21 December 1999. The site offers commentary on various legislative issues, which it updates monthly. Also find legal articles. 21 August 2003. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) makes available information about pending legislation on several hot topics, including criminal justice, death penalty, drug policy, free speech and more. Browse the collection by issue or ACLU region. Stay up-to-date with these issues by requesting to receive email updates. 23 January 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. Denise M. Howell, an attorney with Reed Smith (formerly, Crosby Heafey Roach & May), comments on a variety of legal issues related to intellectual property, Internet law, technology, and more. Denise cites her sources, which facilitates additional research. The RSS news feed appears to reproduce the entire blog entry. A Harvard Law School research program, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society comprises several components of potential interest to those researching Internet law. Open Law, for example, provides a forum for "develop[ing] arguments, draft[ing] pleadings, and edit[ing] briefs online." This project offers brainstorming ideas, reference sources, legal background, pleadings and more. 23 January 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. Sabrina Pacifici, Editor of LLRX.com, comments on law and technology issues. These often comprise copyright, trademark, patent, and Internet law matters. Like, Tech Law Advisor, beSpacific cites its sources, making additional research easier. The RSS news feed appears to reproduce the entire blog entry. 21 August 2000. Because of reported discrepancies in various Whois databases, BetterWhois offers an interface for searching "the shared domain registry" by domain name. It returns matches, which provide the name of the registrar for the domain.
This search feature serves primarily to find owners of registered domains and to identify reserved names. You cannot search by owner. 21 February 2002. Business 2.0 offers an extensive guide for finding sources of business and economic information. It focuses on professional sources and covers issues like management, electronic commerce, finance, industries, technology, and more. This Web guide also covers current issues like finding sources of information about Enron. 1 October 2001. This utility queries several WHOIS databases for information about the owners of a domain name. It covers several top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .edu., .net., .org, .mil, and those of many foreign countries. 24 January 2001. The Freedom to Read Foundation offers this question and answer sheet prepared by Jenner & Block, legal counsel to the American Library Association.
See also: CIPA Web site. 7 March 2002. Several law schools and the Electronic Frontier Foundation join to provide this database of cease & desist letters and information about intellectual property and free speech law. Browse by topic, or search the database, to find out who's sending and receiving cease & desist letters. The site uses the power of multimedia to link portions of the letters to relevant commentary. For example, it links any language that implies parody (e.g., "We have reviewed your website and have concluded that it incorporates the use and threat of violence towards the children’s character Barney without permission....") to the site's commentary about the legal definition of parody within the context of intellectual property. It also provides images of the original letter(s). While the database currently contains a small number of documents, it offers tremendous potential for investigative or legal research.
Those researching various intellectual property topics will like the links to related resources, news, and relevant cease & desist letters. 25 January 2001. The American Library Association offers a site devoted to educating librarians about the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Neighborhood Internet Protection Act (NCIPA). It provides practical tips for complying with the law and measuring its impact on library services. It also offers a copy of the new law and notice of FCC proposed rulemaking.
Librarians in libraries affected by the new law will also find a helpful toolkit, which contains sample Internet use policies, suggestions for addressing concerns about children's access to the Internet in your community, the ALA position on Internet filtering, resources, contacts, and more. 3 January 2002. This FAQ, prepared by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, offers questions and answers on issues of compliance with CIPA and N-CIPA for the E-rate program. It also provides links to additional sources of information. 7 February 2001. The site gives law enforcement agencies access to consumer fraud complaints. It also provides information about various types of fraud including prize promotions, work-at-home schemes, telemarketing scams, and identity theft. Victims of consumer fraud also may file complaints here.
