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Posts tagged with

law(16)

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law(16)

Reasserting the Rule of Law

Last week the CEO of United Healthcare was assassinated in midtown Manhattan. A surprising number of reactions amounted to some variant of “he had it coming.” Why were people defending what appears to be a vigilante killing? Because the rule of law in the US has been undermined by a pervasive sense that the justice system is rigged to protect the rich and powerful and their interests. There appears to be no accountability for them while ordinary citizens find themselves subjected to abuse by ...

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The Terrible, No Good CFAA: Giving More Power to Networks Instead of Endusers

I have written and talked about the need for a “right to be represented by a bot.” By a bot here I mean software that runs on my behalf as an enduser and mediates my interactions with online services. In the web world, the browser is such as bot. For instance, I can run an ad blocker which I instruct on which parts of a site to show to me. I can also run something like 1Password that manages my security. I could use a custom bot to say keep an automatic personal copy of all the images and tex...

Benefit Corporation: Facilitating a New Market

As longtime readers of Continuations know, I have been a strong proponent of the Benefit Corporation. I am therefore thrilled that Delaware, which is the home to almost all venture backed corporations, has introduced Benefit Corporation legislation. This will allow companies to charter or recharter in Delaware and add one or more public benefits as goals that are on equal footing with maximizing shareholder value. This is critical for allowing mission driven companies to raise money from priv...

A Further Step on the Road towards a Spy-vs-Spy Society

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of wa...

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Reasserting the Rule of Law

Last week the CEO of United Healthcare was assassinated in midtown Manhattan. A surprising number of reactions amounted to some variant of “he had it coming.” Why were people defending what appears to be a vigilante killing? Because the rule of law in the US has been undermined by a pervasive sense that the justice system is rigged to protect the rich and powerful and their interests. There appears to be no accountability for them while ordinary citizens find themselves subjected to abuse by ...

2 collected

The Terrible, No Good CFAA: Giving More Power to Networks Instead of Endusers

I have written and talked about the need for a “right to be represented by a bot.” By a bot here I mean software that runs on my behalf as an enduser and mediates my interactions with online services. In the web world, the browser is such as bot. For instance, I can run an ad blocker which I instruct on which parts of a site to show to me. I can also run something like 1Password that manages my security. I could use a custom bot to say keep an automatic personal copy of all the images and tex...

Benefit Corporation: Facilitating a New Market

As longtime readers of Continuations know, I have been a strong proponent of the Benefit Corporation. I am therefore thrilled that Delaware, which is the home to almost all venture backed corporations, has introduced Benefit Corporation legislation. This will allow companies to charter or recharter in Delaware and add one or more public benefits as goals that are on equal footing with maximizing shareholder value. This is critical for allowing mission driven companies to raise money from priv...

A Further Step on the Road towards a Spy-vs-Spy Society

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of wa...

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More on Privacy and Encryption

My blog post on Monday about privacy and DRM was read by some as suggesting that we abandon any and all notions of privacy over night. That was not the point I was trying to make so let me try again, this time with an analogy. We secure our homes by closing and (generally) locking the front door. That serves as a demarcation and keeps out a completely opportunistic thief. It does not, however, prevent anybody even remotely determined from entering. For that we rely on some combination of soci...

More on Privacy and Encryption

My blog post on Monday about privacy and DRM was read by some as suggesting that we abandon any and all notions of privacy over night. That was not the point I was trying to make so let me try again, this time with an analogy. We secure our homes by closing and (generally) locking the front door. That serves as a demarcation and keeps out a completely opportunistic thief. It does not, however, prevent anybody even remotely determined from entering. For that we rely on some combination of soci...

Law - Continuations

Contracts: Defining Future Negotiations

Contracts are necessary to doing business but surprisingly many people miss a central point about them: they define the starting point for future negotiations. Where you actually wind up as an outcome depends on both the contract and external factors that determine your bargaining power. Let me illustrate what I mean by that by looking at a rental contract (lease) for an office. Suppose you have signed a three year office lease and two years into it you have to leave. The lease says that you ...

Contracts: Defining Future Negotiations

Contracts are necessary to doing business but surprisingly many people miss a central point about them: they define the starting point for future negotiations. Where you actually wind up as an outcome depends on both the contract and external factors that determine your bargaining power. Let me illustrate what I mean by that by looking at a rental contract (lease) for an office. Suppose you have signed a three year office lease and two years into it you have to leave. The lease says that you ...

Stop Congress From Making a Bad Computer Law Worse

I have written previously about cyber security and cyber defense topics that have become more acute in the wake of several large scale attacks on banks and other companies. Unfortunately, law makers in DC are reacting the only way they seem to know how: by further broadening laws that are already overreaching and yet ineffective at the same time. In particular the House Judiciary committee is proposing changes to make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) even more draconian. As a quick rem...

Stop Congress From Making a Bad Computer Law Worse

I have written previously about cyber security and cyber defense topics that have become more acute in the wake of several large scale attacks on banks and other companies. Unfortunately, law makers in DC are reacting the only way they seem to know how: by further broadening laws that are already overreaching and yet ineffective at the same time. In particular the House Judiciary committee is proposing changes to make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) even more draconian. As a quick rem...

APIs and Copyright

Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief signed by some of the big names in computer science and software engineering to support the court decision in Oracle vs. Google that APIs are not copyrightable. The brief is well worth reading because it lays out in detail many of the instances over the last decades in which the non-copyrightability of APIs has turned out to be important for innovation. I also support this view which is based on concept that functions or methods themselves are not copy...

APIs and Copyright

Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief signed by some of the big names in computer science and software engineering to support the court decision in Oracle vs. Google that APIs are not copyrightable. The brief is well worth reading because it lays out in detail many of the instances over the last decades in which the non-copyrightability of APIs has turned out to be important for innovation. I also support this view which is based on concept that functions or methods themselves are not copy...

California's Right To Know Act

One of the major issues we are struggling with in this flood of data is the question of what data belongs to whom and in particular how much access and control endusers should have over their data (or for that matter what “their” data even means). In California a “Right to Know” bill has been introduced that would require companies to let endusers access what data has been stored about them and which third parties that data has been shared with. The definition of personal data in the bill is ...

California's Right To Know Act

One of the major issues we are struggling with in this flood of data is the question of what data belongs to whom and in particular how much access and control endusers should have over their data (or for that matter what “their” data even means). In California a “Right to Know” bill has been introduced that would require companies to let endusers access what data has been stored about them and which third parties that data has been shared with. The definition of personal data in the bill is ...

Libel, Slander, Defamation and the Internet

At a dinner at DLD we were discussing the issue of libel and I was surprised to find one participant defending the UK law that allows Lord McAlpine to sue individuals who (re)tweeted an allegation against him. Apparently the amounts asked for depend on follower count. This approach seems to run counter our views of the importance of free speech which makes libel suits very difficult in the US. But as I started to think more about it I do believe we have a problem that may need some kind of so...

Libel, Slander, Defamation and the Internet

At a dinner at DLD we were discussing the issue of libel and I was surprised to find one participant defending the UK law that allows Lord McAlpine to sue individuals who (re)tweeted an allegation against him. Apparently the amounts asked for depend on follower count. This approach seems to run counter our views of the importance of free speech which makes libel suits very difficult in the US. But as I started to think more about it I do believe we have a problem that may need some kind of so...