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Did Mark Zuckerberg sign away 84 percent of Facebook?
by Jonathan Strickland | July 23, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, news broke that a man named Paul D. Ceglia claimed to have a signed contract that gave him 84 percent ownership of Facebook. Today, Caroline McCarthy reports on CNET that Facebook says the contract is a forgery. Ceglia’s claim is that he entered into a contract with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 to design the site that evolved into Facebook.
The copyright infringement lawsuit filed by corporate media giant Viacom against video service YouTube has taken a very ugly turn. According to an article I was reading from the BBC, YouTube has accused Viacom of having its marketing partners upload Viacom videos and then contacting YouTube to have them taken down.
Microprocessor manufacturer Intel has been fielding legal complaints against it in Europe and Asia for a while now, but this morning New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against the company for anti-competitive practices.
According to Ashlee Vance’s article in The New York Times, the state claims that Intel has been using its position in the microprocessor marketplace to strong-arm Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) out of the way, which violates both state and national law.
A Twitter user in the United Kingdom has been posting under the name of right-wing political blogger Donal Blaney. Perhaps he or she should’ve picked someone who wasn’t as familiar with the law — since the real Blaney’s a lawyer. His firm delivered what BBC News said is the first court order ever served over Twitter at 7:30 p.m. British Standard Time.
Though I haven’t seen the order, I’m assuming it’s longer than 140 characters. So Griffin Law sent a direct message to the faux Blaney with a link to the full text. The BBC said the order says that the impersonator is breaching Blaney’s copyright, must reveal his or her identity, delete all posts from the account and stop posting as Blaney.
Though delivering a court order over Twitter may seem sort of groundbreaking, the laws in the United Kingdom permit delivery of orders via e-mail or fax.
It appears that there’s a growing call for more accountability on the Internet. Is it possible that the days of going online under an assumed name and taking potshots at other people without fear of any form of retribution are over? Let’s take a look:
John Timmer wrote an article at Ars Technica today about the subject. American courts are wrestling with issues of free speech and how to apply those rights to people speaking out over the Internet. The results have been mixed to this point, Timmer said, but mentions a very recent case being heard in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, in which a person has reported a company to the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) for using pirated software. The company’s lawyers, in turn, are trying to have the person’s identity revealed, because they want to sue him or her for defamation.
Unemployable College Grad Sues Alma Mater
by Charles W. Bryant | August 4, 2009
Just when you think you’ve heard it all. A Bronx woman is suing her alma mater, Monroe College, because she has been unable to secure a job and claims that the career placement office hasn’t done enough to help her find one. Trina Thompson, 27, is trying to recoup the $70,000 she spent on tuition and another $2,000 for her troubles.
Let’s just break the facts in this suit, shall we? Then you all can draw your own conclusions:
According to the BBC, the Swedish courts will hand down a verdict on Friday in the copyright lawsuit filed against the torrent tracking site called The Pirate Bay. But this lawsuit isn’t just about copyright laws — it’s about how the Web functions. Throughout the trial, The Pirate Bay’s defense has been to maintain that the site doesn’t host any material under copyright. The site only tracks torrents, giving the site’s users an easy way to find files and download them. In that sense, The Pirate Bay is really just a specialized search engine.
The torrent file protocol has a bad rap because of piracy but that’s not the main reason torrents exist. Torrents make it easier to distribute large files across networks. The initial file is called a seed. Computers that contact the server hosting the seed are called peers. As peers begin to download the seed, they make the file available for others to download.
There’s no law that says you have to get along swimmingly with your father. But what if daddy happens to be a nameless sperm donor and his genetic material wasn’t properly screened by the sperm bank?
According to an article on New Scientist, a U.S. judge has ruled that 13-year-old Brittany Donovan, who suffers from fragile-X syndrome, can sue New York’s Idant Laboratories for not screening out the debilitating genetic disorder.
This is essentially a product liability suit — the same as if you bought a car with faulty engineering. Some states (not New York) offer blood shield laws to protect companies like blood banks from lawsuit.
If successful, how far will this legal precedent reach? While I think everyone can agree on the necessity for sperm banks to properly screen donors for conditions such as fragile-X, could we one day see suits over mild depression or male pattern baldness?
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