Search
Watch-Listed Fliers Can Sue, Appeals Court Rules - Via Threat Level:
Airline passengers on the government's no-fly list can sue the government to get their names removed, according to a federal appeals court ruling Monday that swept aside complicated judicial rules that insulated the government from lawsuits over the sprawling list of suspected terrorists.
The decision (.pdf) marks the first time that an individual has been allowed to use the court -- rather than a form mailed to a Homeland Security office -- to contest their inclusion in the nation's secret anti-terrorism database. In a recent interview, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said such court reviews would destroy the watch lists and lead to another hijacking like 9/11. Those who continually run up against the list describe the experience of trying to figure out how to get off the list as Kafkaesque. read more »
MIT Coders' Free Speech At Stake - Via EFF.org Updates:
As regular Deeplinks readers know, EFF's Coders' Rights Project is defending the rights of three MIT students who were prevented from presenting their research on security vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The students were hit with a temporary restraining order that silenced their planned presentation at DEFCON.
Why this is Important
At first glance, the issues at play may appear obscure, and of interest only to technical researchers and lawyers. But as we noted in a post last week, the right to publish without pre-publication review is part of the purpose of the 1st amendment, and one of the reasons Americans fought the Revolutionary War. (The MBTA's stance is all the more ironic, considering Boston's role in that war.) read more »
EFF Urges Judge to Lift Gag Order on MIT Students - Via EFF.org Updates:
Boston - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Tuesday to lift an unconstitutional gag order issued to three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whose academic research uncovered vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system.
A hearing on the temporary restraining order is set for 11am Thursday at the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston.
The students -- Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa -- would like to resolve this dispute amicably with the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA). However, it has been hard to find an amicable resolution when the students are the subjects of a vigorous lawsuit and under the restrictions of a temporary restraining order. This remains true even though the MBTA filed a motion earlier this week to modify the restraining order to only prohibit disclosure of "non-public" information. read more »
Quick Start to “Quiet” Month - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
August is traditionally a slow time in D.C., with Congress out of session and most policymakers looking to escape town for some vacation. But the early part of the month has already seen some significant developments for Internet policy.
First, on August 1, the FCC voted 3-2 to adopt a controversial enforcement action against Comcast for interfering with BitTorrent traffic. As I noted in July, CDT has reservations about the legal basis for the FCC’s assertion of authority to engage in such enforcement. But the kind of tactics Comcast was using pose a real threat to the openness of the Internet, and the FCC’s decision marks the first time the government has stepped in to impose some concrete limits. It’s too early to judge the full impact — in part because the agency has not yet released the actual text of the order — but clearly this is a landmark development in the public debate over Internet neutrality and network management.
Second, on August 4, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important decision in the case involving Cablevision’s proposed “remote storage” digital video recorder (DVR). CDT helped organize an amicus brief in the case back in 2007, because the lower court ruling that the DVR would infringe copyright threatened to cast a major cloud of copyright risk over services that provide data storage remotely.
Fortunately, the Appeals Court strongly rejected the lower court’s flawed reasoning, which dangerously blurred the line between direct and secondary liability read more »
EFF Battles Dangerous Attempts to Circumvent Electronic Privacy Law - Via Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Email and Cell Phone Privacy Threatened in Two Separate Court Cases
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in two key electronic privacy cases that threaten to expand the government's spying authority.
In the first case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), EFF filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that federal wiretapping law protects emails from unauthorized interception while they are temporarily stored on the email servers that transmit them. This case was brought against the MPAA by the owners and operators of TorrentSpy read more »
Cablevision Scores Copyright Victory Against Hollywood - Via Threat Level:
A federal appeals court on Monday lifted an injunction against Cablevision Systems that blocked it from offering a recording service that stored programming on the cable company's own servers instead of on an viewers' in-house recording devices.
Hollywood and television programmers alleged Cablevision’s plan would directly infringe their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works. read more »
Air Force cracks software, carpet bombs DMCA - Via Ars Technica :
Last week, a US Court of Appeals upheld a ruling on software piracy. The organization doing the piracy, however, happened to be a branch of the US government, and the decision highlights the significant limits to the application of copyright law to the government charged with enforcing it. Most significantly, perhaps, the court found that because the DMCA is written in a way that targets individual infringers, the government cannot be liable for claims made under the statute.
[...]
Although Davenport did his development on a personal system at home, he began to bring beta versions of his code in for testing, and eventually started distributing his improved system within his unit, giving the software a timed expiration. A demonstration to higher-ups led to a recommendation for his immediate promotion, but that was followed by demands that the code for his software be turned over to the USAF. read more »
Judge Hints at Mistrial in RIAA v. Jammie Thomas - Via Threat Level:
DULUTH, Minnesota -- The federal judge who presided over the nation's only peer-to-peer copyright-infringement trial announced from the bench here Monday that he is likely to declare a mistrial.
