Cyberlaw Central

Blawg Review #33 has been posted over at Overlawyered. While I didn’t submit anything this week, I have been following one of the controversies posted about, namely the name change by Pajamas Media to Open Source Media. In relevant part, the quote is as follows:

Taking second place in interblog buzz is the IP sticky wicket that awaited the former Pajamas Media (discussed by Blawg Review here) when shortly before launching it decided to switch to the more dignified monicker of Open Source Media. Turned out there was already a well-known public radio show by the name of Open Source which hadn’t been consulted even though it occupied such URLs as opensourcemedia.net. Ann Althouse has been merciless (here, here and here) in needling the OSM organizers, while Prof. Bainbridge piles on with a law and economics analysis of OSM’s market.

This is a good example of why it pays to do a trademark knockout search before publicly announcing your new company name…

UPDATED TO ADD: The name will be changed back to Pajamas Media. Here’s a link to the company’s explanation of what happened. A good object lesson: don’t blindly follow advice from a marketing presentation without checking with a trademark attorney to see if the name is available.

I am attending the inaugural BlawgThink 2005 here in Chicago tomorrow and Saturday. I have been looking forward to this for weeks. Last-minute spaces are still available, so if you want to learn more about blogging from either a beginner or advanced status you can attend one day or two.

Here’s a link to a fascinating article by Mark Russinovich detailing his process in detecting the DRM on his computer installed with a Sony music CD that uses rootkit technology to hide its existence. It’s the same process used by a lot of malware to hide their existence.

Bad, Sony. Bad, bad bad.

Well, I’ve sort of fixed the archives problem I mentioned previously. The monthly archives are still unavailable ( except for August, which is fine), but I found a great plugin that lists the underlying posts in each month, so the same effect is reached.

I’ll keep working on the problem, I’ve learned a lot while getting this far!

My posts on Attention made it into Blawg Review #20, hosted this week over at The Mommy Blawg. The theme? Reality TV shows. My posts fall into her “Faking it” category since she didn’t know where to fit them into the other themes. Nice theme idea, I suggest reviewing all the submissions this week. When I host Blawg Review in January, I hope to be up to the task for the theme.

Interestingly, her first reaction to Attention was that it was a slick hoax until she read further. I think that’s part of why it’s such an interesting idea!

For some reason, the archives are still messed up. It’s a result of the conversion from Blogger, and I haven’t had much luck fixing it. Until I fix it, the best way to get older posts is by category.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Please excuse any hiccups over the next few days, I’ve upgraded Cyberlaw Central to run on Wordpress. It was time to move on. I will post any updates as necessary, but the Feedburner feed should stay the same.

Most recently, thanks to Jonathan B. Wilson for his kind words on his blog. I’ve added his blog to the Blogroll, check his blog out soon.

Thanks, one step back: Thanks to Kevin J. Heller for including my post on the legality of fan fiction as part of Blawg Review #12.

Thanks, two steps back: Thanks to Al Nye the Lawyer Guy for including my post on the DMCA Takedown Provisions in Blawg Review #11.

I’ve been offline lately, with lots of work and home activities intruding into my blogging time. Well, I’ve come back! In the interim, I’ve had some good ideas for posts that I hope to get up in the next few days.