22 April 2002. Cornell's Computer Policy and Law Program offers this database of information about, and links to, policies on various computer issues. The collection covers corporate, educational institution, municipal, and network policies dealing with acceptable use, access, computer use, terms and conditions, dial-in, email, ethics, privacy, security, World Wide Web, and other policy topics. 22 January 2003. Led by several Internet and intellectual property experts, Creative Commons offers model language for various copyright licenses. These are alternatives to the standard "all rights reserved." For example, the site offers model language for several types of attribution. During 2003, Creative Commons plans to launch "the Creative Commons Conservancy, a sort of 'land trust' for intellectual works. It will provide "widespread public access" for acquired or donated works "while safeguarding [them] against exploitive uses." 14 January 2002. Online Internet Institute tracks domains previously used by legitimate Web sites, but now taken over by cybersquatters, who divert unsuspecting visitors to gambling or pornography sites. It also offers a few articles discussing the issue of "porn-napping" and providing tips for avoiding some of the "mouse traps." 16 May 2000. Revised 2 April 2004. The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice offers this site on computer and intellectual property crimes. Find general information, such as how to report an Internet-related crime as well as legal and policy information. The Web site offers press releases on cases involving computer and intellectual property crimes, guidance documents, relevant laws and other documents. 21 December 1999. Revised 13 August 2004. Intellectual property and technology lawyer Alan Gahtan provides an index to articles, case law, legislation and other resources on a variety of topics related to intellectual property and Internet issues. Unfortunately, it appears the site has not been maintained (broken links) or updated (no new content) for awhile. The CyberLaw Group of Sidley & Austin offers this excellent source of Internet law news, articles, and other resources. The developer of this site is none other than Sabrina Pacifici, editor of LLRX.com!
The site also offers an extensive list of briefly annotated links to sites dealing with specific aspects of cyberlaw. 18 March 2003. Revised 17 June 2003. Technology lawyer Dennis Kennedy (Thompson Coburn LLP, St. Louis, MO) comments on legal technology and technology law. The RSS news feed provides the headline and a brief description. 5 January 2000. nternet.com offers a tool for assisting in the creation of a domain name. Say your business, product or service name is Virtual Chase. Enter it and keywords that describe your business, product or service; e.g., legal research or law. Select the top level domain (.com, .org., etc.) and then submit the information to the wizard. Domain Name Wizard responds with unavailable domain names that match your criteria as well as suggestions for available domain names. VPOP Technologies, Inc. offers a great tool for common law trademark searching. Domain Surfer searches for word strings within a domain name. Unlike Whois, which limits domain name searching to exact matches, this tool finds matches buried within a domain. Domain Surfer provides results for registered domains in the .com, .net, and .org categories. It does not return results for domain with "on-hold" status. 7 March 2000. Network Solutions, once the sole registry of Internet domain names, offers this site to assist researchers in understanding the domain name resolution process. Find answers to Frequently Asked Questions, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, the rules governing administrative procedures, and a list of accredited dispute resolution service providers and their supplemental rules. 12 January 2001. Launched during December 2000, Dotcom Scoop provides a source of rumors and news about dot com failures, lay-offs, lawsuits, and other issues. Revised 16 May 2003. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Law School library, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws offers drafts and final versions of Uniform and Model Acts. The documents are available in Word, Word Perfect, ascii text, and PDF formats. When relevant, the site also provides meeting agendas, statements, and commentary. 28 January 2003. Pennsylvania State University sponsors this specialty search engine that combs the Web for academic and commercial articles covering various e-commerce issues. Search by keyword to finding matching articles, or by author's last name, or first initial plus last name, to find matching citations. The engine performs a phrase search first, and then proceeds with a Boolean query and relevancy ranking if no phrase matches are found. 20 November 2001. A Web site of The Economist Intelligence Unit, ebusinessforum.com offers several goodies to researchers interested in the electronic business practices of companies doing business abroad. Find a "Doing ebusiness in ..." database that provides current news, market profiles, ebusiness rankings, and more. The market profiles include information about a country's business-related taxes, laws and regulations, infrastructure, ebusiness marketplace, and economy.
