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BUT, while a bill which would allow relatively small amounts of money to be raised through crowdfunding, including through sites such as Kickstarter, was passed by the House of Representatives by a 413-11 vote in November 2011, the narrower Senate version of the bill is languishing in the Senate Banking Committee.
Scott Edward Walker at Forbes: “Crowdfunding Bill Stuck in the Senate”
Background on the House Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act - “The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act and What It Could Mean for Startups” posted by the law firm of Sheppard Mullin at the Venture Law Blog.
Text of House Bill (passed): H.R. 2930: Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act.
Text of Senate Bill (in committee): S. 1791: Democratizing Access to Capital Act of 2011.
Senator Scott Brown, sponsor of the Democratizing Access to Capital Act, testifying in front of the Senate Banking Committee in support of the bill.
See also - Senator John Thune, sponsor of the Senate’s Access to Capital for Job Creators Act, calls on the Senate Banking Committee to move forward on his bill which would eliminate the prohibition on general solicitation and general advertising from Regulation D, Rule 506 offerings, provided all purchasers are accredited investors.
A summary of some of the difficulties that federal prosecutors will encounter in their prosecution of megaupload and its principals by Jennifer Granick, former Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and former Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School where she taught Cyberlaw and Computer Crime Law.
See also at ArsTechnica’s Law & Disorder: “Megaupload case gets weirder with gun charges, flight risks, and an inflatable tank”
At TechPresident.com, Yochai Benkler proposes a post-SOPA/PIPA legislative agenda: “Seven Lessons from SOPA/PIPA/Megauplaod and Four Proposals on Where We Go From Here”
Can the Government Force You to Decrypt your Electronic Device or Hand over Your Password?
Hopefully, at some point, the Supreme Court will weigh in on the question, as lower court decisions conflict on the answer. The result might differ depending on the context (at the U.S. border as a result of a customs search or as a result of a police stop or search which took place within the U.S.), whether the government already knows the laptop contains incriminating evidence, and, perhaps, whether the government requests the password or seeks an order for the owner to decrypt the device (without revealing the password). In the latest case, a federal judge in Colorado, ordered a laptop owner to release the contents of her computer’s encrypted hard drive. The court’s order.
The Verge: ”Decrypting Laptop Doesn’t Count as Self-Incrimination, US Federal Judge Rules”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation: ”Disappointing Ruling in Compelled Laptop Decryption Case”
The EFF’s amicus brief in the case.
Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy - ”Encryption and the Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination:”
“The Court ends up ordering the defendant to decrypt the hard drive, but only because the court made a factual finding that in this specific case, the government already knew the information that could be incriminating — and as a result, was a ‘foregone conclusion’ that dissipated the Fifth Amendment privilege. If I’m reading Fricosu correctly, the Court is not saying that there is no Fifth Amendment privilege against being forced to divulge a password. Rather, the Court is saying that the Fifth Amendment privilege can’t be asserted in a specific case where it is known based on the facts of the case that the computer belongs to the suspect and the suspect knows the password. Because the only incriminating message of being forced to decrypt the password — that the suspect has control over the computer — is already known, it is a ‘foregone conclusion’ and the Fifth Amendment privilege cannot block the government’s application.”
photo © 2012 j.r.mchale
The U.S. Supreme Court for the first time pondered the constitutionality of location tracking technology in the case of U.S. v. Jones. The Court decided yesterday that the government’s attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle (followed by the government’s use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on a long term basis) constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. The emphasis in the majority opinion on the physical placing of the monitoring device on the vehicle and the existence of separate concurring opinions raise questions as to how far this decision really extends - important questions given the increasing prevalence of geolocation tracking.
The Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Jones:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf
”Supreme Court Holds Warrantless GPS Tracking Unconstitutional” at ArsTechnica’s Law & Disorder
”Fourth Amendment Lives? Supreme Court Says GPS Monitoring Is A Search That May Require Warrant” at TechDirt.com
“Reactions to Jones v. United States: The government fared much better than everyone realizes” by Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog.com.
”Why the Jones Supreme Court Ruling on GPS Tracking is Worse than it Sounds” by Rebecca J. Rosen at The Atlantic.
”U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Rule that GPS Installation and Tracking of a Vehicle Constitutes a Search, But The Justices Disagree on Rationale - Are Lines Being Drawn on Privacy Rights and New Technology?” at Proskauer’s New Media & Technology Law Blog.
A series of posts at The Volokh Conspiracy by law professor, Orin Kerr, an expert on computer crime and related areas:
”The New Doctrine of What is A Fourth Amendment Search”
”What Jones Does Not Hold”
”What’s the Status of the Mosaic Theory After Jones?”
