Author Archives: John William Nelson

I am a Georgia lawyer who studies the issues surrounding law and technology. My law firm is The Nelson Law Chambers LLC. You can learn more about me at www.johnwilliamnelson.com. You can read my legal publications here: http://ssrn.com/author=937847

How Auto-Tune the News made me look at the DMCA and copyright law

My 18-month old daughter and I watch Auto-Tune the News on our AppleTV in the mornings while her mother prepares her daycare bag and I try to function pre-coffee. One morning we clicked on AutoTune the News and nothing came up except an error. My lawyer brain immediately thought of fears that a DMCA takedown …

June 10, 2011 – 3:02 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

Strip searches of the mind: Why the government can search your laptop at the border

Can the Government search your laptop computer when you cross the border?  Yep. It’s called the border search exception.1 No warrant or reasonable suspicion is required, and it doesn’t just apply to laptops.  Anything, including your international mail,2 may be searched without a warrant if it crosses the U.S. border. The U.S. government’s greatest power …

June 3, 2011 – 11:31 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in 4th Amendment Law, Criminal Law | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Protecting Reviewers: Why review sites are limited in their defense of reviewers

Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica writes that review websites like Yelp​.com “could do more” to protect their reviewers from bogus DMCA claims made against their reviews.  “For example,” Mr. Lee goes on, “Yelp could have offered to represent [the reviewer], or even filed for a declaratory judgment that [the reviewer's] post was not an …

June 1, 2011 – 1:59 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright, Defamation | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Can you steal the idea for a product or service?

The Telegraph has an article about claims that the founders of the Huffington Post ‘stole’ the blueprint for the popular website.  Can you ‘steal’ an idea, be it for a product or a service? On some level this questions appears to ridiculous.  The Huffington Post, for example, is modeled after many community sites before it, …

May 26, 2011 – 2:02 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright, Economics & Commerce, Polemics, Trade Secret, Trademark | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Open WIFI Access Points — Should you use them, or is that illegal?

You are away from home or you office yet you need the internet, and you need it fast.  Your smartphone has it, but your files and program are on your laptop.  No sweat, you’re downtown near a bunch of apartments.  You see there is an open WIFI access point called “linksys.” But should you use …

May 5, 2011 – 3:07 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Criminal Law | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

What’s the point of the DMCA if I have to keep taking down content?

Infringing copyright content isn’t always cut and dry. Sometimes people try and abuse copyright law to silence critics or competition. Sometimes there is a genuine dispute over what elements of a work are copyrightable. One of the complaints about the DMCA’s notice provisions is that it chills free speech and harms folks by reversing the …

January 26, 2011 – 2:33 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Is a data center liable for defamatory or harassing websites? No.

There are three categories of folks who may have control over a website’s content at any given time.  These are (1) the website owner, (2) the web hosting company, and (3) a data center used by the web hosting company.  The first two are directly related to the content’s storage; a website owner creates and …

December 30, 2010 – 11:29 am | By John William Nelson | Posted in Defamation | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

TSA Scans & Patdowns: Do these violate the 4th Amendment? Maybe.

Searches performed at airports prior to boarding planes have just gotten more intrusive—both physically and pictorially.1   The TSA2 has implemented new rules requiring airplane passengers to submit to either a full-body scanner or an ‘enhanced’ pat-down procedure.  Janet Napolitano, head of the TSA’s parent Department, the Department of Homeland Security, has defended the new …

November 18, 2010 – 5:13 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in 4th Amendment Law, Criminal Law | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6)

Rivalrous and Non-Rivalrous ‘things’: Explained through song and illustration

I written multiple times about the difference between rivalrous and non-rivalrous things.  The basic difference is that only one person can ‘possess’ somethiing that is rivalrous; whereas more than one person can possess something non-rivalrous. Madisonian​.net has a post by Jacqui Lipton that links to an illustrated music video that helps explain this concept.  It …

November 17, 2010 – 9:47 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Reputation: Libel, slander, and the purpose of defamation laws

Techdirt1 has an interesting article discussing reputation as a scarce commodity in reference to the Cooksource fiasco.  Techdirt is right: reputation is a scarce commodity; difficult to build yet easy to destroy.  Cooksource’s editor found this out the hard way. Companies and professionals learn quickly the importance of their reputation and their name.  I recently …

November 14, 2010 – 12:21 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Defamation | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)