stories filed under: "legality"
isoHunt Seeks Declaratory Judgment In Canada On Legality Of Torrent Tracking
from the one-to-watch dept
You may remember that soon after the entertainment industry provided The Pirate Bay with a ton of free publicity by getting the site (oh so briefly) shut down, its next target was isoHunt, which similarly backfired. While isoHunt is still involved in litigation in the US with the MPAA, up in Canada, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has sent it a threatening letter demanding that it shut down. Similar threats have worked against other BitTorrent tracker sites, but isoHunt feels that it's on pretty firm legal grounds, and has filed a lawsuit against the CRIA, asking for a declaratory judgment that its service doesn't infringe on copyrights. It's using a similar explanation as its US lawsuit, noting that it's no different than a search engine. It also points out that when given evidence of infringing content, it takes down the related trackers -- which again should help put the site on pretty strong legal ground. While Canadian copyright law is different than US law, this is an important case to watch.Filed Under: bittorrent, canada, copyright, declaratory judgment, legality
Companies: cria, isohunt
AT&T Says It May Inject Its Own Ads In Your Surfing... And You'll Like It
from the oh-really? dept
Various ISPs have long made extra cash by selling your clickstream data to various tracking outfits. But in the last few months, it's come out that many have been either testing or considering taking things a step further by inserting their own ads based on your surfing history, using technology from firms like NebuAd and Phorm. Both of those companies have run into some trouble lately, as there are serious questions as to the legality of such practices, which have gotten the attention of folks in Congress.While most ISPs have shied away from giving too detailed answers to Congress, apparently AT&T has decided to take a different stance. While the company says it has not tried any such ad insertion technology, it vehemently defends the idea, claiming that it would implement it "the right way" and that it "could prove quite valuable to consumers and could dramatically improve their online experiences, while at the same time protecting their privacy."
This is an old line that's been used before about these types of services: that it somehow enhances your surfing experience by throwing less crappy ads at you. Of course, this is based on the somewhat faulty assumption that people actually care about most banner ads, no matter how relevant. Also, it's hard to see how it "protects" a customer's privacy, when the whole point of these programs is to make use of your surfing details (which most people believe is private) to make your ISP more money.
Filed Under: clickstream tracking, isps, legality
Companies: at&t
NebuAd In Trouble After Congress Suggests Its Entire Business Is Illegal
from the oops dept
We've covered the saga of companies like NebuAd and Phorm, who basically worked with ISPs to access your clickstream data and place advertisements based on your overall surfing habits, rather than the specific page that you're on at that moment. It didn't take long before people realized that such services (beyond just being somewhat deceptively implemented by ISPs) were probably illegal. And, of course, given the public outcry over these services, it didn't take long for Congress to get involved, suggesting that it felt these activities were illegal.So, of course, if you happen to work at Phorm or NebuAd, you've got a bit of a business model problem (not to mention the potential legal problem). The Register is reporting that NebuAd has now laid off a bunch of employees -- and also dumped its PR firm. Considering the fact that no amount of PR probably could have stopped consumer outrage over how these services were implemented, it seems like the PR firm may have been something of a scapegoat --- or, perhaps, the company just realized that any PR work at this point is simply futile.
Filed Under: clickstream tracking, isps, legality
Companies: nebuad, phorm
Why Are People Being Sent To Jail For Unlocking A Mobile Phone?
from the bad-news-all-around dept
For a few years, we've been covering the various lawsuits over mobile phone unlocking, mostly involving the company TracFone. TracFone focuses on the "prepaid" mobile phone market. That is, rather than selling long term contracts to people with various total minutes, it just sells phones with a certain number of minutes already on them that can then be re-upped at the buyer's discretion. However, like typical mobile phone service providers, TracFone subsidizes the price of the phone in order to make it seem quite cheap (sometimes as low as $10 or $15). The idea is to hook people and make money on selling the minutes. However, there's no requirement that people buy more minutes.What's happened, of course, is that people figured out a huge arbitrage opportunity. They buy TracFone phones on the cheap, unlock them, and then resell them for a higher price (often outside the country). The problem here is TracFone's choice of a business model. It decided to subsidize the phones and it set up a business model that doesn't require people to sign a long term contract or ever agree to buy more minutes. However, if you listen to TracFone tell the story, this is a case of felony interference of a business model, and anyone unlocking those phones must be stopped.
For a while it was abusing the DMCA for this purpose -- using it to claim that the unlocking was circumvention of copy protection. Of course, that's exactly how the DMCA is not supposed to be used -- and that was made even more clear when the Library of Congress explicitly carved out an exemption for mobile phone unlocking, making it quite clear that this is perfectly legal. TracFone has whined about this, but it still doesn't amount to much more than that the company just picked a bad business model.
