Virtual life

I am not sure if we need to make a blog entry for this week or not but I am going to do one anyway.
I thought that I could go without ever talking about these virtual avatar sites, but I guess not. There is a scary digital world out there and we are all getting caught up in it. More and more people are spending more time and money on-line and virtual websites such as second-life are all making this happen. We live in such a complex world today, and digital images of ourselves on-line are the next step forward. The most interesting part about the virtual sites that our class logged into was that there is a whole on-line community that holds discussions of legal topics and people can interact in all of them. This is creating a different type of learning environment for everyone and could potentially generate on-line classes for universities. As the professor said, "There might not be any more excuses for sick days anymore with classes that can be held strictly on-line" where you must be logged on in order to show proof that you were "there". These websites are gaining more interest from the younger generations and I can only wonder what this will mean for the future.
A downside that is among us everywhere and in this case there is no way for people to monitor who people really are in a digital form. They may say that they are twelve years old, when in fact they could be forty. This creates legal questions of privacy and identity theft problems as well as a whole slew of parental concerns for their children. I can only hope that this will somehow be weeded out of the systems or that the sites do not gain enough popularity to maintain a digital second-life.
This may be my last entry for the semester but I must say that the whole blogging experience has been very enlightening and I may maintain this blog for further conversations. I have never had a blog before and this has been a lot of fun taking about and learning about on-line worlds.

No Confusion

Just so there is no confusion with the amount of entries for my blog, I missed one week in February which was my freebie. I missed another week in March which I made two postings that week for. Lastly, I did not do an entry during the week of spring break. I'm not sure if we needed to that week but I will do another posting if I have to. I just wanted to clear that up.

College and Congress

I guess the saying goes, "Kids will be kids." Colleges are now threatened by Congress over copyright infringement if they do not provide information or "acceptable answers" for measures that they have taken to prevent students from illegal downloading and file sharing. Umass being one of the schools on the list of 20 that Congress has posted does not have me worried because I have not downloaded anything music or video related over the Internet. It's not that I would not like to download songs for free like so many other students do, it's just that I don't have an mp3 player and putting things into a digital format for me is not important so I don't need to download any music.
It would make sense for Umass to make Napster available for students to use if they are a current member of the student body to download legally the music and making it available to students to play songs from their lists but only if they are a member of the university and enrolled. Other colleges use Napster for their students, free of charge, making access to all of the songs available on the server available for play. Songs can be played in their entirety but can not be downloaded. This seems like a sensible solution to at least cut back on the number of students that are downloading illegally from the campus, and it could make the university less likely to be a threat from the illegal downloading scene. With such a large student body, it is difficult to control so many students, but this could be a step in the right direction.
The penalties for the downloading crime should be severe because I don't see the importance of listening to music all of the time when the industry is constantly coming out with new songs all the time and the songs live out their existence usually over a two month span. The solution that I have suggested may not fix the entire problem, but they didn't build the Great Wall of China in one night either.

Online law schools

This posting is going to be more of an opinion based on the idea of online law schools.
I believe that online law schools are a good idea and they are more price conscious, but I do not think that ones that are not associated with an accredited school should be credible or be allowed. The concept of moving everything online is becoming more of a our everyday lives and school should be no exception. I have taken about four online classes and had very positive responses for three out of four of them. Everyone has different schedules and the idea about making things available for people on their time is very convenient. But the online law schools that offer a degree from a bogus name website aren't really teaching the material the way that out legal profession is constructed in this country. Courts are set up in the United States for a prosecution and a defense. Both sides must argue the case physically in front a jury and the fate lies in their hands to deliberate about. This whole process is completed in person. How can one experience how to perform legal responsibilities online, when people will be responsible for the real life experience? Can this be taught online? I guess we will have to see
Also, there was a topic of practicing for prosecution and defense, mock trials, in law schools and someone raised the point that law school students are not required to participate in them except through moot court. This is wrong. My friend had to perform a series of practice situations in front of other classmates and the professor, for a grade, to gain knowledge on how to approach a court and the judges, as well as how to present cases to the jury defending or supporting their positions. I just wanted to clear that up.

