Blog
“Hot News” Surviving but Struggling… and maybe Unconstitutional
The advent of the internet has accelerated the evolution of business models by creating the possibility for countless novel companies with low start-up costs. One need only look at the fate of newspapers across the country and the pains of the music industry to...
Stream of Digital Evidence Leads to Conviction
The death of Tyler Clementi in 2010 stocked the country as it added another example of bullying of LGBT teenagers ending in suicide. Last Friday, Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, was found guilty of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, evidence tampering and...
Paramount Pictures Speaks to Michigan Law Students about Online Piracy, Cyberlockers
Last month, copyright students at Michigan Law were able to engage in a Q&A after a presentation from Alfred Perry, the VP of Worldwide Content Protection at Paramount Pictures. The topic? SOPA, PIPA, and the legal issues that surround file-sharing websites, like...
MTTLR Publishes Volume 18 Issue 2
On behalf of the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, I am pleased to announce the publication of our Spring 2012 issue. It has been a pleasure serving as Editor-in-Chief, and I look forward to reading the great pieces that Cliff Helm and the Volume...
The Facebook Password Privacy Act – Is It Legal?
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted down an amendment to FCC legislation that would prohibit employers from asking or demanding that potential employees disclose their Facebook usernames and passwords as part of the interview screening process. This...
Sony’s $8M Settlement and the Future of Digital Royalties
Wrapping up six years of heated litigation, Sony offered an $8 million settlement this week in a class action lawsuit led by The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick, accusing Sony of underpaying the bands' digital record royalties. Originally filed back in 2006, this...
Biotechnology, Bioterrorism & the First Amendment
Last year, two teams of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) succeeded in genetically modifying the H5N1 avian flu virus. The modified virus is capable of respiratory transmission between ferrets, suggesting that it would also be...
Bollywood & Hollywood: Opportunity for Collaboration through Reform of Policies Governing Copyright and Plagiarism
The Bollywood film industry has been using ideas from foreign films since its inception. This “borrowing” has ranged from melodies for background scores to entire plot summaries and even translated dialogues. However, with the advent of technology and the increasing...
Hashtags Represent the Future of the Linkable Web
When Dick Costolo succeeded Evan Williams as the CEO of Twitter, the social network blogged about the occasion with a post entitled "#newtwitterceo". This is an example of a new kind of link—the hashtag—and its popularity is growing rapidly. The #-symbol (a.k.a....
Dueling Cybersecurity Propositions in the Senate
It's no secret that cybersecurity is a big issue today, especially with certain private networks containing the personal information of millions of Americans being at a very high risk of attack. Never fear, though, because the U.S. Senate is on the case. Last month, a...
Limitations on the Seventh Circuit’s Reasoning in Flores-Lopez
In an opinion by Judge Posner, the Seventh Circuit held on Wednesday in United States v. Flores-Lopez that police may conduct a warrantless search of a cellular phone to determine the device’s phone number when the device is found with or on an arrested suspect....
DOJ Threatens to Sue Apple, Publishers for Violating Federal Antitrust Laws
How much did you pay for your most recent e-book purchase? According to the Justice Department, you may have paid too much. News outlets have recently reported that the Justice Department has threatened to sue Apple and prominent book publishers such as Simon &...
Will Jeremy Lin’s Success On The Basketball Court Lead To Troubles In Another Court?
Jeremy Lin's battles have been well documented. He led his high school to a state title his senior year, and yet he received no athletic scholarship offers out of high school. After going undrafted from Harvard, Lin bounced around a few NBA teams before finding...
What Will Pay For Information Next?
As Ezra Klein wrote earlier this year at Bloomberg, someone has always footed the bill for information distribution. For a century and a half, newspapers and print sources were the primary sources people read in order to access information. Initially newspapers were...
Who Needs SOPA When You’ve Got GoDaddy?
On Wednesday February 15th, 2011 JotForm.com had its domain name removed from the Internet by its hosting company, GoDaddy. It appears that site came down at the request of the U.S. Secret Service, possibly due to a form on the site being used in connection with a...
PDUFA V Authorization: Just the Medicine the FDA Needs
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).[1] In response to a sluggish drug approval process and inadequate congressional funding of the FDA’s research and development arms, Congress passed the PDUFA to create an additional...
Patents for Humanity: A Non-Market Approach to Invention
The USPTO recently announced a new awards competition called Patents for Humanity. The competition is a pilot program meant to encourage the development of technology to meet humanitarian rather than strictly business means. The prize? Accelerated processing of the...
The Value of a Twitter Follower
These Are My Followers Well, I think they are, anyway. Litigation over the ownership of a Twitter account is pending in the Northern District of California right now. Here are the facts of PhoneDog v. Kravitz. Noah Kravitz was hired as an independent contractor to...
Ensuring the Super Bowl is Still All About the Commercials: Federal Crackdown on Illegal Sports Streaming Websites Leads to Arrest of Michigan Man
Everyone already knows that Tom Brady wields tremendous power in the sports world. Add to that a Brazilian super model wife and the guy has some serious social capital as well. But who knew the former Michigan quarterback’s casual comment to a group of reporters could...
Not your Average Super Bowl Party: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cracks Down on Street Vendors and Internet Streamers
In the days leading up to the Super Bowl the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized $4.86 million worth of counterfeit merchandise and 307 websites. 291 of those sites were engaged in selling counterfeits, and the other 16 were set to stream...
Two Google Policy Changes You Should Know About
Over the past month, Google has announced two policy changes it will be implementing in the near future. Free speech advocates and government officials charged with protecting individuals’ privacy on the Internet have voiced concerns over the forthcoming changes. I. A...
AIA and Double Patenting- Not Worth Taking Advantage Of
The America Invents Act (AIA) was passed in September 2011, bringing with it many changes to patent law. The most noteworthy change was the shift from inventorship being granted on a first to invent system to a first to file system. However, there were many...
Free Speech Online is No LOL Matter to the American Public
The people have spoken—and the people want their digital freedom! As the 112th Congress found out just last week, the prospect of the federal government infringing on the open and free Internet has been both politically tumultuous as well as philosophically unpopular...
Megaupload takedown creates trouble for users and cyberlocker community
On January 19, US authorities shut down Megaupload.com, a Hong Kong-based digital storage and file sharing company. Megaupload provided a cloud service that enabled users to easily share content, including hosting video and entire music libraries. The site is...
Posts on the MTLR Blog are editorial opinion pieces written by student-editors of the Michigan Technology Law Review. The opinions expressed in these editorial posts are not espoused or endorsed by the University of Michigan or its Law School. To view scholarly Articles and Notes published by the Michigan Technology Law Review, please visit the MTLR home page.