Posts tagged Court
French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free
Feb 1st
Google faces a $660,000 fine after a French court ruling that the company is abusing its dominant position in mapping by making Google Maps free. According to The Economic Times, the French commercial court “upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google…
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Supreme Court Offers No Help To Schools Looking To Clarify Online Speech Policies
Jan 18th
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a case this term that could have clarified the authority schools have over students and their use of social media when they’re not in school.
On Tuesday, the court said it would not hear appeals on the suspension of a West Virginia student who ridiculed another student or a lower court’s decision to overturn a Pennsylvania school district’s suspension of a student who posted comments about her principal online. Officials on both sides of the issue saw the high court’s decision as a setback, as it means it will be at least another year before the Supreme Court offers clarity to an issue that has divided lower courts.
A ruling by the Supreme Court on any of the cases it was asked to hear may have also updated a Vietnam-era free speech ruling that has become dated in the Internet age. The 1969 ruling applied to on-campus speech that would “materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.” More recently, however, the ruling in Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District has been interpreted to give schools authority over comments students make on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social networks, regardless of the student’s physical location when the comments are posted.
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Lower courts have been ambiguous at best on trying to settle rules on what online speech schools can and cannot regulate. The 2011 case the Supreme Court was asked to review comes from the 3rd District Court of Appeals and involves a decision in favor of a student who had been suspended by a Pennsylvania School District for posting critical comments about her principal online.
One year earlier, however, the same court upheld the suspension of a student who had created a fake MySpace profile insinuating a principal was a sex addict and a pedophile.
Both the lower court and the National School Boards Association have asked the court to review the case, and consider abandoning Tinker, which is no longer relevant in the Internet age.
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Lamar Smith Countermoves, Will Remove Court Order Provision from SOPA
Jan 13th
In a move that could enable some form of anti-piracy legislation to pass this Congressional term, Rep. Lamar Smith (R – Texas), principal author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), said this evening he will make adjustments in the bill to coincide with changes advised by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D – Vt.) yesterday to the Senate counterpart bill, PROTECT-IP.
In his statement, Rep. Smith says the remaining portion of SOPA, still due for a vote on January 24, will still contain a provision that compels (though not directly forces) payment network providers to act in good faith to refrain from handling payment transactions for IP trafficking sites.
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The complete statement from Rep. Smith’s office is as follows:
After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers.Current law protects the rights of American innovators by prohibiting the illegal sale and distribution of their products by domestic websites. But there is no equivalent protection for American companies from foreign online criminals who steal and sell American goods to consumers around the world. Congress must address the widespread problem of online theft of America’s technology and products from foreign thieves.
The Stop Online Piracy Act cuts off the flow of revenue to these foreign illegal sites and makes it harder for online criminals to market and distribute illegal products to U.S. consumers. The bill maintains provisions that ‘follow the money’ and cut off the main sources of revenue to foreign illegal sites. It also continues to protect consumers from being directed to foreign illegal websites by search engines. And it provides innovators with a way to bring claims against foreign illegal sites that steal and sell their technology, products and intellectual property.
American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60 percent of U.S. exports. Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while some of America’s most profitable and productive industries are under attack. The Stop Online Piracy Act protects the products and jobs that rightly belong to American innovators.
The way the Senate’s PROTECT-IP act is currently structured, payment network providers would be granted immunity from prosecution for suspending service to the owner of a domain name listed in a court order. Sen. Leahy’s withdrawal of the court order provision yesterday makes it difficult to contemplate how this section of the Senate bill would be resolved.
By contrast, the way the House’s SOPA is structured, payment network providers would be granted immunity from prosecution simply for suspending service to “a foreign infringing site or… an Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” SOPA does not specify whether a court must first make that determination. At any rate, after Rep. Smith removes the court order provision, the remaining immunity grant provision could conceivably stand without significant revision.