The "best practice" channel offers case studies concerning the ebusiness strategies of select companies or industries. The "research" channel offers market trends, business strategies, executive surveys and benchmarks, and a collection of Web-based resources. 6 February 2002. The law firm McBride Baker & Coles offers two databases for obtaining information about laws pertaining to 1) electronic commerce and digital signatures and 2) electronic health care policy. The section on electronic commerce and digital signatures offers commentary, various legislative tables (e.g., status of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act in all states), state laws and pending legislation, federal laws and pending legislation, foreign and international laws, and actions concerning uniform laws. The section on electronic health care policy provides commentary, federal and state laws and pending legislation, and related initiatives and uniform laws.
19 June 2001. Subtitled "Your site for cross-border ecommerce complaints," econsumer.gov offers information about consumer protection laws and agencies in several countries. It also provides an online form for filing a complaint against a business operating in another country. 6 August 2007. The legislative research librarians at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) track state legislative activity pertaining to Internet legal issues. Specific topical coverage includes spyware, disclosure of security breaches of consumer personal information, monitoring of employee e-mail and Internet access, and privacy policies on Web sites. You will also find links to policy statements and other documents (reports, position papers) from authoritative sources. 27 January 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. Ernie the Attorney is Louisiana lawyer Ernest Svenson. Ernie comments on a variety of law and technology issues, including copyright, patent, trademark, and Internet law matters. He likes gadgets, so you will often find mention of the latest devices, software, or other new technology. The RSS news feed appears to reproduce the entire blog entry. 19 June 2002. The law firm Baker & McKenzie compiles legal resources pertaining to electronic signatures and transactions. These include commentary and primary sources of U.S. state law and the laws of various foreign countries, as well as, uniform laws, conventions and treaties. 27 January 2003. Revised 21 November 2003. Joy London, knowledge and training manager at Allen & Overy discusses the implementation of knowledge management in law firms. Frequently, excited utterances contains postings with bibliographic references to new or thought-provoking materials. Anyone with an interest in how people share and use information will want to visit this site. The RSS news feed appears to reproduce the entire blog entry. 6 February 2002. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School offers a monthly newsletter on pressing public interest–oriented Internet issues. It provides news summaries with links, not only to the news source, but to related documents discussed in the news. It offers information about the activities of the Center and provides links to Web sites of potential interest. 7 May 2001. This site offers news, commentary, and information pertaining to Internet-related fraud. Find a database of consumer complaints, which you can search by company name, ISP, or Web address. Read the latest scam and virus alerts. Browse a directory of consumer information sources, where you can learn about anti-spam laws and products, consumer information organizations, and more. Also find glossaries of investment, virus, and Internet-related terms. 13 August 2004. Revised 25 June 2007. Maintained by Atlanta-based intellectual property and technology lawyer Doug Isenberg, Gigalaw offers commentary on news and legal developments pertaining to intellectual property, technology and Internet-related issues. You may keep up-to-date with news posted via e-mail or RSS feed. 7 March 2002. Gilbert & Tobin is an Australian corporate, technology and communications law firm. It provides full-text copies of articles covering timely issues in competition law, business law, intellectual property, tax law, and more. From the home page, select the Publications tab. 19 June 2002. Revised 25 June 2007. Appears to be an abandoned Web site. The law firm Baker & McKenzie offers an email alert service, with accompanying searchable Web archive, covering U.S., foreign, and international legal developments in the areas of electronic commerce, intellectual property, telecommunications, jurisdiction, and privacy. 22 April 2002. The General Service Administration (GSA) organizes and links to laws, presidential executive orders and memoranda, OMB circulars, memoranda, and reports, congressional reports, and GSA reports pertaining to governmental information technology policy. Also find a related Web page devoted to IT legislation. 20 September 2001. A quote from the site: "InfoTech Trends provides market research data on all aspects of the information technology industry - computers, peripherals, software, storage, the Internet, communications, and more. Our database contains information on forecast sales and forecast shipments, market share, trend analysis, and other frequently used market statistics."
