Joshua Rand Kagan, Attorney-At-Law

A Few Useful Internet & Tech Law Twitter Feeds

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where users post short updates called “tweets” about whatever is on their minds. I’ve been using Twitter for just over a month now. I’ve found it to be useful not only for keeping up-to-date with friends and associates, but also for getting quick updates about interesting technology law articles from around the Web.

Not surprisingly, three of the most useful of these feeds are maintained by my friend Michael Scott of The Singularity Law Blog, who goes by the handle @LawProf on Twitter. His first feed, @CopyrightLaw, features broad coverage of copyright issues with an emphasis on new media. His second feed, @InternetLaw, provides coverage of Internet Law news scoured from sources like Slashdot, Ars Technica, TechDirt, and many others. One of Michael’s talents here is his ability to filter the news for us, picking out the most interesting and well-written stories to save us time. His third feed is called @PrivacyLaw and it specifically focuses on privacy on the Internet. I follow all three of Michael’s tech law feeds and I find them useful.

In addition to Michael Scott, there are also a few other legal bloggers and pundits who have begun using Twitter to provide occasional insights. Harvard Law Professor and author Jonathan Zittrain has a feed at @zittrain although his updates are somewhat sporadic, and fellow blogger/podcaster Denise Howell has her own feed at @dhowell that can be interesting at times.

Of course, I also have my own feed at @JoshKagan where I post updates regularly.

Do you have a favorite feed that should be on this list? Tell me about it by adding a comment below!

Apple Extends NDA to Include Application Rejection Letters

The Apple rumor sites are reporting that Apple has begun including the following language at the bottom of iPhone App Store rejection letters:

The information contained in this message is under non-disclosure.

I’d love to hear one of Apple’s attorneys explain what the company’s damages would be if a developer were to breach this.

That aside, there’s a bigger problem here: this is bad business sense, no matter how you spin it.

It’s also bad for society.  In stark contrast to Apple’s approach, Google seems to be going in the opposite direction with their new “Android” platform.  The platform is wide-open, so anyone can develop almost anything for it without any limitations.  I think it’s obvious why that’s dangerous.  So, as of today the market has exactly two major choices: Apple’s closed system that’s hostile to developers, and Google’s open system that’s a malware attack just waiting to happen.

I don’t think this can last.

3rd Party iPhone Email App Rejected By Apple. What Next?

Angelo DiNardi writes that he developed an alternative email client for the iPhone called “MailWrangler” only to have it rejected by Apple’s App Store because it “duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion.”

I wonder whether an iPhone-specific version of the Firefox web browser would similarly be rejected because it’s too similar in functionality to the iPhone’s built-in Safari browser.  If so, this reminds me a little (and I mean just a little) of United States v. Microsoft.¹

1. 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000). [↩]

Briefly This Week

Here are some of the issues I’m following this week:

• 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.

Briefly This Week

Here’s a summary of the stories I’ve been following this week:

• 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.