Disturbing

Since I was away last weekend I did not get back to Massachusetts until after midnight so I was unable to make a blog entry. I will make two postings this week to substitute for that.
After reading the suggested articles for this week, the Nirenberg files website controversy has me very confused and disturbed. I discussed this case with a friend of mine who is a practicing lawyer. She told me that the legal aspect of what they are doing on the website is considered legal. I agree, but I feel that the site should be forced to be shut down much like the YouTube website postings. The site is making the names of doctors who perform abortions public and also publishing their home address names and numbers for which they live and practice. This is a form of harassment and despite my personal feelings on the abortion issue, no one should have to be displayed like this across the world for performing a job with which they get paid for. Would people who are tree lovers and feel that trees are depleting faster than they are being replenished make a list of all the carpenters who work to make a living, post their names on a website and try to perform horrible acts of violence on them? I think not. They are just trying to make a living just like everyone else.
Yes there is a certain human element connected to this case but if the saying goes "it's just business" then why not let is be.

labels for adult websites

A bold move this week by members of the Senate in an effort to make access to adult websites more difficult for users is causing a lot of controversy. The proposed movement by the some members of the Senate have suggested that the adult explicit material websites should be forced to change their sites to a registered adult web site tag or they could face serious fines from the government. Some members in favor of this policy agree that this is an attempt to clean up the Internet for children.
There are many violated constitutional rights that would limit the proposal to pass in the Senate. If every company engaged in the industry would go along with the proposal willingly, there would be much less tension converting everything in the industry over. The largest problem that causes much controversy seems to be the volunteer part of the actions. If there is a mandated government requirement many people suggest that there is a violation of the freedom of speech right.
Other ideas have surfaced to come to terms with this racy subject such as labeling websites material, much like the rating that television shows that appear on TV. However, there has not been much success with this idea because the large time burden this would place on web providers as well as the issue of who would mandate it.
I believe that this is a troublesome issue and I am not sure of a solid solution to it. The Internet was created for communication between computers. Users of the computers should be given the right to access any material that they feel they want. However, when it comes to many people in the United States, they are very conscious of what they believe that their children should be allowed to view. This society has been a very controlling one since its inception and this is another example of how the government would like to control what the web can offer to people. Many countries in Europe do not feel that it is too racy for naked women to be broadcast their bodies on late night television. America has always felt a need to censor everything. If the country were to take more of an open minded approach then maybe a better outcome could arise. I am not saying that it should be alright for eleven year old children to be downloading porn, but I am saying that if they really what to, they will figure out a way to anyway.

Thailand

A few of the class discussions have included the YouTube website and the case of Thailand and the Google owned site is no different regarding inappropriate videos.
Thailand's government announced that the YouTube site contained multiple postings of insulting pictures and videos about the Thai king. Google has taken down many videos per request from its website and this case should be no different. However, Google has refused to take the offensive postings down as per the country's request. Thailand has decided to block access to the YouTube website.
This brings up many political and legal issues about this situation. Should a government be given the right to block certain websites in a country? I guess that depends on the country. However, there is no written law in Thailand, or the United States, that limits the use surrounding the Internet. I believe that this sort of censoring in the US can never occur because of the founding principles the country lives by. Censoring could be deemed a violation of our freedom of speech right given to US citizens. Also, there are many disrespectful things discussed publicly about our president every day. Should all of these comments be censored? I think not.

Online legal services

Unfortunately due to a problem with my vehicle this week, I was unable to attend the class and with no response from the e-mail I sent to the professor about what was discussed, I am forced to discuss an issue from the syllabus for this week.
Many of the customer service jobs that used to be in the United States are now overseas. The wave of legal service jobs could unfortunately also take the same path as them. It is very easy to teach the laws of the US in another country and pay individuals a lower rate to conduct legal research in a different country. Selling a service to someone over the Internet is cheaper than a telephone call these days, and people are willing to save the money on one end versus the other end. Some law firms are conducting legal advice now via the www and these services are done at a lower cost to the lawyer which could in turn make it cheaper for customers of legal advise in the future. With the ever increasing amount of people that are on the web every day, advertising a legal service via the www is possible to reach more people all over the world than a television spot would ten years ago. A lot of this talk is somewhat in the future but some of it has precedence today.
A few posing questions that comes to mind concerning this topic is if legal advise over the Internet is allocated the same time and energy as a regular client service would be conducted in person? Also, the customer is only dealing with a virtual person through a website and e-mail, so how is the customer assured that the work is being done by a real accredited person? Also, is the billing cheaper for the end customer because of the cheaper Internet transaction costs, and can the customer call the lawyer for more technical questions and answers and will this be billed differently?
The future will help answer some of these questions, but for now they are interesting to think about. More to come later.

Viacom and Google

A new law created in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was designed to adapt copyright protection for use over the Internet. Viacom recently sued Google for its YouTube website claiming that it violates copyright issues for the posting of copyrighted clips such as the Jon Stewart Daily Show. Google's lawyers plead the case that its website falls under the protection of the Copyright Act because it has the power to take down any clip that is requested to be taken down off of YouTube. Viacom argues that these and many other clips that are posted on YouTube are property of Viacom and not Google.
One striking thing that is quite interesting about this case is that these are two relatively large companies that are standing their ground over this copyright issue. The outcome of this case will definitely be interesting for the evolution of the Internet from here on out such that if Viacom wins, posting anything on a personal website without written consent from the owner will cause a lot of lawsuits flying around about copyright. If I were to post a picture of myself at Walt Disney World standing next to Mickey on my own personal website or on this blog for that matter, do I need written consent from Disney saying that it is ok for me to post a picture of myself and Mickey on my personal website that I pay for? Hard to say, but the outcome of this suit will be interesting needless to say.
Also, just because YouTube has the right to take down any clip, picture, etc. as per a request, how can Google monitor its 50 million user-based postings to YouTube a day. Again, the outcome of this case will be very interesting.