For free, researchers can obtain data from previous financial quarters (typically, 2000 and 1999). For a per minute fee or by subscription, the site offers current data. In seeking information about the DSL market, for example, I found a second quarter 2000 cite to the journal, TELE.COM, which provides a forecast market share of Internet access by type. 3 December 2001. Interactive Week offers this annual list of companies with Web operations. It ranks the companies by revenue. The resource also provides an overview of the economic health of the industry. 5 April 2004. LexisNexis offers this resource containing news summaries pertaining to international law issues, such as world trade, tariffs and trade agreements, NAFTA, foreign tax and the European Union. Use of the site is free and the news appears in full-text. 2 October 2003. Looking for statistics about the growth and use of the Internet? This Weblog, by Marcus P. Zillman, author of eCurrent Awareness Resources 2003, provides links to resources on Internet demographics. 7 March 2001. Two professors from the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin track and document the growing Internet economy. They provide economic indicators like employment figures and revenue as well as comparisons to traditional business growth. Also find other Internet-related statistics with source notes. 21 December 1999. Revised 1 October 2000. Michael A. Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa in Ontario, serves as consulting editor to BNA for this Internet law news service. Subscribers receive email summaries of the latest Internet and e-commerce law news from worldwide sources by email every weekday. 13 July 1999. Revised 25 June 2007. The site offers a well-organized collection of digested case law on topics involving the Internet. A sampling includes advertisements online, blogs, copyright, e-mail, jurisdiction, meta tags and spam. A search engine helps you find full-text or digested cases, articles and more. There is also a subject index for browsing the digest. If you would like to receive periodic updates about new cases, the site offers an e-mail service. 18 March 2003. Patent attorney and law professor Gene Quinn comments on cases and other news pertaining to intellectual property, Internet and antitrust law. The site also offers a weekly newsletter by email. 6 March 2003. Kroll OnTrack, a technology forensics consulting firm, offers a small collection of resources. These include a glossary of technical terms, a list of briefly annotated court decisions on electronic discovery and computer forensics issues, articles about electronic discovery and computer forensics and information about related court rules and statutes for a few jurisdictions. 20 November 2003. Cindy Chick, former co-editor of LLRX.com, recently launched a Weblog on law library technology and knowledge management. Since Cindy works with knowledge management issues on a day-to-day basis, LawLibTech should be a great resource. Currently, in addition to knowledge management, topics covered include PDF, search engines, spam and virtual libraries. 23 August 2005. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers information about liability issues for bloggers. The guide provides an overview of common legal issues for those who post public comments, several FAQs covering intellectual property issues, online defamation law, Section 230 protections and privacy issues. It also provides information for bloggers who act as journalists; that is, bloggers who report news gathered from confidential sources or those who want to secure access to information as media. 13 September 2000. Dennis Kennedy, a Thompson Coburn LLP lawyer, who practices intellectual property and information technology law, offers this compilation of his previously published legal technology articles. Arranged by subject, revised and updated, the articles deal with various aspects of legal technology. "Chapters" include:
Thinking About Legal Technology (e.g., document management, leasing)
E-Mail Lessons (e.g., 10 habits of highly effective e-mailers)
Hardware Lessons (e.g., hard drive size, laptops)
Internet Lessons (e.g., resources, intranets, extranets)
Law Firm Web Page Lessons (e.g., promotion, design, maintenance), and more!
Consisting of sixteen chapters, this online "book" covers just about every aspect of law and technology. 29 May 2001. Line56 offers various products and services for the business-to-business e-commerce market. Researchers looking for hard to find information about private B2B companies may want to start here.
Line56's B2B Company Directory helps you find businesses by B2B category. It also occasionally profiles businesses in the directory. Profiles offer a brief business description, press releases, contact information, business status (e.g., private), number of employees, and the names and positions of people in management.
