Legal Issues

Following closely on the heels of Amazon.com's decision to end its "business relationships" with marketing affiliates in North Carolina (Shelf Awareness, June 29, 2009), the company has made a similar move in Rhode Island.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon "sent an email to its Rhode Island affiliates on Monday saying that it was closing their accounts immediately." This was in response to a bill passed by the state legislature recently "that would force companies to collect sales taxes if they have online-marketing affiliates--businesses that get a sales commission by featuring links to outside e-commerce sites on their own Web sites--in the state."

On the same subject, an interesting piece from Wanda Jewell's blog entitled, "He’s Just Not That Into You: An Alternative for Ex-Amazon Affiliates".

(from the blog): "It’s like the morning after the prom, when in wrinkled dress and wilting corsage you realize they’re just not that into you. At least, not when they may have to collect millions in state sales tax that could help fix bridges, keep schools open and fund libraries at a time when your states are truly suffering. And they seemed so nice."

Jewell is the Executive Director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Association.

From The Seattle Weekly:

Tomorrow, the State Supreme Court will hear Bradburn v. North Central Library Region (NCLR). The North Central Library Region is a system spanning Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Grant, and Okanogan (WA) counties. Like other library systems that receive federal funds for Internet access, the NCLR is required to have the ability to block minors from seeing materials deemed "harmful" to them. Typically, libraries disable those filters at the request of adults.

Nevertheless, the NCLR has instead decided that it will judge the merits of each adult's request to disable the filter. This, says the ACLU, "hampers adults in researching academic assignments, locating businesses and organizations, and engaging in personal reading on lawful subjects." ACLU spokesperson Doug Honig says that the majority of requests to lift the filter has been denied.

The organization sent out a partial list of sites that have been blocked by the filter:

* The website of an organization encouraging individuals to commit random acts of kindness
* The Seattle Women's Jazz Orchestra website
* The website of an organization encouraging women to carry to term by creating "a supportive environment for women in crisis situations to be introduced to the love of Christ"
* YouTube

It's bad enough that libraries are in the financial situation they are today, but it only makes it worse when they wind up fighting their city government for money that's supposed to be theirs.

Such is the case in Detroit where the library learned that the City of Detroit is spending money out of the library's fund. The Detroit Public Library is a separate municipal tax corporation and the use of it by the City not only raises ethical questions, but several legal ones as well. Even worse, the library found out about this practice the same time Detroit Public Schools learned that the City has been dipping into their equally separate tax fund.

Since July 1 of last year, the City spent around $6.2 million in money that didn't belong to it. Library Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said:

"It's horrible, and it's illegal. There's a piggy bank that our money is supposed to be in, and the city is basically going into our piggy bank to pay their bills."

The City's misuse of money garnered the attention of the State Legislature and an investigation may be launched.

More from Detroit Free Press.

In this essay, they discuss the currently available research that sheds light on the effects of file sharing, particularly in music where its effects have been most pronounced. They start by describing the new technology and how consumers are using it. Section 4 reviews the evidence that file sharing reduces the profitability of creating and selling new works. They discuss the importance of complements to original works in Section 5 and describe the artistic and corporate response to file sharing in section 6. The concluding section offers policy implications.

"...in the industry with the largest purported impact – music – consumer access to recordings has vastly improved since the advent of file haring. Since 2000, the number of recordings produced has more than doubled. In our view, this makes it difficult to argue that weaker copyright protection has had a negative impact on artists’ incentives to be creative."

As discussed here last week, a local Louisiana ordinance has prevented Josh Wexler and Anne Jordan Blanton, two recent college graduates, from getting a permit to sell used books and blank journals on the streets of New Orleans. On Tuesday, a New Orleans judge issued a temporary restraining order, thus allowing the pair to sell books until April 30, when the court will hear a lawsuit filed by the pro-bono Institute for Justice on behalf of the couple.

Story continued at Publisher's Weekly

Institute for Justice helped Wexler and Blanton with their case. They have info about the case at their website.

View the decision here.

A federal district judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that Holden Caulfield, the querulous, precocious protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s most famous work, “The Catcher in the Rye,” will exist at least a little longer solely in a state of permanent adolescence, unburdened by the cares and recriminations of age.

The judge, Deborah A. Batts, said a new book that contains a 76-year-old version of Caulfield cannot be published in the United States for 10 days while she weighs a copyright infringement case filed by lawyers for Mr. Salinger. The lawyers contend that the new book, published in Britain, was too derivative and that Mr. Salinger’s most well-known character was protected by copyright.

More here and here.

The top federal prosecutor in Chicago is threatening to sue publisher HarperCollins, calling a book about the war on terrorism that focuses in part on cases he handled "a deliberate lie masquerading as the truth."
If HarperCollins publishes the new edition of "Triple Cross" by Peter Lance this month "and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued," Patrick Fitzgerald said in a letter to the New York-based company.

The book focuses on, among other things, major terrorism cases that Fitzgerald prosecuted when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in New York in the 1990s.

Its content goes beyond normal criticism, which "goes with the territory" for public figures, Fitzgerald told The Associated Press on Monday.

"This is different," he said. "The book lied about the facts and alleged that I deliberately misled the courts and the public in ways that in part caused the deaths in the 1998 embassy bombing attacks and in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

Full story here.

Book: Triple Cross: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI--and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him

Is everything on twitter 100% accurate? Far from it. And can a journalist chronicle a court case 140 characters at a time?