"Certainly, I have sent a signal to both sides of where I'm headed," U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said during a 70-minute hearing in which lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America and defendant Jammie Thomas sparred over whether a jury verdict against Thomas should be overturned.
At issue is whether the RIAA needs to prove that copyrighted music offered by a defendant on a peer-to-peer network was actually downloaded by anyone. During Thomas' trial last October, Davis, on the RIAA's recommendation, instructed (.pdf) the jury that no such proof was necessary; if Thomas had the music in her Kazaa shared folder, where it could be downloaded, she could be found liable "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown." read more »
Appeals Court Reverses "Remote DVR" Decision - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed a lower court decision that, as CDT and a number of others argued in a 2007 amicus brief, had the potential to chill innovation in products that use the Internet to provide storage and computing functions from remote locations. The lower court ruling had blocked Cablevision from rolling out a digital video recorder (DVR) system that stores recorded television programs on remote servers instead of in set top devices in the customers' homes. CDT applauds today's decision, which finds that providing such a remote DVR does not constitute direct copyright infringement. CDT also welcomes the court's finding that transitory data held in buffers for a mere 1.2 seconds do not constitute "copies" for purposes of the Copyright Act.
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
Arguments in Jammie Thomas RIAA Case Starting Soon - Via Threat Level:
DULUTH, Minnesota – Threat Level is here outside U.S. District Judge Michael Davis' courtroom ahead of a scheduled 10 a.m. central time hearing in the Jammie Thomas file sharing case, the nation's first such case to go to trial.
Ten months ago to the day, a federal jury here dinged the Minnesota woman $222,000 for making 24 copyrighted songs available on the Kazaa network. But Davis, on his own motion, called the Recording Industry Association of America and lawyers for Thomas back here to his courtroom for Monday's hearing. read more »
RIAA Gets Nervous, Brings In Big Gun - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."
RIAA's Lawsuit Strategy in the Balance at Jammie Thomas Hearing Monday - Via Threat Level:
A federal judge on Monday will consider reversing the nation's first and only federal jury verdict against a Kazaa user for distributing copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network without the labels' authorization.
The outcome is likely to have wide-ranging implications in the Recording Industry Association of America's file-sharing litigation campaign –- 20,000 lawsuits and counting. Most cases have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars and had never broached the topic of whether the RIAA must prove copyright violations.
The RIAA claims that infringement on peer-to-peer networks is implied, and that it shouldn't have to provide proof -- because it's impossible. read more »
SCOTUS To Hear Small ISPs' Case Against AT&T - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
snydeq writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an antitrust case that alleges AT&T squeezed out small ISPs by charging too much for wholesale access to its phone network. The case, originally brought to US District Court in 2003, had been appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But AT&T requested the case be heard by the Supreme Court on the grounds that prior conflicting appeals court decisions in this area should be resolved at that level. As part of the case, the Supreme Court will likely also ascertain whether AT&T could be held to violate antitrust law without setting its retail prices below its own cost."
EFF Urges Judge to Grant New Trial for Jammie Thomas - Via EFF.org Updates:
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of consumer and industry groups have asked a judge to grant a new trial to Jammie Thomas, who was hit with a $222,000 judgment in a file-sharing lawsuit based in part on the recording industry's bogus "making available" theory.
Thomas' trial and the staggering financial penalty made headlines around the world. In the case, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sought to hold Thomas liable for unauthorized distribution of digital music over the Internet without having to prove that anyone actually downloaded songs from her. The RIAA argued that simply making the songs available in a shared folder on her computer was enough to impose penalties, and a jury found Thomas liable for $220,000 in October of 2007.
But earlier this year, the judge in the case said he was concerned that he might have made a mistake when he followed the RIAA's reasoning in his jury instructions and asked for more briefing on whether Thomas deserved a new trial. In an amicus brief filed today, EFF argues that the RIAA cannot take shortcuts when it takes music fans to court. read more »
Law Profs File Friend-of-Court Brief Against RIAA - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A group of 10 copyright law professors has filed an amicus curiae ('friend of the court') brief on the side of the defendant in Capitol v. Thomas, agreeing with the judge's recent decision that the $222,000 verdict won by the RIAA appears to be tainted by a 'manifest error of law.' The clear and well-written 14-page brief (PDF) argues that the 'making available' jury instruction, which the RIAA had requested and the judge ultimately accepted, was in fact a 'manifest error of law,' making the point, among others, that an interpretation of a statute should begin with the words of the statute. My only criticism of the brief is that it overstates the authorities relied on by the RIAA, citing cases which never decided the 'making available' issue as cases which had decided it in the RIAA's favor." ---
As it turns out, the MPAA, close ally to the RIAA, has come forth with a more controversial view. They suggest that proof of actual distribution shouldn't be required. From their brief (PDF): "Mandating that proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances."
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Google
Yahoo
Technorati