, 2006
Copyright Traps
The Map Room on Copyright Traps [via The Morning News (that excellent Brooklyn daily)]
Posted by Kevin Heller
Fair Use and Media
IPcentral Weblog points to this excellent resource for documentary filmmakers from the Center for Social Media: Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use [pdf]
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 02, 2006
This probably qualifies as good faith registration
Chris Garnett, youth outreach coordinator for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. [via Consumerist]
Posted by Kevin Heller
Intellectual Property and Media Law
Copyright
- The Patry Copyright Blog
- Lessig
Trademark
- 43(b)log
- Counterfeit Chic
- Likelihood of Confusion
- The Trademark Blog
- TTABlog
- UDRPlaw
Patent
- The Invent Blog
- Patenet Baristas
- Patently-O
- Phosita
- Promote the Progress
Media
- Silicon Valley Media Law Blog
Miscellaneous
- Eric Goldman, Technology and Marketing Law Blog
- Rethink(IP)
- IPTAblog
Posted by Kevin Heller
January 01, 2006
Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project
TLA 8-16-02: Here is a link to The Columbia Law School Music Copyright Infringement Online Archive, which analyzes more than 100 music federal copyright infringement cases from over the last hundred (and also contains audio samples and commentary).
The Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project features audio samples that compare songs that were involved in landmark copyright cases. Users can compare, for example, Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" with "Alone Again" by the rapper Biz Markie, which sampled the original and lifted the lyrics.The site includes court decisions and commentary on them from the site's authors. The judge in the "Alone Again" case, the site says, missed the fact that "apart from the gibberish chanted over O'Sullivan's ostinato, there is nothing original in Biz Markie's song or his recording except his performance of it."
Other songs featured on the site include "Don't Fence Me In," "Feelings" and John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun.'" For some mysterious reason, the sound files are all encoded in the RealPlayer format.
Posted by Kevin Heller
DMCA Information
Paper: Is the DMCA Unconstitutional
Posts:
* Bugmenomore: USDC DC held that the unauthorized use of a username/password to gain access to a personal web site is not "circumvention" prohibited by the DMCA. [Egilman v. Keller & Heckman, LLP] [via] 30 November 2005
* DMCA requires Subjective Good Faith 2 December 2004
* Up/Downloaders Identities Not Protected by First Amendment 27 July 2004
* Does this post violate the DMCA? 8 March 2004
* DMCA does not cover non-copyrighted data 27 February 2004
* Looking at the Decision in 321 v. MGM 24 February 2004
* Attacking With The DMCA's Section 1202 18 February 2004
GROKLAW: "See any room for mischief there? Any money-making opportunities? Perhaps you discern why the terrified mommies of 12-year-old music downloaders pay the RIAA off without going to trial. It seems on first reading a bit like the no-win balance in the trials in the Middle Ages. If you survived a dunking underwater for 5 minutes, you were declared innocent."
* Safe Harbor not a safe bet 10 February 2004
* New DMCA Exemptions 30 October 2003
* if you circumvent copy control, you circumvent access control 14 October 2003
* 7th Circuit affirms "Aimster" injunction 30 June 2003
* Thoughts on the DMCA (after Eldred) 24 June 2003
* Orin Kerr has an interesting analogy that provides a unique perspective on the DMCA 17 June 2003
* Court Hears DVD Copying Dispute 15 May 2003
* DMCA Take Down Provision 07 February 2003
* Movie Studios File Countersuit Against Seller of DVD-Copying Program 24 Dec 2002
* Bnetd Attacks Congress' Power to Enact DMCA 05 December 2002
Links:
* HOWTO hack the DMCA
Posted by Kevin Heller
About
TECHLAWADVISOR.com is edited and published by Kevin Heller, a one time NYC intellectual property lawyer who seems to spend alot more time these days with his two young children, on the SoJo side of Philly.
At Cardozo Law School, Kevin received a "concentration" in Intellectual Property Law. He was also the President of the Intellectual Property Law Society and Symposium Editor for the Cardozo Journal of International Law and published what could be considered the definitive manual on cybersquatting in the Cardozo Online Journal of Conflict Resolution: The Young Cybersquatter's Handbook.
Kevin began TECHLAWADVISOR.com in August 2002 as an outlet for the vast amounts of information that he was drinking in via the internet. A lot of his early posts discussed downloading music, deep links and domain names and tend to champion the consumer. Over time, he has attempted to provide useful information with regard to individual's rights and the law and in an early post was even so bold as to state that the goal of the site was to help promote democratic values constitutional principles of freedom and democracy in a digital age and to try to explain how law and technology interact.
Blogger recognized TECHLAWADVISOR.com as a 'Blog of Note' in January 2003 and several other publications have had similar nice things to say.
In 2004, Kevin launched the Induce Act Blog with other distinguished IP blawgers to track the course of that bill through Congress and then in 2005 was part of the birth of Blawg Review, which is the best place to glimpse a peak at depth and breadth of the legal blogosphere. Kevin also maintains the Legal Jobs Blog which was recognized by the WSJ Career Journal and has bold plans for the forth coming launch of Blawgr.
Posted by
Document Directory
Google
# gonzalez_google.html
# google-motion-dismiss.pdf
Grokster
# mgm-grokster.html
Alphabetical
# arribasoft.doc
# bainwoll_induce.htm
# brief_PlayboyExcite.pdf
# can_spam.html
# elcom.htm
# Farinas.pdf
# franklin_NYT.htm
# induce-act-091004.pdf
# knight-mcconnell.pdf
# mccain-2391-statement.pdf
# montana-johnson.txt
# Radio Computing Services v. Roland Computing Services.doc
# rapidigm.pdf
# Retail Services, Inc. v. Freebies Pub.doc
# scott_dixon_vara.asp
# SHAPIRO-BERNSTEIN.txt
# sun_v_ehrlich.pdf
Posted by Kevin Heller
ISP subscribers protected from DMCA subpoenas
IN RE: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC., No. 03-3802 (8th Cir. 2005) The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. section 512(h), does not permit copyright owners and their representatives to obtain and serve subpoenas on internet service providers (ISP) to obtain personal information about an ISP's subscribers who are alleged to be transmitting copyrighted works via the internet through file sharing programs.
Posted by Kevin Heller
Pirating DIRECTV Signals Violates DMCA
DirecTV v. Borow (03-cv-2581)(2005): Judge Norgle of the Northern District of Illinois has ruled that DMCA rights of DirecTV have been violated where defendant pirated signal to access copyrighted works owned by third parties.
related: DirecTV Loses Weapon in Piracy Fight
In a setback to DirecTV's fight against satellite piracy, a federal appeals panel on Tuesday ruled that the company cannot sue people under a wiretapping law just because they possess cards allowing them to intercept its signal. The 11th Circuit said that DirecTV must be able to show that the alleged pirate actually used the device. It's the first federal appellate decision on the issue, and thus is controlling law nationally for the time being.see DIRECT TV INC. v. TREWORGY, (11th Cir. 2004) (18 U.S.C. section 2520(a) does not create a private cause of action against a defendant found in illegal possession of equipment used to intercept satellite transmissions in violation of the criminal statute). [6/16/2004]
Posted by Kevin Heller