Lawyers Weekly (Canada) asks us to judge for ourselves. Follow trials in Ottawa and London, ON where judges in both cases are letting journalists stream events from the courtroom to the Internet via Twitter. Here are two cases to follow: In Ottawa, the bribery trial of Mayor Larry O’Brien and in London ON, the Bandidos trial.

Many lawyers aren’t yet sure what to think. “This is evolving rapidly,” says Toronto-based Daryl Cruz, partner and leader of th litigation practice group at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. “Six months ago, we probably wouldn’t have had this conversation because it wouldn’t have crossed anybody’s mind.”

Says law librarian Connie Crosby: "It (twitter) doesn’t give a lot of room for clarifying context and giving facts" principal of Toronto-based Crosby Group Consulting. She adds that tweets can be taken out of context, as happened when somebody mistakenly attributed an inflammatory tweet about Tamil protesters to Toronto Mayor David Miller when, in fact, the comment was merely addressed to Miller. She tells us that news organizations like The Wall Street Journal are now sending their reporters guides that cover Twitter as a medium for reporting.

Dr. Romney C. Andersen, a Walter Reed Army Medical Center surgeon, was surprised last summer when his neighbor, a fellow doctor, congratulated him on a new medical journal study bearing his name.

“What study?” Dr. Andersen asked.

Soon, he was not the only person asking questions. Army officials, alerted by Dr. Andersen, began an investigation. They uncovered an apparent case of falsified research by a doctor who had befriended Dr. Andersen when they both worked at Walter Reed, treating American soldiers severely injured in Iraq.

The full report of that Army investigation, recently obtained by The New York Times, provides an unusually detailed anatomy of a suspected case of medical research fraud — one all the more disturbing because it occurred at the nation’s premier military research hospital.

Within the last week, the Justice Department opened an inquiry into the episode, said two people with knowledge of it, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Full story in the NYT

Blake posted a story about this the other day but now NPR came out with a piece about the controversy.

Author J.D. Salinger has mounted legal efforts to keep a Swedish author's book, seemingly based on Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, from being published.

Story at NPR

Author JD Salinger is taking legal action to block the publication of a book billed as a follow-up to his classic novel The Catcher in the Rye.

According to legal papers filed in New York, the 90-year-old's lawyers called the book a "rip-off pure and simple".

60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye features someone similar to Holden Caulfield from Salinger's work, which he says only he is able to use.

Voting 2-1, the court rejected the claims of the mother of a kindergarten student who said public school officials violated her First Amendment rights when they prohibited her from reading verses from the Bible -- which she said was her son Wesley's favorite book -- during a program called "All About Me" week.

Writing for the court, 3rd Circuit Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica said "parents of public school kindergarten students may reasonably expect their children will not become captive audiences to an adult's reading of religious texts."

When parents participate in an elementary school's curricular activities, Scirica said, school officials have the right to require that the parents refrain from promoting specific messages in class.

More at Law.com

Full text of court's opinion

An attorney for a former Lynn MA library board member with a spotty attendance record argued yesterday that his client had no obligation to attend board meetings in order to earn pension credit.

The attorney made the argument to the Lynn retirement board, which is attempting to rescind the pension of 60-year-old Linda Bassett of Marblehead, and recover about $20,000 in payments she has received.

Bassett applied for a pension in 2002 based in part on her volunteer service on the Lynn public library Board of Trustees in the 1980s. But records checked by the Globe last month showed that she last attended a meeting in March 1984, even though she claimed credit through September 1986, two years and five months after her last meeting. Boston Globe reports.

Bruce Schneier: "This isn't a technological problem; it's a legal problem. The courts need to recognize that in the information age, virtual privacy and physical privacy don't have the same boundaries. We should be able to control our own data, regardless of where it is stored. We should be able to make decisions about the security and privacy of that data, and have legal recourse should companies fail to honor those decisions."

Three groups representing libraries, including the American Library Association, the largest such group in the United States, have asked a federal judge to exercise “vigorous oversight” over a class action settlement between Google, authors and publishers.

The two other groups are the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries. The groups did not oppose the settlement, but in a court filing they asked United States District Court Judge Denny Chin to provide continuing oversight of it, to ensure that the prices Google charges for subscriptions to its digital library aren’t artificially high because of a lack of competition. They have also asked Judge Chin to ensure that the privacy of readers of books made available online by Google is protected.

Full story here.

NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.

The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.

Full story here.

An ugly dispute has erupted between West Publishing and two law professors who claim they were falsely identified as the authors of an annual supplement to a treatise on Pennsylvania criminal law even though they had nothing to do with writing it.

In a federal lawsuit, professors David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania and Leonard Sosnov of Widener Law School claim that the December 2008 supplement, or "pocket part," to their book, "Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure -- Law, Commentary and Forms," was so poorly researched that it will harm their reputations if allowed to remain on library shelves.

Full story here

Taiwanese firm Elan Microelectronics has sued Apple Computer alleging infringement of two of its touch-screen patents, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

The suit was filed late Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said spokesman Dennis Liu, speaking by phone from the chip design firm’s headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

“We couldn't find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action,” he said, adding that the companies had been in licensing talks for about two years.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple products including its MacBook computer, iPhone and iPod Touch use technology that infringes on two of Elan’s “multi-touch” patents, the company said in a statement.

Wonder what this will mean for all those Apple products already in use.