Dan's New Blog

Today U.S. District Justice Louis L. Stanton ruled against Viacom in its copyright-infringement suit against YouTube. Here’s some (subdued) crowing from the YouTube blog:

“Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.”

This is only the first round. The NY Times says Viacom is already working on its appeal:

“We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions. We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible. After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis. We look forward to the next stage of the process.”

CNET reports that the FBI wants Internet Service Providers to log the Websites you visit and keep the data for 2 years. Frankly, this does not surprise me, given the government’s predilection towards outsourcing surveillance to the owners of the pipes.

I’ve blogged in the past about how Tor can enable you to surf anonymously. But afaik Tor can’t help you evade your ISP’s prying eyes. You’d have to use a proxy that would encrypt traffic to and from your computer; I can’t see that working out for you very well.

As Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy said a few years back, “You have no privacy, get over it.”

Wired reports that the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management has issued new jury instructions regarding the use of social media. Here are the instructions that U.S. District Court justices should give to juries before they begin deliberations:

“During your deliberations, you must not communicate with or provide any information to anyone by any means about this case. You may not use any electronic device or media, such as a telephone, cell phone, smart phone, iPhone, Blackberry or computer; the internet, any internet service, or any text or instant messaging service; or any internet chat room, blog, or website such as Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter, to communicate to anyone any information about this case or to conduct any research about this case until I accept your verdict.”

It’s about time. I’ve blogged previously about the havoc a chatty juror can cause using Twitter during a trial.

I wish state and local courts would get on top of this as well. Last month I served as a juror in a two-day criminal case in Delaware County. The judge admonished us not to read about the case in the papers, watch anything about it on TV, visit the areas mentioned in the testimony to do research, or discuss it with family members and friends. Not once in the half-hour of jury instructions did he mention the word “Internet”, let alone Google or Twitter or Facebook. Nor did he mention text messaging. It would have been soooo easy for him to say something like, “Don’t use any Web sites or electronic devices to do research about the case or talk to others about it.” But we know that the whole legal profession changes very slowly, in some cases much slower than the rest of the world. At least the judge in my trial wasn’t required to wear a powdered wig.