”Three Questions Raised By The Trespass Test in United States v. Jones”
”Why Did Justice Sotomayor Join Scalia’s Majority Opinion in Jones?”
“‘Least restrictive means’? One way that SOPA could die in court” by Matthew Lasar at ArsTechnica’s Law & Disorder. Lasar ponders whether SOPA/PIPA could meet the same legal challenges and fate as legislation such as the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was found not to be the “least restrictive means” of addressing the issue of access to online materials by minors. Is SOPA/PIPA the least restrictive means of addressing online privacy or, rather, as the Supreme Court declared in the COPA matter: “If the State has open to it a less drastic way of satisfying its legitimate interests, it may not choose a legislative scheme that broadly stifles the exercise of fundamental personal liberties.”
“Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest” by Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa. Professor Geist summarizes the reasons why SOPA/PIPA, including its extra-territorial effects, should concern individuals and businesses outside the U.S.
“The Google Anti-Stop-Online-Piracy-Act Statement, Corporate Speech, and the First Amendment” by UCLA law professor, Eugene Volokh, asking how those who oppose 1st Amendment rights for entities such as corporations square those beliefs with support of yesterday’s anti-SOPA protest actions by prominent technology companies.
“SOPA and Censorship Spillovers” by University of Chicago Law Professor, Randal C. Picker. Professor Picker (a former classmate of mine in law school at the University of Chicago) examines claims regarding how foreign governments that desire to engage in censorship will respond to U.S. efforts to implement DNS filtering to address copyright infringement.
“Why SOPA is Dangerous” a close look at the bill itself at Mashable.com, and “An Updated Analysis: Why SOPA & PIPA Are A Bad Idea, Dangerous & Unnecessary” a more general effort to summarize the ill effects of the bills at TechDirt.com.
“Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System” by Fenwick & West attorney, Alan P. Bridges, arguing at PandoDaily.com that content owners already have a good deal under current law given the oversized nature of current statutory copyright penalties that may be applicable even if there is no commensurate actual economic damage to any particular content owner.
As the appeal process in the Cariou v Richard Prince copyright infringement case (background) begins, Hyperallergic.com posts the first in a three part series on the impact of the case and the issues posed in the appeal, including whether Richard Prince’s photos are transformative and constitute fair use.
Part 1 (including a link to the defendants’ appellate brief)
Part 2
Part 3
I’ve always thought that one of the more serious policy mistakes of the past few decades was permitting publicly-held corporations to adopt poison pill takeover defenses, shielding poor performing firms and their managers from the discipline and focus that stems from the risk of loss of corporate control.
How to Fix Copyright: a three part series of posts by William Patry at The Volokh Conspiracy on the heels of the release, earlier this month, by Oxford University Press of Patry’s new book with the same title. Patry, currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, served as a copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1990s and is the author of a seven volume treatise on U.S. copyright law.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
When Paintings are Easily Reproduced: Hrag Vartanian writing at hyperallergic.com on the issues about to be unleashed in the art world by affordable, high quality 3D printers:
“So far, the debate about artistic copyright has been safely in the realm of design and photography … . but how will that conversation change when anything can be easily reproduced and presented without proof of origin or even the original artist’s touch? … . A copyright lawyer by day, Steiner bought a glob-erific clown painting by Allison Schulnk … He then proceeded to have a replica of the work fabricated on a ZPrinter 650 3D printer. The result is a quite good monochromatic reproduction of the painting that is full of the brushstrokes and textures that until recently we thought we couldn’t so easily reproduce. Looking at the potential in this art work, I realized it was only a matter of time (months?) before paintings with their grooves and quirks could be churned out at will.”
photo of artwork at Palm Springs Art Museum © 2012 j.r.mchale
Has James Joyce Been Set Free?
On New Year’s Eve, the Twitter feed of UbuWeb, an online archive of the avant garde, posted a link to an article in The Irish Times about the expiry of European copyright on the work of James Joyce. The link was accompanied by a curt message to Joyce’s grandson and sole living descendent: “Fuck you Stephen Joyce. EU copyright on James Joyce’s works ends at midnight.” While the language may have been unusually confrontational, the sentiment it expressed is widespread. The passage into public domain of Joyce’s major works has been talked up in certain quarters as though it were a bookish version of the destruction of the Death Star, with Stephen Joyce cast as a highbrow Darth Vader suddenly no longer in a position to breathe heavily down the necks of rebel Joyceans.
-Mark O’Connell on what the post-Stephen will bring: http://nyr.kr/xj2D9F
See also at TechDirt.com:
”Why Johnny Can’t Read Any New Public Domain Books in the US: Because Nothing New Entered the Public Domain”
“Jazz Pioneer ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton’s Music Finally Free For Re-use In Europe — A Hundred Years Too Late”.