B2B Finance tracks the current B2B stock market and offers profiles of B2B public companies. Profiles offer a brief business description, ticker symbol, current stock market performance, press releases, articles from Line56 Magazine, contact information, business status (e.g., public), number of employees, and the names and positions of people in management.
Finally, B2B Research offers analyst and research reports related to the B2B market.
This personal page offers links to articles and news on legal issues associated with linking and framing. 16 May 2000. Professor Michael Rappa and North Carolina State University offer this electronic commerce educational resource. Find lectures that you can watch with the aid of RealVideo as well as articles on topics like Net-centrism, navigation, digital design, web metrics, and more. Each article offers citations to independent sources of additional information as well as news stories, broadcasts, and forums.
Forums cover issues like COPPA, Net privacy, employer surveillance, intellectual property, and others. The site is a virtual gold mine of information related to electronic commerce. Don't miss it! 21 December 1999. Yedidya Melchior, currently a law student in Israel offers a periodic email newsletter on computer and Internet law issues. Researchers may subscribe via this link. They may also browse the online archive, which dates back to March 1999. 25 February 2000. This site provides one of the few domain name search engines that retrieves .edu registrations in addition to the usual, .com, .org, and .net. It also found possible matches when I entered a phrase rather than a string of characters (e.g., enter virtual chase instead of virtualchase). n@medroppers.com also searches for matching strings within a domain name, something Whois alone cannot achieve (e.g., finds domains like businessresearcher.com upon a search for researcher).
As if these features aren't sufficient, the site offers an advanced query page whereby researchers may exclude terms (e.g., search for law within a domain name, but not lawyer or lawyers).
Upon finding a match, researchers may then click on the Whois link to read the domain registration record.
18 March 2003. The Web site of the National Fraud Information Center (NFIC) assists visitors in filing and documenting complaints about telemarketing or Internet-based fraud. Read the latest news about telemarketing and Internet scams, or learn how to combat fraud. The site also provides an extensive list of links to related government and law enforcement agencies. Established during 1992 by the National Consumers League, the NFIC receives its funding from this group and others, including Bank of America, MCI, Microsoft and Verizon. 12 September 2000. What word appears more frequently than any other in the meta-tag keyword field? Answer: family. "Sex" ranks in tenth place. What percentage of domain names end in .com (comparing .edu, .gov, .net, .org, and .com)? Answer: 79% as of September 4th. What is the percentage of active Web sites (have content and are not down)? Answer: 46% as of August 8th. How many new domains are registered weekly? Answer: 380,000 as of June 27th.
If you seek a fact about the Internet, NetFactual.com may have it. It supplies statistics and other facts about domains, Web technology, and e-commerce. 21 December 1999. The site offers a dictionary of Internet terminology. Definitions are easy to read and include examples when relevant. 2 October 2003. The Information Technology and Technical Assistance Training Center (ITTATC) of the Georgia Institute of Technology makes available an annotated table of state laws, policies, standards or guidelines, and other resources on Web accessibility. Find a summary of these documents along with links to the original sources. Perkins Coie LLP offers this current digest of U.S. and international court cases pertaining to Internet law. Browse the digest by topic. The site provides reported citations and links to decisions, when available, as well as court information and synopses of opinions. 8 November 2007. Tabatha Marshall, a self-proclaimed phishbaiter, maintains this listing of companies alleged to be involved in online scams, especially those targeting job seekers. The list provides at least some of the following information: company name, affiliated businesses, type of alleged scams, e-mail contacts, contact names, associated phone numbers, source/s for the phone numbers, primary business address, source for the business address, Web site/s, Web page/s, and sample of the e-mail scam. Please note: While this is an excellent starting point for research on a suspicious company, you should take care to verify the information you find. Ms. Marshall's Web site, including the PhishBucket, is the subject of a defamation lawsuit filed in federal court (Middle District) in Florida on 1 November 2007 (6:07-CV-1740-ORL-22KRS). 5 October 2001. his subscription-based site compliments the newsletter, Internet Law & Regulation. It offers recent developments, primary source documents including legislation, statutes, reports, foreign law documents, and more, topical case digests, case law, forms related to providing Web-based services, pleadings, and more. 29 October 2007. The law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, maintains this blog on privacy and security law. Lawyers comment on events in the news and legal developments, such as court decisions and state or federal legislation. The blog has an RSS feed and e-mail alert service for keeping up with new postings. The topics links on the home page take you directly to related commentary. You will also find this subject index in the site map. 19 June 2002. The law firm Baker & McKenzie compiles legal resources pertaining to privacy and data protection issues. These include commentary and primary sources of U.S. state law and the laws of various foreign countries. Please note: As of this writing, the Pennsylvania page contains incorrect legal citations. The links lead to the Pennsylvania Code (codified state regulations) not to Pennsylvania statutes, as indicated. 22 November 2000. This site offers summaries, and links to, current news items worldwide related to the Internet and information. It also provides free email delivery and appears to publish weekly. Articles appear mostly in English, but occasionally also in German and French.
