Ilaw: Wikipedia Assignment

Place your wiki page and thoughts here.

=Chris Wurster: Initial Interest Confusion

May 15, 2008. I edited a section of the Trademark page. Specifically, I added information about the initial interest confusion test used in some of the domain name cases we read. [1]

I always have found initial interest confusion kind of funny (not funny "ha ha," but funny "huh..."). I think what I wrote is pretty accurate and clear. I'm just a dummie and don't know how to underline case names and all that stuff in Wikipedia, so I'm sure someone will come along and help me out with it. It will be interesting to see how quickly that happens, if at all!

=Jim Moynihan: Software Copyright

May 7, 2008. I edited the Software copyright page. [2]

I found this page on another page that contained a list of pages that needed work. And this page needed work alright. It was disjointed and lacked an introduction that would give it any real organization. I thought about trying to clean it up, but it seemed like it would take forever to straighten out. So instead, I added a few paragraphs about fair use, which was not previously mentioned on the page. I discussed Sega v. Accolade, which I now see from a post below has its own section on a reverse engineering page. Perhaps someone will link this up, but I am not sure how to do that.

I struggled a bit with my writing - I wanted to be legally accurate, but I also wanted to clearly communicate with non-lawyers. It was challenging.

=Jonathan B. David: Robert Tappan Morris

May 5, 2008====

I chose to edit the page on Robert Tappan Morris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris

I chose this page because I think RTM could be seen as a pioneer. He exposed what needed to be done. I thought it was interesting to find out how the act seemed to have help his career. It was important to also point out what could happen if you aggregated his actions. I thought he had a very unique and interesting life story and how it related to open network systems, although people are sure to disagree on his exact impact.

Ben Snitkoff: Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases

I chose to edit the Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases page, as it was covered in our third class.

March 16, 2008

I just finished editing the Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases page. First thing I'll say is that editing a wikipedia page wholesale like that is a lot harder then it looks. The markup is very different then anything I was used to, so I made quite a few errors in the markup, and probably one or two in text too. It's kind of like writing a short memo in word, but without the benefit of being able to see the formatting before you're done. Not pleasant.

March 31, 2008

David, from our class, edited my article, but only to correct a possessive and make "defendant" vs. "Defendant" changes. I therefore conclude that my legal analysis is beyond reproach. Or, at least up to the standards of wikipedia.

John Long: GNU GPL

I chose to edit the GNU GPL page after our discussion in class today.

March 20, 2008

12:00 AM. I was able to edit the page more easily than I thought, save for the markup. With extensive coverage already present, it was easy to pick out what I needed to get a quick first edit completed. I continue to believe that the GPL is one of the most restrictive licenses ever conceived. I also believe that it will eventually be found unconstitutional in the United States, despite prevailing recently in US courts. Wikipedia will not allow me to post my unpublished, baseless (and at the moment unprovable) criticism of the GNU GPL. I fault Wikipedia for that shortcoming.

March 20, 2008

6:49 PM. Nice. Somebody has already read the link I posted and added to my original entry.

April 5, 2008

I cited a source where the parties could not implement Sun's ZFS filesystem as a kernel module. It is not clear that either party (Sun or Linus) is at fault per se, but the license incompatibilities may require one of the licenses to change. Sun, meanwhile, patented the open source ZFS, which has chilled efforts to reverse engineer the code...(other examples of GPL subversion include trademark battles - I will look for that article in a later update)

April 30, 2008

Summary of Changes

March 20: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&diff=199561799&oldid=199559902

April 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&diff=203605447&oldid=203602444

Personal Identification on wikipedia

User: L0ngjc47 (when i remember to log in)

IP: 24.60.105.80 (when i forget to log in)

May 1, 2008

It is also interesting to see the Microsoft criticism grow against the GPL - they harbor a lot of disdain for a boiler plate license that they have no interest in using. Competing companies that have shifted toward Open Source (but not necessarily GPL), like Apple and Sun Microsystems, also retain a strong interest in controlling their hardware. It is not clear how MS will fare in the future without similar control now that we've entered another cycle apparently favoring integrated manufacturing. http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2008/04/bill-gates-disd.html

Jason Langley: reverse engineering

I chose to mess with the reverse engineering page, specifically the legality section

March 30, 2008

20:21 PM. Added quote from Sega case. This section needs a bunch more work though, probably splitting it and specifically addressing copyrights and patents would be good.

John Nwosu: Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria

I chose to update this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_and_Financial_Crimes_Commission There are some errors on the article and I think I will make it my duty to continually update it. I chose this article because it is something that I have personal interest in and also you have sort of mentioned, though in passing, about a lot of internet fraud activities emanating from Nigeria.

