Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Fighting the ICANN Marshmallow

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

ICANN seems to have improved since its early days, but hasn’t, it seems, transcended its secrecy DNA. Kieren McCarthy, former insider, now critic, fights with the marshmallow that is ICANN faced with any request by powerless outsiders. How long can the ICANN Board hide its secret meeting?

The issue: did the Board have a secret meeting to discuss whether to keep its (now-departing) CEO? Note that having a meeting to discuss a sensitive personnel matter and then not disclosing the minutes would not be controversial — even radical ICANN transparency types like me could agree that’s appropriate. The issue is whether there actually was the secret meeting Kieren suspects, and if so why the coverup?

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Fighting the ICANN Marshmallow

‘There Will Be Lawyers’

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Virtual Reality as the next growth industry for litigation? Might be:

One of the most interesting apps that someone produced was a virtual tee-shirt shop.

“He put it in the 20 most expensive shopping streets in the world, selling t-shirts.”

Stop and think about that for a minute. He built a virtual shop where a real one already existed. His shop was accessible via a mobile phone, the real one was accessible through, well, being real. That means that real space and virtual space can be owned by different people.

It actually starts to alter the most fundamental aspect of an economy, property ownership. While only one person can own the real space, anyone can own the virtual space.

“We are democratizing space,” says Mr. Van der Klein with no exaggeration. “Space needs to be opened up to allow people to contribute to it.”

If you are a store owner on say, the Ku’Dam or the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, how well do you think that is going to go down? But just because you own the physical space of your building, do you own the virtual space as well?

There will be lawyers.

Tech Europe – WSJ, Augmented Reality Start-Up Ready to Disrupt Business, via slashdot.

Posted in Law: Internet Law | 1 Comment

New Paper on the Regulation of Online Anonymity

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I’ve posted a first draft of my new paper, Lessons Learned Too Well, on SSRN. The paper, which is about the regulation of online anonymity, was written for a conference being held next later this week to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Oxford Internet Institute, A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society.

I’m the sort of person who prefers to post only more polished drafts — this one has a couple holes I know about and no doubt many I don’t know about too. But the symposium organizers asked us to post our papers on SSRN, and so there it is.

Comments very welcome, either below or in email.

I’m leaving for the UK tomorrow in order to give myself a bit of time to recover from jet lag before it begins, this being my first solo international journey since all my medical excitement. Posting may be light for a few days.

Below I post the introduction, which I thinks gives you some idea of what it’s all about:
Continue reading →

Posted in Internet, Law: Internet Law, Law: Privacy, Talks & Conferences, Writings | Comments Off on New Paper on the Regulation of Online Anonymity

How Bad Data Spreads

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

In case you were wondering: The fatherhood myth | Inside Story shows how lazy reporting and the jungle telegraph spreads a false statistic about the percentage of children whose paternity likely is other than they think. Hint: the right number is not 30%.

Posted in The Media | Comments Off on How Bad Data Spreads

Looks Like I Am Behind on my Reading

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Internet Archive reached the milestone of offering 3 million freely downloadable texts yesterday. Our 3 millionth text is a Galileo pamphlet from the rare book collection of the University of Toronto.

See 3 million texts for free « Internet Archive News for more.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Looks Like I Am Behind on my Reading

Attack of the Giant African Land Snail

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

New pest in the neighborhood:

A dangerous snail of gigantic proportions is gradually invading Miami Dade County, threatening to consume plants and plaster and infect humans along its way.

The creature, known as the Giant African Land Snail (GALS!), is "one of the most damaging snails in the world," the [Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services] says. The slow-moving sloth not only can consume at least 500 different types of plants, but "can cause structural damage to plaster and stucco and can carry a parasitic nematode that can lead to meningitis in humans.”

Wait a minute: this snail eats stucco? It can eat my house?

I mean, it’s a snail, right — just how fast does it eat a house? It and its 1200 descendants…

Posted in Miami | 4 Comments