Whenever I visit, my grandmother always takes some time to ask me for help with various electronic gadgets around her home in southern Arizona.  And, likewise, I’m always eager to help her by checking the house for problems that might be obvious to me but not-so-obvious to her.  This time she threw a curveball at me: she decided to buy herself a new computer and wanted me to help her get started with it.

She certainly didn’t act a moment too soon.  Her old computer was equipped with an aging Pentium III processor that could barely run Windows XP adequately.  Over a hundred “Windows Updates” later and with new software like Internet Explorer 7 and the latest versions of her virus-checking software and some “utilities” suite, that computer’s performance was absolutely abysmal.  To replace it, my grandmother chose an Acer machine that she found at the local Costco that appeared to have impressive hardware specs, especially considering its price.  For $569, Costco sold her a computer with a dual-core AMD 64-bit processor clocked at 2.3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, a fairly generous hard disk, and even threw in a 19″ widescreen flat panel monitor.  Not bad.

I think we both assumed that “help her get started” meant that I would assemble the new computer for her, configure it for internet and email access, transfer some files from her old computer, and then spend some time patiently answering her questions about how to use it to accomplish certain tasks.

Before you start laughing, understand that we were both sort of naïve.  The last three computers that I’ve purchased for my own personal use have been Apple Macs.  Macs aren’t cheap, but they ship pre-loaded with tons of high quality “full version” software like iPhoto, iDVD, iChat, and iCal that makes them ready-to-use right out of the box.  I’ve also had a two company notebook PCs issued to me by my last two jobs, but both of those were also extensively configured for me by an IT professional before I ever got to touch them.  When it comes to opening a new computer, I’m spoiled rotten.  And, as for my grandmother, she hasn’t purchased a new computer since sometime shortly after the birth of Christ.  The Compaq Pentium III that we replaced today was positively ancient.

So, even though I keep very up-to-date with respect to Windows news, and I even dual-boot Windows Vista Ultimate on my MacBook in addition to a desktop, nothing could have prepared me for what I faced when I booted up my grandmother’s new Acer computer for the first time.

The computer ran like molasses.  Mouse-clicks took whole seconds to register.  The Windows desktop was a mess of icons for “Trial”-this and “Demo”-that.  A “McAfee 30-day virus protection BUY NOW!” window popped up at twice during the first few minutes the computer was powered on.  The system tray was filled with littered with the icons of a backup application, a trial version Office 2007, and something called “Acer GameZone,” each with its own respective “bubble” begging me to click it and learn about its offer.  The top of the screen was occupied by an always-on-top “Acer Empower” windowpane application that could not be hidden or quit without accessing the Windows Task Manager.  Internet Explorer also had at least two non-standard toolbars, including Yahoo’s annoying one that simply duplicates the functionality of IE7’s built-in search bar.

My grandmother’s brand new computer was truly loaded to the brim with crapware.

I can’t say that it completely surprised me.  Apple CEO Steve Jobs has often made comments about how, in contrast to many PCs that ship with tons of bundled software that is either of poor quality or that the hardware vendor was simply paid to include, new Macs ship only with “software you’ll actually use,” like the iLife suite and other first-party applications like iTunes and iChat.  And I’ve read reports about how some vendors like Sony actually charge extra fees for computers that ship without crapware.  There’s no question in my mind that Acer was paid to include much, if not all, of this extra software with the computer.

In principle I don’t have a problem with this.  If vendors like Acer want to offer value-priced products like my grandmother’s $569 desktop and keep the price that low by agreeing to bundle third-party software that consumers might not otherwise be inclined to install on their own, they’re absolutely free to do that.  But I also feel that PC vendors should be required to disclose when they do this.  It might affect a consumer’s decision to purchase a computer if she learned that she needs to spend potentially hours uninstalling demos, trials, and redundant toolbars (in addition to re-installing the appropriate non-trialware like the full version of Microsoft Office) before she can actually use the computer productively.  I’m sorry, Acer, but there was absolutely no way I could leave my grandmother with that computer as it came right out of the box; it was simply unusable.

