April 2001 Archives | LawBlog.com

April 30, 2001

CNET News.com: Pirated Office XP copies flood Malaysia

April 26, 2001

Federal Trade Commission press release: FTC supports legislation to limit junk e-mail (also see Spam Laws)

The FTC’s position may sound reasonable, but in fact the Commission favors a horrid out-out bill, S. 630. The FTC praises that bill in its testimony, saying that it “could make the use of commercial email a more effective marketing tool, because consumers likely would be more willing to trust the contents of a piece of UCE if they know the source of the email.”

The FTC has been studying the spam issue for several years; you’d think that by now they would have figured out that the problem doesn’t have anything to do with the content of communications. An effective spam law could help solve the spam problem, but legislating an opt-out rule would only make it much, much worse than it already is.

InternetNews.com: Consumer groups rally to decry spam before Senate meeting

April 24, 2001

Detroit News: Cub Scout mom: Race judges cheated

Scientific American: Publish free or perish: Life scientists are urging publishers to grant free access to archived research articles

April 23, 2001

CNET News.com: Small claims court becomes spam battlefield

April 22, 2001

BBC News: Lying around is ‘good for you’

April 20, 2001

Slashdot: Paper: Technical and Legal Approaches to Spam

Daily Californian (UC-Berkeley): Law students resist faculty appointment

Wired News: Linking records raises risks (also see GAO Report GAO-01-126SP, Record Linkage and Privacy [1.4 MB PDF])

April 19, 2001

CNET News.com: Giving spam the network boot

Bankrate.com: Internet fraud: credit crooks and the new economy

April 18, 2001

Chicago Sun-Times: Sorkin navigates troubled waters (also see Los Angeles Times)

The Onion: Accountants pack Times Square for fiscal new year

Reuters: Bald is bad for discipline, says former referee (a London newspaper reports that soccer referees are more likely to impose penalties on bald or shaven-headed soccer players, apparently because they are perceived as more aggressive)

Ananova: Billy Bass helps train fish eagle to hunt

April 17, 2001

Associated Press: Where did I come from? (Ellis Island officials and the Mormon church offer new database of immigration records, ellisislandrecords.org)

CNET News.com: Broadband fans busted over Gnutella

Declan McCullagh’s politechbot.com: Brown U professors demand crackdown on anonymous “injurious” email

April 16, 2001

Letter to OMB regarding chief privacy counselor (see also politechbot.com)

April 13, 2001

U. of Virginia Cavalier Daily: Exposure to cats may reduce risk of asthma

Reuters: Clowns told to get custard pie insurance

N.Y. Times: Safety of chocolate egg is questioned

April 12, 2001

Privacy.Org: HHS will implement health privacy regulations (also see statement of HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson; HHS HIPAA page; Peter Swire’s home page; and Health Privacy Project)

Wired News: Hate groups will hate these ads

CNET News.com: Electronic smells creator closes shop

Associated Press: Higher ed now controls dot-edu (also see EDUCAUSE press release)

April 10, 2001

MasterCard International: Cease-and-desist letter to rec.humor.funny (apparently MasterCard can’t buy a sense of humor)

April 09, 2001

Purdue University Police: Help identify riot suspects (also see criticism by Prof. Mathieu Deflem; Purdue Exponent editorial)

offshoremp3s.com: Offshore Napster Server Initiative (an effort to establish a Napster server in a jurisdiction beyond the reach of major governments and the RIAA)

Bloomberg: Jurors misstate MP3.com payment