However, the situation keeps getting more bizarre. Some folks involved in one of these arbitrage opportunities were eventually arrested for terrorism, after US officials assumed that anyone buying so many prepaid phones must be planning some sort of attack (don't ask). This had companies in the space suddenly claiming that this action of unlocking prepaid phones was a national security threat (seriously). What's scary is that some officials seem to believe it.
It turns out that TracFone actually is winning a bunch of the lawsuits it's filing, using both questionable copyright and trademark claims. However, the real kicker is that one man is actually facing jailtime for this. It's a little unclear from the wording in the article, as the jailtime may actually be as a result of him ignoring a judge's order to stop the practice of reselling unlocked TracFones -- but it's still not clear why it's illegal to unlock these phones that were legally purchased. The DMCA exemptions say that unlocking a phone is perfectly legal, and as long as the phone was legally purchased, it's now the possession of the buyer, who should be allowed to tinker with the software and resell it without having to worry about lawsuits or (worse) jailtime. Yes, TracFone is upset that it wipes out their business model, but the law isn't designed to protect their own poor choice of business models.
Filed Under: jailtime, legality, mobile phones, prepaid wireless, unlocking
Companies: tracfone
Research Into NebuAd Finds Controversial And Potentially Illegal Tactics
from the not-looking-good dept
NebuAd is a company we've discussed before, that basically works with ISPs to use your clickstream data to send targeted ads. It's quite similar to Phorm, which has received plenty of attention for its questionable behavior over in the UK. Now, some researchers have looked into the details of what NebuAd really does... and it's not pretty:NebuAd exploits normal browser and platform security behaviors by forging IP packets, allowing their own JavaScript code to be written into source code trusted by the Web browser. NebuAd and ISPs together cooperate in this attack against the intentions of the consumers, the designers of their software and the owners of the servers that they visit.... NebuAd breaks the rules of acceptable behavior on the Internet. It monitors what you do and see on the Internet, it breaks in and changes the contents of your private communications, it keeps track of what you've done, and if you even know that it's happening, it is impossible to opt-out of it."Perhaps Charter Communications and other ISPs that have signed up for NebuAd should have researched things a little more thoroughly. Congress is already investigating the legality of something like NebuAd, and one assumes that a report like this may find its way to many of those politicians pretty quickly.
Filed Under: clickstream tracking, isps, legality, spyware
Companies: nebuad
Judges Rejects Gambling Group's Attempt To Toss Out Anti-Online Gambling Law
from the keep-trying dept
A group calling itself the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association has failed in its attempt to get a judge to throw out Congress' law designed to ban online gambling. While the judge did note that the group has standing to bring this suit (which was an open question), she did not find their case compelling at all. She basically said that Congress passed the law legally and it wasn't a violation of the Constitution. The group is planning to appeal, but it still seems like a more likely path towards getting such a law overturned is to convince Congress that it made a mistake.Filed Under: congress, constitution, legality, online gambling
TorrentSpy Loses To The MPAA... But For The Wrong Reasons
from the bad-news dept
TorrentSpy has lost the first round of its case against the MPAA, but the details suggest that it's for all the wrong reasons. TorrentSpy, of course, is like many other torrent trackers: it's a search engine. While the MPAA went after TorrentSpy claiming that it was violating copyright laws like Grokster/Morpheus, TorrentSpy pointed out (correctly) that the Supreme Court only said that service providers who actively encourage copyright infringement can be held liable. Instead, TorrentSpy noted, it was a search engine, just like Google -- which is quite accurate. However, the court seemed to have difficulty understanding this -- and when the court ordered TorrentSpy to spy on its users (against TorrentSpy's own terms of service), the company instead chose to cut off US users. This seemed quite admirable and reasonable. It was, in fact, a lot more admirable than the MPAA, who hired someone to hack into TorrentSpy's servers and pass on internal emails. However, it appears that TorrentSpy's decision to not spy on its users and to block access to US users is part of what caused it to lose the case. The ruling isn't on the merits of the actual copyright claim, but on the claim that TorrentSpy destroyed evidence -- such as the IP addresses of its users. There does appear to be some additional egregious destruction of evidence from TorrentSpy beyond just the IP addresses of users -- which was incredibly stupid for the company. That certainly hurt the company's position. However, that does not address the merits of the original lawsuit. The MPAA, of course, is claiming this is a huge win, but that's just its usual press release quote and has little to connect it to reality: which is that the MPAA won this case on a technicality rather than the merits. TorrentSpy plans to appeal, so this is hardly over -- but the destruction of evidence will hurt the rest of TorrentSpy's position, no matter how reasonable it may have been.Filed Under: copyright, file sharing, legality, mpaa
Companies: mpaa, torrentspy