What happened to the days when unboxing a new computer was something to look forward to?  Back in my retail days I was a firm believer that a customer’s opinion of a product is based primarily on her very first experience with it.  I think that consumers should at least be told what they’re getting themselves into.  This is exactly the sort of thing that companies like Acer should care about.  We have a very mixed opinion of Acer right now.  On the one hand, the hardware seems very good for the price and, now that I’ve removed over a dozen applications from it, the software seems adequate too (for a Windows PC of course).  But our out-of-box experience was irreparably marred by what we saw when we first powered on that computer.  Maybe it’s time that some PC vendors learned from Apple’s strategies.  If you ship a computer “clean,” with no stickers to peel off and no crapware to remove, ready to work right out of the box, consumers will love it from the first moment they hold it.  We love that kind of an experience.  It makes us feel like we just purchased something wonderful, and when you keep offering it, we’ll keep coming back to you for it over and over again.

The plaintiff in this case is the manager of an open source software project whose code was improperly used by the defendant in a commercial software product that did not comply with the plaintiff’s license.  But when the plaintiff brought an action for copyright infringement and moved for a preliminary injunction, the defendant argued that by releasing his code under an open source license the plaintiff waived his right to sue for copyright infringement and could now only sue for breach of contract under the license.  The defendants relied on language from Sun Microsystems v. Microsoft Corp.² that limited the rights of copyright owners to sue licensees for copyright infringement.  The problem here is that the defendant — and the lower court — seems to have misunderstood an important element of how a license works.

When a copyright owner issues a nonexclusive license to a licensee, he grants the licensee the rights to use the work for some purpose.  Here, the plaintiff wanted to ensure that his work remains available to the public in source code form so that anyone can edit and improve upon his work.  That’s why he chose to release the software under an open source license rather than some other kind.  In doing this, the plaintiff limited the scope of the license he granted the defendant as an end-user, and the defendant exceeded that scope.  Legally, this means that by using the plaintiff’s code in a way that was repugnant to the open source license, the defendant’s use was not a licensed use at all.

Consequently, the central issue in this case was whether the relevant requirements in the license were conditions for the license to be valid or merely covenants to which the receiver of source code contractually agreed.  A breach of a condition points toward copyright infringement liability because conditional language defines the scope of a contract.  On the other hand, promissory language merely serves to create covenants that are actionable only in contract law.³  Luckily for the plaintiff, the appellate court seems to have had an easy time finding that the relevant language in the license was conditional in nature.  Provisions such as “the intent of this document is to state the conditions under which [the program] may be copied” and that rights are granted “provided that” certain conditions are met weighed heavily in favor of the plaintiff in this case.  This should serve as an important reminder to anyone drafting a license agreement who wants to preserve his client’s ability to sue for copyright infringement.

Practical matters aside, one of the best things about this case is that the court reaffirmed that “copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material.”  All too often people seem to confuse “open source” with “public domain” when in fact they are very different.  In fact, open source relies heavily upon copyright law to exact its restrictions.  The peculiar thing about open source is that, while traditional software uses copyright as an offensive tool to thwart pirates, the copyleft movement uses the same body of law as a defensive shield to ensure that its work remains freely available and modifiable.

This weblog is an informational resource only. It is not designed to offer legal advice.

1. Full text available at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf.
2. 188 F.3d 1115 (9th Cir. 1999).
3. Graham v. James, 144 F.3d 229, 236-37 (2d Cir. 1998).

1. It’s important to understand that I’m not referring to software that is merely “free as in beer” meaning that it is given away without cost, but specifically software that is “open” in that its source code may be used, studied, and modified without restrictions.  Another term for this is “free, libre, and open-source software” or “FLOSS.”

Except that this time, the last step didn’t happen.