The site maintains a searchable archive of issues going back to the first, published on 14 October 1997. It also offers a detailed subject index.
The author is Richard Swetenham. I found no information on the site, however, regarding his credentials. 12 November 2002. Domain Dossier queries domains ending in .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info to find registered domains, active Web sites, active email systems, and top-ranking results from Google. 8 May 2000. SearchEngineWatch offers an annotated index of articles relating to disputes over Web site issues. Arranged by subject, researchers easily may find several incidents concerning advertising, domain names, linking, government regulation, meta tags, meta search (issue is obtaining agreement to query another site's index), patents, privacy, and trademarks. 20 June 2002. The law firm Baker & McKenzie compiles legal resources pertaining to security law, including digital signatures, public key infrastructure, and cybercrime. These include commentary and primary sources of U.S. federal and state law and the laws of various foreign countries, as well as, uniform laws, conventions and treaties. 20 June 2002. John Marshall Law School professor David E. Sorkin offers easy access to U.S. federal and state, as well as European Union and other country, laws regarding mass email. The site covers both enacted laws and proposed legislation. 23 January 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. Attorney Kevin Heller comments on copyright, trademark, parody, fair use, and technology law issues. His comments consist of short remarks on news items, court decisions, Web sites, and more. Moreover, he links to sources so that you can continue to research whatever strikes your fancy. The RSS news feed appears to reproduce the entire blog entry. 30 May 2001. It in own words, "TechAgreements is a research tool for those looking for model legal forms and competitive information on publicly disclosed deals in the Internet, Computer and Telecom industries." Search by company name or keyword, or browse agreements by industry.
The site offers a brief summary of the agreement including the date it was signed and number of pages. You pay per agreement to access the full-text. TechAgreements.com helpfully supplies a line item for entering billing references.
18 December 2007. The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) released the 9th edition of The Digital Economy Factbook. Co-written by Stephen McGonegal, President of Independent Analysis, Inc., and PFF Research Associate Daniel B. Britton, the fact book contains statistics and other information on the digital economy. Its 7 chapters comprise the following topics: The Growth of the Internet, The Hardware Sector, The Communications Sector, Digital Media, Electronic Commerce, Threats to the Digital Economy, and The Worldwide Digital Economy.
