Politics and Law

Controversial "paranormalist" Uri Geller has settled a lawsuit claiming he misused copyright law to squelch criticism. But much like Geller's mysticism, the legitimacy of his legal dispute remains rather ambiguous--the terms of the settlement are mostly confidential.

The legal battle began when Brian Sapient, a longtime skeptic of Geller's, used footage from a NOVA documentary to create a 14-minute video on YouTube debunking Geller's powers. Geller's company, Explorogist, sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to YouTube because some of the NOVA material--about 8 seconds--was under copyright owned by Explorogist. YouTube suspended Salient'… Read more

A settlement reached over hidden sexually themed content in the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has been stolen, after a federal judge Wednesday tossed out the deal reached last November between the game maker and plaintiffs' lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram ruled that "each settlement class member's consumer-protection claims are governed by the law of the state where he purchased," so it cannot be settled in a single federal court proceeding. "Accordingly, the court decertifies the settlement class on the grounds that common issues do not predominate over individualized issues."

Kram … Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.

A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)

DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "… Read more

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.

"We need to protect consumers' access, said FCC Chairman Kevin … Read more

Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is drawing fire from economic conservatives over his plan to declare that Comcast violated the law when throttling BitTorrent last year.

The vote is expected at a FCC meeting (PDF) on Friday morning. It promises to be a landmark one: this would be the first time the commission has ruled on a Net neutrality violation. (An earlier one was settled without a formal ruling.)

Martin's intra-party backlash started on Wednesday with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that started with this uncomplimentary paragraph: "Bad personnel decisions have … Read more

A California state judge handed down a surprising and oddly reasoned verdict Thursday: Sprint Nextel's early termination fees for cell phone customers are illegal.

My colleague Maggie Reardon wrote an article about the 38-page ruling, which orders Sprint to pay $18.25 million to California customers who were charged termination fees. Customers charged fees who never paid them get a credit of $54.75 million.

You can imagine how much of this will go to the members of the supposed class that was harmed, and how much to the plaintiff's lawyers. In the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas … Read more

The Bush administration's newly created National Cyber Security Center remains shrouded in secrecy, with officials refusing to release information about its budget, what contractors will run it, and how its mission relates to Internet surveillance.

In correspondence with the U.S. Senate posted on Thursday, the Bush administration said it would not provide that information publicly. An 18-page, partially redacted letter from DHS said that disclosure could affect "the conduct of federal programs, or other programs or operations essential to the interests of our nation."

The censored letter--a nonredacted, "For Official Use Only" version was … Read more

It's been nearly 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, and at least a decade since the first blogs appeared. But until now, publicly traded companies have not been able to use the Web or blogs to meet the Feds' disclosure requirements.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week finally woke up to the fact that the Internet already has become an alternative to the traditional press release, and announced that a company's Web site can qualify for an alternative "channel of distribution."

Companies still must follow certain rules, the details … Read more

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's recent threats of adopting unspecified "legal remedies," potentially including criminal prosecution, against Comcast apparently worked.

Comcast responded this week by saying it signed a memorandum of understanding with Cuomo's office. United Online's NetZero also signed an agreement that deals with Usenet, the pre-Web collection of discussion groups.

Cuomo, a Democrat, is pitching these agreements as a way to reduce the amount of child porn on Usenet. His latest prepared statement: "I commend the companies for working with my office to aggressively eradicate online child pornography and strongly … Read more