David O'Brien: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

I edited several sections of this including the "Controversy," "Application," and "Section 230 and Fair Housing Act." I found some of the language in the "controversy" section to be a little restrictive, so I modified the language to be more objective and reflect the broadness of §230. The "Application" section had some formatting and parenthetical problems. I found most of the parentheticals weren't very helpful and would benefit from some additional information on the cases. And, finally, I added an additional paragraph to the "Section 230 and the Fair Housing Act section". This section had discussed the Craiglist case regarding discrimination claims in postings online, it hadn't been updated since the 7th Circuit Appeal came out in March. In addition to adding the ultimate holding, I pulled out a few quotes I thought would help illustrate the rationale of Judge Easterbrook.

Other Thoughts: I've done some wiki editing in the past, so I didn't have much trouble with the markup. I did most of my edits using a plain text editor. I had tons of ideas of pages that needed to be created/maintained for Internet/Cyberlaw topics, something to keep in mind for the future.

Wiki UserID: Revision1.0

Matthew Rogers: Peer-to-Peer Legal Controversy

Peer-to-Peer Legal Controversy I completely rewrote the entire Legal Controversy section of the Peer-to-Peer page, adding analyses of the cases and legal theories. The section was previously very short and did not include any of the applicable case law. Let the merciless editing begin!

May 12, 2008

Hmmm...it's been over a week, and no edits yet. I guess nobody cares about the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing, or maybe everyone that uses wikipedia is just in denial...

Bo Kinloch: Jurisdiction Over Non-US Defendants in US Courts in Internet Law

Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases
I took a crack at adding to the jurisdiction in internet cases to add one of my pet-interests: the pitfalls and possibilities of getting jurisdiction over a foreign national in US court for cybercrime, cybersquatting, or other electronic fraud cause of action. Since I discovered that there's virtually nothing on some of the international law doctrines on jurisdiction, I added these to the personal jurisdiction in internet page (although these could arguably be put in a general international law section and linked back to this page).
I wanted to discuss the effects doctrine hook that I detected in the anti-cybercrime statute as well, but I'll have to save that for my next post if this one doesn't get removed for lack of citations (OK I got tired by the end!). --Bkinloch 00:32, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

May 11, 2008

Checked back on my post and there hasn't been any action. It's been 5 days! My entry was riddled with incomplete information!

May 14, 2008

OK, someone wasn't happy with my perhaps overly glib discussion of enforcement remedies, so they took the liberty of removing the section and adding this comment: "section was written in an aggressive and polemical form; I have removed it until its content can be extracted into a section with a more suitable tone."
Here is the offensive passage...
Enforcement Across Borders
So, if you’re GMAC and you have your judgment from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against a citizen of India in your hand, what are you going to do? How will you collect on that judgment? Here, all of your hard work in proving jurisdiction over a foreign tortfeasor comes to naught. You are left with the options of either asking a court in India to enforce the judgment on a theory of comity; or you can petition the WIPO (part of the WTO and created to monitor and enforce the TRIPS agreements of the Uruguay Round of GATT) to in turn draw the matter to the attention of the government of India; or you could persuade the US government to take action on the international plane to sign a bilateral treaty with India to enforce intellectual property rights. But good luck collecting that judgment from Raju, because the expense is high and the likelihood of success is extremely low in pursuing any of these routs to enforcement of the judgment.

Nick Cassie - ProCD v. Zeidenberg

I chose to edit the facts section of the ProCD v. Zeidenberg page. My changes were made under ncassie. I decided to edit the fact section because it was a little thin and basically just stated that Zeidenberg purchased the program and copied it. I felt a little more information was needed on the size of the database and on ProCD's price strategy.

I thought Wikipedia was pretty easy to edit. I did not attempt any type of fancy formatting, so it may get more complicated if that is added in. But for the most part, editing an existing page seems pretty straightfoward.

Kristin Pappas - Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.

I edited the "subsequent developments" section of the Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. page. More specifically, the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. part. Whoever wrote it did not mention the important part of the case, that despite the fact it was only an overturned summary judgment, the Supreme Court said that having a noninfringing use was not sufficient to escape liability when there is an affirmative intent to infringe and users are taught how and encouraged to infringe, etc. I added the last 4 lines to the section. (The IP address is 72.72.97.84 to see it in the history.) I thought about writing more, but I think its enough for a quick summary and the MGM Studios page itself is comprehensive.

Although my Wikipedia use was limited to typing in some text and there was no reason to format, I found it incredibly easy to work with. The hardest part was not having spellcheck.

Dominik Rabiej - Network neutrality

I edited Against network neutrality. My changes were made from drabiej. I edited to include quotes from anti-network neutrality advocates, making sure to cite them properly.