According to PFF, "[t]his year's edition of the popular publication contains an expanded chapter on the worldwide digital economy. The section focuses on both global statistics and information from three important regions: Europe, China and India.... The data and statistics included in the book are the most up to date available in the years 2006 to 2007." 22 January 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. Intellectual property lawyer Martin Schwimmer comments on trademark-related events and issues. One of my favorite postings explains the importance and complexity of trademark searching. The news feed provides the headline and lead sentence. 22 April 2003. Ignus, a technology company, offers a WHOIS look-up utility. Enter a complete domain to find the WHOIS record. TRUEWHOIS queries .com, .net, .org, gov, .edu, .mil, .us and other top-level domains (TLDs), as well as select country TLDs. This utility does not query partial domain names. 21 April 2000. McGuire Woods Consulting and the law firm, McGuire Woods Battle & Boothe, LLP offer this excellent source of UCITA legislative news and developments. UCITA is the mnemonic for Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act. Find an explanation of the controversial uniform law. Discover state legislative efforts, links to Web sites supporting or opposing the legislation, and links to news and trade industry articles about UCITA. This site offers articles, a case law and statute index, and an extensive bibliography of print and online sources. 20 May 2003. Patrick L. Jones, a lawyer with the District of Columbia law firm Silverberg, Goldman & Bikoff, LLP, provides news and information about domain name disputes and related legal issues. Also find a briefly annotated list of domain name disputes with links to the full-text of the decision. 21 December 1999. Cornell Legal Information Institute offers the full-text of the Uniform Commercial Code as a searchable hypertext document. Professional researchers should note this version does not include the 1994 revised Article 8 nor the 1995 revised Article 5. The text appears to be a 1992 edition. 20 May 2003. The Cornell Legal Information Institute, The Markle Foundation and the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution offer this database, which contains decisions from several sources, including the National Arbitration Forum and the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. Find the names of the parties, the domain name and registrar, a procedural history, the factual background, the respective parties' contentions, a discussion and findings of the panel as well as the panel's decision. Advanced search features enable several limiting options, including by date, trademark, respondent's interest, bad faith allegations or outcome. 22 April 2008. Writer and intellectual property attorney, Benjamin Duranske, blogs about legal issues that affect virtual worlds, or 3-dimensional networked environments where people come together to interact in some way. "Many people, including me," writes Duranske, "[B]elieve that we aren’t just seeing a bunch of play and social places, but the emergence of the 3D internet. Basically, we think that the internet is going to look more like an interactive movie than a newspaper in 5-10 years. If this is right, whatever legal issues you see involving web sites now, you’re going to see involving 3D spaces in the future."
As Duranske points out, we don't have to await the future to experience the legal issues. Plenty of comments already appear in the Virtual Law subcategories, which include familiar topics such as contract law and criminal law. The blog also features RSS feeds for posts and comments. 8 February 2000. Revised 7 August 2002. Formerly the Lycos Tech Glossary, this handy site defines technical terms. What is a smurf attack? Why does my Web hosting service want to ping me? What is POTS and how does it differ from DSL? Find the answers using this dictionary. 11 March 2008. Find a nifty, easy-to-use utility for discovering who hosts a Web site at a particular domain. Once you have the Web host, the next step to discovering who owns the site may require sending the host a subpoena, assuming the information isn't apparent in the domain name registration record. 5 August 2002. Revised 14 November 2003. Whois Source provides a WHOIS look-up utility for domains registered with the following gTLDs: .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz or .us. Search by partial or full domain name, or keyword, to find registration records. A legend in the search results indicates whether the domain is a registered and active Web site, parked, redirected, registered with no Web site, on hold status, deleted and available or never registered. Details include the Web site title, description and keywords (generated from meta tags), number of listings in the Open Directory Project, availability via Yahoo, reverse IP look-up, IP address and more. This is an excellent utility for investigating domains and Web site ownership. 22 April 2003. This utility queries over 1100 domain extensions to find the owner of a domain. While it claims to search partial, as well as complete, domain names, it did not process searches for partial names during our visit. The site provides a complete list of TLDs covered. 11 September 2002. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides a database of UDRP (Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy) cases and panel decisions. Search by WIPO case number, disputed domain name, or keyword to find a case summary, domain names involved, complainants, respondents, and the result of the decision. Click the hyperlinked result to find the full-text of the decision. Oikoumene Online Marketing offers articles, annotated links to relevant government publications, news, and more.
The site employs an annoying introductory message for every hit to the home page. Researchers who can put up with it will find much of value here. |
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