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Leahy Recommends Setting Aside Controversial PIPA Court Provision
Jan 12th
In a statement from his office Thursday evening, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D – Vt.), who co-authored the current version of the PROTECT-IP bill (also known as PIPA) along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R – Utah), said he is now willing to set aside the most controversial aspect of the anti-piracy legislation currently under discussion. Sen. Leahy now says that the provision that would empower courts to order service providers to block access to foreign sites under investigation for suspected illicit trafficking, should be set aside for further study.
Leahy credits his Vermont constituents for giving him insight into the issue, as well as service providers, whom he admits stand in opposition to the provision.
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The bill is still scheduled for a floor vote January 24, though the statement from Leahy’s office this evening indicates that the legislation under consideration may have the controversial court order provision stricken.
The section with Leahy will recommend be set aside grants the court the ability to issue an injunction or restraining order against a domain name. In the act of carrying out that injunction, DNS servers may be issued court orders compelling them to “take the least burdensome technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent the domain name described in the order from resolving to that domain name’s Internet protocol address,” granted that such measures would not force them to redesign their networks.
The House version of the legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, remains under consideration and, as of now, continues to contain the counterpart to the court order provision. Earlier today, its principal author, Rep. Lamar Smith (R – Texas), vowed to press forward with the SOPA legislation as it stood, but that statement was made prior to Leahy’s.
Any final legislation passing Congress would need to be a reconciliation between both bills, which may now be more difficult if SOPA were to pass the House with the court order provision intact.
The senator broke the news of his decision in a response to a question on Vermont Public Radio this morning.
According to VPR reporter Patti Daniels, Leahy said, “I’m going to set aside these Domain Name provisions. That we’ll hold back on, because I’ve listened to some of the concerns on those. I think there [are] easy answers to it, but let’s set it aside, let’s spend a year or so studying that part.”
The full text of Sen. Leahy’s statement follows:
The PROTECT IP Act provides new tools for law enforcement to combat rogue websites that operate outside our borders but target American consumers with stolen American property and counterfeits. One of those tools enables law enforcement to secure a court order asking Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to use the Domain Name System to prevent consumer access to foreign rogue websites. This provision was drafted in response to concerns that law enforcement has remedies it can take against domestic websites, but does not currently have the power to stop foreign rogue websites. I worked closely with the ISPs in drafting this provision to ensure they were comfortable with how it would work, and I appreciate their support.The process in drafting the legislation has always been an open one in which we have heard from all third parties, and have worked to address as many outstanding concerns as possible. It is through this process that we have gained the support of the majority of third parties who will be asked to take action under the legislation, as well as a bipartisan group of 40 cosponsors in the Senate.
It is also through this process that I and the bill’s cosponsors have continued to hear concerns about the Domain Name provision from engineers, human rights groups, and others. I have also heard from a number of Vermonters on this important issue. I remain confident that the ISPs – including the cable industry, which is the largest association of ISPs – would not support the legislation if its enactment created the problems that opponents of this provision suggest. Nonetheless, this is in fact a highly technical issue, and I am prepared to recommend we give it more study before implementing it.
As I prepare a managers’ amendment to be considered during the floor debate, I will therefore propose that the positive and negative effects of this provision be studied before implemented, so that we can focus on the other important provisions in this bill, which are essential to protecting American intellectual property online, and the American jobs that are tied to intellectual property. I regret that law enforcement will not have this remedy available to it when websites operating overseas are stealing American property, threatening the safety and security of American consumers. However, the bill remains a strong and balanced approach to protecting intellectual property through a no-fault, no-liability system that leverages the most relevant players in the Internet ecosystem.
In a response this evening, Sen. Ron Wyden (D – Ore.), the co-author of the competing Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, vowed he would continue his plan to block whatever parts of the Leahy-Hatch bill would try to reach the floor for a vote.