DEF CON is an annual computer security convention where experts gather to hear about the latest in computer and hacking-related topics.  This year’s convention was held this past weekend at the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.  Three MIT students prepared a presentation for this conference in which they would have discussed the the “vulnerabilities in magnetic stripe and RFID card payment systems implemented by many urban transit systems.”  The scheduled presentation was the result of the students’ research project, conducted under the auspices of a renowned MIT computer science professor.  All was well until the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) filed suit in federal court to enjoin¹ the students from speaking at DEF CON because the disclosure of their research could compromise the MBTA ticketing system.  A federal judge, apparently agreeing that the students should not be permitted to speak, issued a temporary restraining order² that prohibited the students from presenting at the conference.

It’s not hard to see why the MBTA would want to shut these researchers down.  Their work, if disclosed to the public, would severely undermine the security of the card systems that the MBTA and other transit authorities have invested heavily in.  But the problem here is that, in agreeing with the plaintiff in this case, Judge Douglas P. Woodlock imposed a prior restraint on the students, which is generally unconstitutional except in extreme circumstances.  A prior restraint occurs when the government somehow prohibits someone from speaking before the actual speech occurs. It is a much stronger restraint on speech than censorship, and therefore as a matter of public policy it is close to taboo because of the fear of chilling effects.  Courts have traditionally held that prior restraints are unconstitutional except in extremely limited circumstances such as national security issues.³ Later cases clarified that “any prior restraint on expression comes . . . with a ‘heavy presumption’ against its constitutional validity”⁴ and suggested that even the “national security” exception requires some grave and irreparable imminent danger.⁵

When we apply these prior restraint standards to MBTA’s case, the results aren’t pretty.  The MBTA relies primarily on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,⁶ a law designed to criminalize unauthorized access and damage to computer systems, and the issue here is whether the danger of any criminal activity resulting from the students’ speech would have been sufficient to maintain a valid prior restraint.  The relevant case law points strongly toward there being a requirement of some imminent danger.  In the absolute worst case scenario here, if these students were allowed to present their research and a few evil-doers used the research to get free rides on the Massachusetts public transit system, the damage done would be a few subway fares.  Taken to an extreme, it could mean the premature obsolescence of the MBTA’s RFID card system.  While obviously not a desirable outcome, this still clearly doesn’t threaten national security.  For this reason, this prior restraint doesn’t seem to pass muster.

If you follow technology law, you might be drawing a parallel to the DeCSS case,⁷ in which the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a defendant could be enjoined from releasing a computer program that makes it possible to copy DVD movies in violation of the relevant provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.⁸  But this case is easily distinguishable.  In the DeCSS case, the appellate judges skirted around the free speech issue by contending that computer programs have both “speech and non-speech” features, and that the injunction only targeted the “non-speech” ones.  That argument might fly for regulating computer programs, but I don’t think it’s possible to argue that a speech at an academic conference has any significant “non-speech” qualities that could be exempt from First Amendment protection.

It seems clear to me that the temporary restraining order issued in this case was an unconstitutional prior restraint.  However, I don’t place all of the blame here on Judge Woodlock.  There was a right and a wrong way for the MBTA to handle this situation.  The right way was to listen to (or read a transcript of) the students’ research into the inherent vulnerabilities of magnetic and RFID systems and to modify their systems to be more robust.  The wrong way was to silence public discourse on the subject and to continue pretending that their system is a good one.

Unfortunately, the MBTA chose the wrong course of action, and –worse — a federal judge let them get away with it.

This weblog is an informational resource only. It is not designed to offer legal advice.

1. An injunction is a judicial decree that orders a party to refrain from taking some action.  ”Enjoin” is the verb form of this term.
2. A TRO is an injunction that is issued for a short term before an issue is actually decided on the merits.  A judge typically uses this only when it is necessary to avoid some imminent harm to the moving party and the moving party appears likely to prevail on the merits.
3. Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
4. Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976), relying on Carroll v. Princess Anne, 393 U.S. 175 (1968) and Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963).
5. New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), popularly known as “The Pentagon Papers Case,” striking down a prior restraint by the Nixon administration that purported to rely on the national security exception.
6. 18 U.S.C. § 1030.
7. Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001).
8. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2).

