Singularity Law

The Federal Communications Commission’s loss in recent Comcast decision has cast doubt on whether the FCC has the authority to implement net neutrality regulations applicable to ISPs. While Congress certainly has the ability to broaden the FCC’s charter to include regulating the Internet, Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they are not [...]

In the mid-1990s, I spoke on a panel at the “Digital World” conference in Hollywood, California. It was one of the first conferences to bring together the entertainment industry and the nascent Internet industry. I remember clearly that the keynote speaker, one of the major studio heads at the time, starting off his speech with [...]

Many legal pundits start each year with an excellent series of predictions on where IT law will go during that year. I don’t want to provide a list of issues that may (or may not) be resolved in the next 12 months. Instead, I want to note an issue that II believe will be THE [...]

The newspaper industry is suffering. At least one newspaper is closing down each week in the United States, and this trend is likely to continue unless the industry makes some radical changes in their way of thinking. Unfortunately, those who control most of the newspapers in the United States just don’t get it. These publishers [...]

In the computer field, like any other field, there are “fads.” Some fads are short lived, while others take root and become part of the fabric of the IT business world. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell sometimes what kind of fad we are talking about. When the Internet was first opened up to “public” [...]

During the last week there were two articles – one on the Wall Street Journal and one in the Los Angeles Times – about law firm establishing “specialties” in videogame law — as if this was a new field.
The fact is lawyers have been “specializing” in videogame law since the 1980s. When I began working [...]

Several weeks ago now, Google announced the settlement of a copyright infringement case filed against it by a group of American publishers who objected to the Google Book Search project. (I recently wrote about the settlement here.) The Google Book Search project has the goal of digitizing virtually every book ever published, and making that [...]

I have written about my law school’s evolving summer program in London (starting in 2009) on International Information Technology Law several time over the last year. (See here and here.) There have been a few wrinkles that had to be ironed out, but I am pleased to announce that the program has been finalized and [...]

In September 2005, Google was sued by the Authors Guild, the American Association of Publishers and a number of individual authors for copyright infringement for its “Google Book Search” project (which was launched in 2004). The plaintiffs claimed that the project was “massive copyright infringement” and should be shut down. Google held the plaintiffs at [...]

“Network neutrality” is a highly charged issue amongst Internet lawyers, business executives, users and government officials. During the formative years of the Internet, the question of whether companies that provided Internet connectivity should treat all users and websites equally was not an issue. It was assumed that they would. Just like the telephone companies treat [...]