“It is welcome news that proponents of PIPA are finally accepting that it contains major flaws,” stated Sen. Wyden. “Unfortunately, this announcement to study the DNS provision does not eliminate the clearly identified threat to net security contained within this bill. Beyond the DNS provisions, the bill still establishes a censorship regime that threatens speech, innovation, and the future of the American economy. I remain firm in my intent to block consideration of the PIPA bill until these issues are addressed and I am committed to doing all I can to ensure that whatever legislative course is taken, that it is fully transparent, fully understood and fully considered by all those who value the Internet.”
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Free Speech Battle In India: Google, Facebook Summoned By Court Over “Inflammatory Images”
Dec 23rd
According to a report from Chinese news agency Xinhua, a judge in India has ordered a broad range of online companies, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, to “delete ‘inflammatory’ images of religious figures” from their sites. Though not identified in news reports the…
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At it Again: Viacom and Google Back in Court Over YouTube Copyright Issues
Oct 19th
Sixteen months after a federal judge threw out Viacom’s $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google, the two companies are back in court. Specifically, Viacom is asking an appeals court to revisit its case against YouTube, which they say is guilty of a whole lot of deliberate copyright infringement.
The original case was thrown out last year when a U.S. District Court judge ruled that YouTube was protected by the “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which essentially argue that site owners are immune from the legal implications of what the site’s users do, such as uploading copyrighted material.
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That YouTube has hosted copyrighted material is not in dispute here. What’s up for debate is whether Google knew about it and whether it is at fault for only acting against copyright infringers when issues were reported. Viacom’s lawyers are hoping to convince the three-judge panel to open up an appeal of the case so they can make the argument that Google and YouTube were aware of, and thus complicit in, the infringements.
Google’s Anti-Piracy Measures
Google is well aware of the copyright issues raised by sites like YouTube and has gone to great measures to try and alleviate the problem, in the hopes of not only avoiding $1 billion lawsuits, but also partnering up with traditional media companies in the future.
Last month, Google touted a series of accomplishments it’s made in the battle against digital piracy. The company says it responds to all DMCA content take-down requests within 24 hours, often much earlier than that. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told an audience of TV executives in Scotland that the average take-down request is fulfilled within four hours.
They’ve also developed a set of tools to help copyright owners more easily make claims of infringement. The company’s Content ID technology is used to automatically check audio and video clips against a large database of copyrighted material to determine if it’s in violation of the law. They’ve even blocked certain piracy-related terms from showing up as auto-suggestions in their search query box.
So What’s the Big Deal?
Despite Google’s recent efforts to assuage copyright concerns, Viacom is arguing that from 2005 to 2008, Google deliberately allowed copyright-infringing material – 63,000 video clips in particular – to be uploaded to YouTube and sit there until complaints were made. Google says there isn’t a single copyright-infringing clip that wasn’t taken down upon request. The judge that heard the original case agreed.
Obviously, Viacom’s legal team doesn’t think the first judgement was legally sound and wants it to be overturned. Even though YouTube isn’t known to be routinely hosting any pirated, Viacom-owned clips these days, the company is hoping to establish a new legal precedent, which would serve as a victory for traditional media companies and copyright owners, who often view the Web and companies like Google as a threat to the way copyright law and intellectual property have worked historically.
The panel of judges haven’t decided whether or not to hear the appeal yet. If they do, Viacom will have its work cut out for it as it tries to convince the court to counteract the prevailing legal precedent over DCMA and safe harbor.
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Friday Roundup: Court Tosses Oracle Award, App Engine Pricing, Fake IDs, Seesmic and More…
Sep 2nd
It’s been a crazy conference week with VMworld and Dreamforce ’11 going on at the same time. News from those shows have been all over ReadWriteWeb’s channels this week, like the VMware vFabric Data Director announcement, and CloudStack going 100% open source.
We also looked at storing Salesforce data locally, and Microsoft’s digs at a certain virtualization vendor over cloud computing.