Monster Cable Products Inc., a maker of audio/visual cables, recently sent a cease and desist letter to a much smaller company called Blue Jeans Cables.  Monster claims that Blue Jeans’ products infringe several of Monster’s design patents.

I’m not going to bother with legal commentary or any further explanation on this one because, as it turns out, the president of Blue Jeans happens to be an attorney with over two decades of litigation experience.  Audioholics reports that he responded with a rather pointed letter.  Here are the last few paragraphs of it:

            I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable’s modus operandi in these matters.  I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

            After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues.  My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle.  In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table.  I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word.  If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds.  As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

            I say this because my observation has been that Monster Cable typically operates in a hit-and-run fashion.  Your client threatens litigation, expecting the victim to panic and plead for mercy; and what follows is a quickie negotiation session that ends with payment and a licensing agreement.  Your client then uses this collection of licensing agreements to convince others under similar threat to accede to its demands.  Let me be clear about this: there are only two ways for you to get anything out of me.  You will either need to (1) convince me that I have infringed, or (2) obtain a final judgment to that effect from a court of competent jurisdiction.  It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind.  If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court’s attention upon the merits of your claims–or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims–from start to finish.  Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

          I will also point out to you that if you do choose to undertake litigation, your “upside” is tremendously limited.  If you somehow managed, despite the formidable obstacles in your way, to obtain a finding of infringement, and if you were successful at recovering a large licensing fee–say, ten cents per connector–as the measure of damages, your recovery to date would not reach four figures.  On the downside, I will advance defenses which, if successful, will substantially undermine your future efforts to use these patents and marks to threaten others with these types of actions; as you are of course aware, it is easier today for your competitors to use collateral estoppel offensively than it ever has been before.  Also, there is little doubt that making baseless claims of trade dress infringement and design patent infringement is an improper business tactic, which can give rise to unfair competition claims, and for a company of Monster’s size, potential antitrust violations with treble damages and attorneys’ fees.

            I look forward to receiving the information requested and will review it promptly as soon as it is received.

                                                            Sincerely,

                                                            Kurt Denke

Wonderful.  Absolutely wonderful.

• A company named Psystar made headlines yesterday by offering to sell low-cost computers that are pre-loaded with the retail version of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” the next-generation operating system that Apple includes on new Macs and sells at retail as an upgrade for other Macs.  The problem is that Leopard’s EULA specifically forbids installing it on non-Apple hardware.  Now Psystar is threatening to challenge the enforceability of Leopard’s EULA if Apple mounts a legal action.  Probably a bad idea.
• Zango v. Kapersky: A software vendor is upset with the developer of an anti-spyware app that classified its product as malware.
• Elektra v. Barker: More on whether “making available” a copyrighted file constitutes infringement.

As Kelly illustrated, web pages are absolutely fair game for copyright infringement actions when they contain infringing materials.  Take a closer look at this very post as it appears in your computer’s web browser.  There are a few small graphics here and there such as the small “Linkedin” icon to the right, but the vast majority of this page is text.  As the author of the substance of this text–the “words” of it–I own the copyright to it and, by publishing it on this blog, I’m granting you a license to download, read, and use it under certain license terms that are outlined in the Creative Commons License that I’ve indicated at the bottom of the page.  But how about the “design” of the words?  I don’t own the copyright to the typography or font.  I certainly don’t have a right to distribute the font, and I’m certainly not authorized to convey any rights to you in that regard.  Luckily, thanks to the basic design of HTML and the Web, this has traditionally never been a problem.  No web page actually contains or distributes a copy of a font.  Web pages instead rely on tags written into the HTML which simply tell the receiving party’s computer’s web browser (in this case your web browser) which font or fonts to use for rendering the web page’s text.

