Wireless Span

Verizon Wireless just won a lawsuit against a company who was sending unsolicited text messages to their customers. The owner of the company Specialized Programming and Marketing LLC was forced to pay up to two hundred thousand dollars in damages, and are also prohibited from sending spam messages to Verizon customers. The company sent nearly one hundred thousand of these messages. The messages usually contained content about potentially winning a vacation.

Some spam is harmless other then the additional time and money it requires to read the message. However, some spam is trying to defraud the recipient or may cause computer problems. Also the way in which these spammer's attain our email addresses can be through breaking the law and actually stealing email lists from major companies or from service providers. I think this is a great win for Verizon Wireless but also for all Internet and cell phone carriers, because these spammer's are able to operate at such low costs to themselves, while passing costs onto the recipient of the message and also the carrier who is transporting the message. Usually spammer's are mainly big companies who are trying to market a product or a scheme, and unfortunately big companies usually have money and the means to fight off these lawsuits. However, it should be thought about to attack the individuals sending the spam and working for these companies. That may be a more viable solution to putting an end to spam.

File Sharing

I have previously written about the record industries assault on people who they believe are illegally copying their materials. Although I do believe that peer to peer file sharing is something that is wrong, and should be regulated. I just don't think there is a good enough solution out there at the moment. Up until now the only solution has been for record companies to exert their power and money through frivolous lawsuits against people who are most likely sharing files and stealing music, but there is really no hard evidence that would be sufficient enough in court for the record companies to win.

However, now in California lawmaker's are trying to curb the instances of file sharing, and also the frivolous lawsuits by record companies. The idea is to require all people who are sharing files through peer to peer sharing to be required to publish their real name and address' when sharing copyrighted files with other people. If you do not publish your information you would be subject to a 2500$ fine and up to a year in jail.

I think if this law is passed in California it would be a good experiment to see if it really stopped people from sharing copyrighted materials. If it were me, and I was forced to publish my personal information like that then I would stop sharing files in a heart beat. Since not only is your personal information out for the whole world to see, but the record companies would have no trouble linking you back to file sharing since there is a paper trail right in front of that that leads right back to your front door.

MySpace

A judge in Texas has recently dismissed a 30 million dollar civil suit against News Corp. the parent company of MySpace.com. The suit was brought about by the family of a 13 year old girl who claims she was sexually assaulted by a 19 year old man she met on MySpace. They were sueing MySpace alleging that it was their fault, because the website has no measures to protect the children who use the social networking site.

The judge dismissed the case citing that MySpace and News Corp. are protected under the Communications Decency Act, and that forcing the site to verify the age of it's users would be nearly impossible and force the site to practically shut down.

MySpace has over 100 million registered users. Even if there were some sort of way to enact safety measures to protect the site's users especially the young ones. There still needs to be responsibility on the parents part. The fact that they would allow their young daughter to join MySpace, and then to not even monitor her activity seems negligent. Everybody knows the Internet is not a safe place, and even the most secure of sites has it's flaws. Educating America's youth about the dangers of the web needs to be at the forefront of society. The parents of this 13 year old girl dropped the ball, and they are lucky their daughter was not seriously harmed.

The criminal trial for the 19 year old young man has yet to begin, but I believe the judge in the matter of the civil suit against MySpace was correct in his judgment, and hopefully this is a lesson to parents out there, because it is up to them to protect their children about the Internet, and not some website

Downloading Music

Downloading music for free on the internet is something that has greatly affected the music industry. After years of simply trying to deter people from illegally downloading music by posting warnings, and letting the general public know of the harm that is caused by stealing music. The music industry began to fight back by forming lawsuits against the people they were able to catch stealing music.
However, the music industry may not be targeting the right individuals in their fight against piracy. Evidence of this would be an ongoing lawsuit between a sixteen year old boy and five major record labels. The alleged privacy occurred nearly five years ago when the boy was eleven years old. To this young man and his families credit they are not just rolling over and settling they are fighting back with a countersuit, that attacks all the major problems of record companies trying to come after individuals and how they can disseminate who actually illegally downloaded music, and who was abiding by the vague laws.
In the countersuit they claim that there were not adequate warnings about downloading music, and that the record industry is trying to defraud the courts of America with its eighteen thousand frivolous lawsuits that are currently clogging up the federal court system. It will be interesting to see how this case plays out and what reproductions it will have for the future of piracy law and lawsuits.