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Top Stories of the Week
This week, Scott Fulton’s been on fire. He turned in an exceptionally thoughtful piece about the implications of friending things. Says Fulton, “we have to start wondering, at what point will this leveraging of social media for the purposes of data mining and customer engagement drive back the social media revolution, and force millions upon millions of new users to dial down the volume?” Seriously, take the time to read this piece, it’s worth the time.
Also check out SSL Certificates: What’s Left to Trust?, where Fulton looks at the SSL certificates improperly granted by DigiNotar. Must-read material for anyone that depends on SSL, and if you’re reading this site – you almost certainly do.
Along those lines, David Strom looks at the proliferation of fake IDs online. Strom reports that as much as 40% of the accounts registered on some sites were created by spammers.
Good news for SAP this week in the Oracle case, but not so much for AT&T.
Finally, the folks at Seesmic have big plans with Seesmic CRM replacing the desktop.
As usual, there’s much more from the ReadWriteWeb Channels this week that you shouldn’t miss:
- Linux Kernel Host Kernel.org Breached
- Big Question (Answered): What Else is There to Cloud Computing?
- A Big Splash for Enterprise Password Management Tools
- Research: Mobile Ad Inventory Could Swallow All Internet Advertising
- Data.com Is Just a Big Nothing
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Court Tosses $1.3 B Oracle Award, SAP Gets a Second Chance
Sep 1st
The changes in U.S. copyright law over the past three years affect the way damages are assessed. When a party is found guilty of infringement of copyright (which runs deeper than mere violation), the test now is the extent to which the infringed party is less able to license its intellectual property than it had planned back before it was infringed.
In other words, if you weren’t going to sell something in the first place, you can’t claim lost sales. That’s what SAP argued after a jury awarded Oracle a record $1.3 billion, after finding SAP guilty of copyright infringement for tapping into Oracle’s servers for product support data. Today, a federal court judge struck down that verdict, stating it didn’t match the circumstances.
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SAP was the corporate parent of an IT support service called TomorrowNow. Clients of TomorrowNow who had Oracle software counted on that service to provide product support, which they thought included software updates. As it turned out, the jury found, TN had hacked into Oracle’s servers to obtain those updates and provide them to Oracle’s customers – or perhaps some others as well. SAP’s defense had mostly boiled down to stating most or all of the transgressions took place prior to it having acquired TN.
Certainly the loss consisted of Oracle’s intellectual property, but the value of that property, District Court Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton determined, cannot be measured based on how much it might sell for if it wasn’t being sold, or wasn’t going to be sold.
SAP argues that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law that Oracle is not entitled to actual damages for copyright infringement in the form of a hypothetical license, because Oracle did not establish that, but for infringement, it would have licensed the asserted copyrighted works for the use at issue, and because Oracle did not present evidence sufficient to value such a license, with the result that the award was based on undue speculation.
The Copyright Act allows recovery of either statutory damages, or “actual damages suffered by [the copyright owner] as a result of the infringement” plus “any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages.” … Because actual damages must be suffered “as a result of the infringement,” and recoverable profits must “be attributable to the infringement,” … the plaintiff bears the burden of proving the causal connection between the infringement and the monetary remedy sought… Actual damages are generally determined by the loss in the fair market value of the copyright, “measured by the profits lost due to the infringement or the value of the use of the copyrighted work to the infringer.”
The jury was given the option of using a fair market value scale or a lost profits scale for assessing damages, and it chose the former. In earlier testimony, an Oracle expert witness offered the court a “hypothetical example” of a licensing agreement with Oracle’s own rivals – PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JDE. Had such an agreement ever been reached in the real world, it would have been an extraordinary occasion, and perhaps continents would have shifted.
Oracle’s own expert had calculated its loss in terms of potential licensing customers, presenting a figure of $408.7 million. SAP’s expert had argued only $28 million. Now, Judge Hamilton has ordered that the entire matter be retried, unless Oracle agrees to a settlement offer now of $272 million.
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