So, for example, if I want the text of this post to display in the font called “Helvetica,” I insert a tag that tells your web browser to display that text in “Helvetica” and rely on your computer already having that font and using it to display the text.  If for some reason your computer does not have that font, your web browser will probably substitute the typeface with some other one, perhaps “Times New Roman.”  There’s no potential for copyright infringement here because the web standards in place simply don’t provide a mechanism for the distribution of a font; we’re merely using ones that you (the viewer) already have.

As you can imagine, this results in a frustrating situation for many web designers.  The inability to “push” fonts to visitors’ computers means that web designers are typically limited to a very small selection of “web-safe fonts,” or typefaces that are likely to be installed by default on wide variety of computers and operating systems.  Apple and others in the software business have recently been promoting a new standard for the web called CSS Level 3 (or “CSS3″) which provides, among many other things, a way for web designers to easily embed a copy of a font into a web page.  In theory, this would mean that a web designer could use any font he likes in his designs instead of being limited to only a handful of “web-safe” fonts.  The latest version of Safari, Apple’s freeware web browser application for Windows and Mac OS X, is among the first to support CSS3 and Apple has begun promoting this.  Specifically, the Safari website contains the following text as of this writing:

With CSS3 web fonts in Safari 3.1, web designers can go beyond web-safe fonts and use any font they want to create stunning new websites using standards-based technology. Safari automatically recognizes websites that use custom fonts and downloads them as they’re needed.

Typography designers are understandably disturbed by this sort of marketing because it could give some web designers the mistaken impression that it’s permissible to distribute copies of a font without authorization from the owner of the copyright in that font.  This sort of marketing language bears a scary resemblance to the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in MGM v. Grokster, in which the Court unanimously declared that one who “actively induces” copyright infringement is secondarily liable for that infringement.  I don’t think it would be a stretch to call Apple’s “use any font they want to create stunning new websites” text an “active inducement” of that infringing activity.

Of course, there are obvious differences between the Grokster application and Safari.  Grokster was designed specifically to attract former users of Napster’s peer-to-peer network following that service’s annihilation, for the same purpose as Napster.  The Safari application is merely a cutting-edge web browser.  Indeed, Safari itself doesn’t provide for file distribution at all; it only provides a way to download information that has been posted.  There’s also a weak argument that Apple’s Safari website is aimed at end-users (communicating what they can expect from the application) and not web designers (telling them what they should do).  But, for the purposes of secondary liability, none of this matters.  At the end of the day, Apple’s Safari website is actively telling visitors that web designers can distribute any fonts they want for users to download through CSS3, and this sort of marketing language is dangerous.  There’s nothing wrong with offering CSS3 compatibility and advertising that fact, but in a post-Grokster world, Apple and other software companies with cutting-edge technology need to be more careful about publishing information that seems to promote use without regard to infringement.

Disclaimer: This weblog is an informational resource only. It is not designed to offer legal advice.

Update: I remembered this morning that PDFs can also include copies of the fonts used therein, depending on the settings of the software used to make them.  Some PDF creation software, like the one built into Mac OS X, seems to embed font files for every font used in a document.  Unless the PDF format provides some way to prevent end-users from accessing and using embedded fonts, this poses the same question as CSS3.

• Elektra v. Barker and London-Sire v. Doe:  Can merely “making available” a file on a P2P network constitute copyright infringement, or does infringement require that a plaintiff prove that the file was actually downloaded by a third party?  Maybe not.  Coincidentally, I’m currently working on a seminar paper on this very topic.
• Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC.:  Roommates.com was denied § 230 immunity by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Eric Goldman comments on his blog.
  