Verizon and Vonage

Vonage recently lost a patent dispute with Verizon this past week for infringing on Verizon's patents. The ruling was in favor of Verizon for Vonage infringing on 3 out of 5 Verizon's patents. Vonage is required to pay 5.5% of its future earnings for any further patent infringements for a grand settlement amount of $58 million. From our discussion earlier this week about how patents are used to encourage innovations and to protect innovations, then what has Vonage done wrong in creating a competing product for customers to pay a cheaper price than the telecommunication giant Verizon can offer. An important patent that Vonage was found infringing on concerns the use of the Wi-Fi network for Internet phone service. Through a partnership with Earthlink, Vonage is able to offer such a product. The ruling has created further problems with other competing Internet phone service providers also. Will Verizon try and come after those companies? Another pressing question has not been answered however. If patents are used to create innovations, how can Vonage, or any other company, not be allowed to provide such services if Verizon can slap an infringement suit on any company taking too much of the market share away from their pockets. Competition is supposed to be good for the world in lieu of offering lower prices for everyone creating a larger market and creating market efficiency for everyone involved, but how can we achieve this, or other innovations, with such cases being ruled in favor the bigger players involved? The only conclusion that I can come to is that creativity is only allowed if it is in a completely different industry. How is this good for competition then?

Domain Names

This weeks discussion with ICANN's ombudsman has inspired me to mention a recent case about domain names. An article that I read in the Wall Street Journal has much prevalence to this topic. Another issue that comes to mind from this article is about changing pornographic websites to end with the .xxx tag.
Goldman Sachs wants to take the porn website goldmansex.com off the Internet because they believe that the website would cause confusion and the financial company does not want any confusion with an adult website being that similar to the large firm. If the financial company is this concerned about this one website having too much affiliation with the company, then what if my last name was Goldman and I play the saxophone and I wanted to promote lessons over the Internet at goldmansax.com? Does Goldman Sachs have jurisdiction over the domain name? I think noy. There is no similarity over the intent of my website but strictly a phonetic similarity when saying the name. Or, if I had experience with the financial company and it turned out to be a bad experience, am I entitled to create a website called golmansuchs.com?
This leads to my second issue with the article. If the pornographic website was changed to have the .xxx tag at the end, then Goldman Sachs wins and does not have to do anything outside of the realm of the company to maintain the integrity of the company. However, should the pornographic site be sold to the financial company? Whatever one's views are about the issue are important, but the way domain names are set up over the Internet it is a first come first serve basis. So who really wins?

Apple

In lieu of our class discussion about trademarks, Apple Inc. and Cisco resolved their dispute over the new Apple phone called iPhone. Cisco, a supplier of network equipment and network management company for Internet products, recently dropped their lawsuit against Apple accusing them of infringing on a trademark of the term iPhone set forth by Cisco. Cisco held a trademark for the term iPhone since 2000, when it developed an Internet connected telephone. Cisco created many products bearing the iPhone logo relating to voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, used for making telephone calls over the Internet. The two company's reached an agreement stating that they intend on creating products to be used together and "in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications."
This trademark suit leads me to believe that companies will do anything in their power to get what they want. Apple had tried for quite some time to get permission from Cisco to use the iPhone name, but were denied. After Apple had released the new phone to the public bearing the iPhone name sparked the lawsuit against them. Apple Inc. did not have the right or the legal prowess to do so but after the release of the new product to the public and a dispute with Cisco, the company was able to get what they wanted. To use the iPhone name. I'm pretty sure the dispute cost Apple Inc. some money, but in the end they were able to use the now popular iPhone name. This is just another way powerful companies are able to flex their muscles and get what they want.

At what point does the government go too far with national security and the invasion of privacy? Two cases were recently argued, U.S. v. Romm and U.S. v. Ickes, both ruled in favor of the government permission to search the contents of laptop computers when traveling internationally. Computers store a tremendous amount of information on their hard-drive including temporary Internet files when surfing the web. The United States is founded on being a free country, but at what point is surfing the Internet an illegal action? Suppose a travelling business person were downloading pornography while waiting for a return flight home. The government will search the computer and find information regarding the downloads. Is this going too far away from our founding principals? Should I be given the right to search the governments computer contents when I surf the web for federal monetary policy concerns? I think not, nor should they be given the right to search my computer contents.