• Perfect 10 v. Visa:  This is a secondary liability suit in which a copyright owner unsuccessfully sought damages from a group of credit card companies that process transactions for infringers overseas.  On appeal, the plaintiff has now been joined with an amicus brief filed by the MPAA, RIAA, and others, as well as another amicus brief filed by the an organization that polices with counterfeit apparel and sneakers.  I’ll comment on this sometime soon once I’ve had an opportunity to read the briefs.
• A class-action was settled by Apple last week after some consumers complained that the flat panel displays on their Apple notebook computers don’t display as many colors as they should, leading to inferior image quality.  This week, an identical suit was filed complaining that Apple’s “iMac” line of all-in-one desktop computers have the same problem.  Apple might settle again simply to avoid negative press, but the truth here is that all flat panel displays from all manufacturers have this issue.  No flat panel display can mimic every color that the human eye can see, so they all fake it using a technique called dithering.

Trademark law is intended to protect the public from confusion in the marketplace while protecting merchants who have spent time, energy, and money in presenting a product to the public.  A typical action for trademark infringement would require that there be some competition between the owner of the mark (here Deutche Telekom) and the using party, and–most importantly–some likelihood of confusion, mistake, or deception of consumers.  But here, T-Mobile and the Engadget blogs are not in competition with one another.  Each company provides very different products and services.  There’s also virtually no chance that a consumer could ever be confused about whether an Engadget blog was a service of T-Mobile, or vice versa.  Trademark infringement protects a trademark owner from having his or her mark used in connection with competing goods and services.  It does not, however, prohibit another from using that mark in connection with non-competing goods and services.  So long as the trademark is used in connection with goods and services that do not compete with the goods and services of the trademark owner, the trademark has not been infringed.  But Deutche Telekom is not claiming “infringement” here; they’re claiming “dilution.”  ”Dilution” under the U.S. Federal Trademark Dilution Act is a separate action that is available to provide protection even absent infringement, in response to trademark blurring and tarnishment of famous marks.

Let’s assume that the T-Mobile mark is sufficiently famous to qualify for protection under the Trademark Dilution Act.  To maintain a cause of action for trademark dilution, Deutche Telekom would need to show that Engadget Mobile’s use of the color magenta blurs the distinctiveness or tarnishes the trademark it holds.  The logo of the T-Mobile brand includes a solid magenta “T” with three horizontal gray squares; the logo of the Engadget Mobile blog includes the word “mobile” in graded magenta with three magenta rectangles in a vertical line that have been styled to mimic the signal bars on a wireless phone’s display.  ”Blurring,” the most basic kind of dilution, occurs when the use of a mark is “blurred” from association with only one market (here cellular phone services) to signify other products in other markets (here a weblog about mobile phones).  In Toys R Us v. Feinberg, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York clarified that “blurring” occurs when a use of a mark lessens the capacity of a trademark owner’s identify and distinguish their goods or services.  26 F. Supp. 2d 639, 644.  Ergo, the obvious question here is whether the use of the color magenta in a blog about mobile phones would cause any “blurring” of T-Mobile’s mark.  Setting aside any feelings we might have about T-Mobile effectively claiming ownership over a color, does Engadget’s use of that color as an accent on its weblog affect the effectiveness of the magenta accent in T-Mobile’s branding?

Probably not.  The weblog’s use of magenta is not solid and pervasive like T-Mobile’s.  On my notebook computer’s display, it’s not even the same shade of magenta.  It is merely a one-off use of magenta in a logo.  Deutche Telekom might have a case if the Engadget Mobile weblog used design elements like gray squares in horizontal lines, or used magenta pervasively in the same way that T-Mobile’s materials use it, but the use of a similar shade of magenta probably would not be enough because it does not lessen the “punch” that T-Mobile’s magenta branding has on its website, stores, and marketing materials.  Under the controlling authority of Toys R Us and other dilution cases, a court would probably not allow Deutche Telekom to limit the ability of a non-competing website to use the color magenta in a way that does not mimic T-Mobile’s use of the color as a pervasive accent throughout its branding.

Disclaimer: This weblog is an informational resource only. It is not designed to offer legal advice.