Welcome to Legal Musings where I try to blog about something going on in the legal world.  Often the topic will include writing, copyright..etc.  Sometimes it won’t.

There’s an interesting case where a guy named Parker sued Google. Parker lost at the federal district court level, and the Third Circuit Appellate Court affirmed.  Here’s the complete cite:  Parker v Google, Inc., 242 Fed.App, 833 (CA3 2007).  Also, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so this is the end for it.

Basically, Parker wrote the book, 29 reasons To Not Be a Nice Guy.  Somebody posted #6 on one of Google’s global system of online bulletin boards.  (The archive contains more than 845 million messages).  So, Parker sued Google for this, also claiming that Google provided users with links to websites that portrayed him negatively when users utilized Google’s Internet search engine.

The court held in favor of Google, “Parker’s allegations failed to assert any volitional conduct on the part of Google.”  Parker at 837.  Basically, since Google didn’t post the item, it was shielded from liability for the copyright infringement.  In fact, the court compared Google to a company providing copiers for use (and cited the Fourth Circuit.) “A copy machine owner who makes the machine available to the public to use for copying is not, without more, strictly liable under [the Copyright Act] for illegal copying by a customer.” 373 F.3d at 550.

So, Parker’s second cause of action was for vicarious liability…meaning that Google was liable because it allowed the posting.  Parker lost because “he failed to allege that Google had the requisite knowledge of a third-party’s infringing activity.”  Parker at 838.

So this opens up the question…what if Google had known?  That type of case has to be coming down the pipeline, and when I find it, I’ll post all about it.

Parker also got his butt kicked on his claims for invasion of privacy, defamation and negligence because Google has immunity under the Communications Decency Act (CDA).  The CDA is a federal law I’ll dig into sometime in the future.  (Some of it has been struck down).  Not today.  For today, just know that the CDA shields companies like Google if all the requirements are met.

Also, the court declined to award attorney fees to Google (often they’re awarded to the winner) because the internet is new law and nobody quite knows the answers regarding it yet.

Today, I’m at the RT Booklovers Convention in LA.  If you’re around, stop by.  Here’s the website:  RT Booklovers Convention.

CYA Disclaimer:  This is not legal advice.  You’re a moron if you take this as legal advice.  If you need legal advice, find a lawyer.  Yes, I’m a lawyer.  But I’m not your lawyer.  I’m providing my analysis of interesting stuff on the internet.  I am not representing you or giving you legal advice.  As much as I’d like to.  🙂 

Hell yes, it’s stealing.  Seriously. 

Welcome to Legal Musings…where I try to find a blog niche and talk about the law.  Yes, I’m a lawyer.  Yes, I hope to include a lot of legal analysis dealing with being an author.  But I might digress into other legal areas…because there’s some weird stuff going on in the law.

So, what is Senate Bill 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act…and where is it today?  Well, it’s a Bill that was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Leahy from Vermont that allows the government to go after pirates.  By pirates, I don’t mean Captain Hook.  I mean the blood sucking, evil, narcissistic people thumbing their noses at karma and stealing books on the internet.  Dante has a brand new, special level of hell for those folks.

But, I digress.  About the current status of the law…The Bill spent some time in committee, and needs to be re-introduced. 

On February 16, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings and Scott Turow, one of my favorite authors and the president of the Author’s Guild, gave testimony. 

First, Senator Leahy testified, “I am confident that we will pass legislation to target rogue websites this year. I want to hear from all sides as we move forward, but I refuse to accept that addressing the problem is too difficult because people who want to steal will always find a way. That is like saying that we should not prosecute drug crimes or child pornography because bad people will find a way to do bad things anyway. I am a former prosecutor, and that line of argument is unacceptable.”  See Judiciary transcript for full text.

Scott Turow testified and gave some amazing examples of online piracy.  “One is tempted to call it a vast underground economy, but there’s nothing underground about it: it operates in plain sight…Money clearly suffuses the system, paying for countless servers, vast amounts of online bandwidth, and specialized services that speed and cloak the transmission of stolen creative work.” 

Turow then gave specific examples of the most prolific of pirates, stating that it was time to make piracy not so secret, calling for online providers to register an agent for service of process (just like any business in the US has to do).  He had several recommendations…read the full text here.

Is anyone besides the pirates against the Bill?  YES.  There are groups up in arms about the former text of the Bill, claiming it would allow the U.S. Government to shut down every site from YouTube to Yahoo. So the text may have been over-broad.  I think that’s why it went back to committee and they’re holding hearings now.  To clarify the text.

Finally, Nora Roberts, the Queen of Romance, submitted a letter to the Judiciary Committee in support of the Act.  She asked, “If piracy continues to devastate a writer’s income, to erode the ability of the publishers to make the profit necessary to bring those books to the public, where will the next generation of storytellers come from?”  The woman can write!  The full text of her letter is up on the RWA website. 

So…the current status of the law is that they’re working on the law.  I’ll try to keep you updated.

Hi all!  So, I’ve been working on a book trailer for CLAIMED.  It’s a bit rough and I’ll work with it some more, but this is what I have so far:

I kill people in books.  It’s true.  The lady who cuts me off for a parking spot, the bat-sh*t crazy chick who yells at me in a bar…even the lady at the post office who growls at my many packages.  They die.  And hard.

One of the most cathartic things to do is work out your demons via writing.  Of course, you often end up passing emails to your critique partner titled, “Best place to bury a dead body,” or “Do you think I could snap a neck with a stapler?”  In the name of research, of course.  Other fun notes we pass back and forth: 

• Does the human body really bend that way?
• I don’t think a man would really call that “Tonto.”
• Your heroine already fell off the bed – there’s no way he can reach her now.
• I think the grave should be deeper.
• I’m not sure they’d eat his liver first.

So, one of the many fun things about being a writer is that you can talk pretty much about anything.  In one of my works in progress, my heroine stumbles upon a marijuana growing farm.  Well, my husband was using my laptop and went to ‘favorites’ for our bank’s URL.

He finished banking and asked, “Why do you have the ‘hydroponic marijuana guide’ listed as a favorite?”  My answer:  “So I wouldn’t forget the name.”  What’s cool is that he nodded, because that made perfect sense to him.  He lives with a writer.

So, welcome to the St. Patrick’s Day Blog Hop!  Make sure you leave a comment at the end for a chance to win the Kindle 3–as well as a bunch of books, including FATED.  This time, the organizers of the blog sent out a list of words and a challenge for us to incorporate them in our stories.  I’ve made the important words green for easy counting.  🙂

The Mark of the Leprechaun

“Why is it green?”  Emily asked, leaning forward from her comfortable chair to peer at Jordan’s nipple.  He’d stormed inside, interrupting what should’ve been a relaxing afternoon by the fire.

He let out a low growl.  “The damn leprechaun marked me with a shamrock shape.  Last night at the tavern.  When I find that little monster, I’ll take my leather boot to his head.”

“Okay.  We can figure this out.  Don’t get your knickers in a bunch.”  Her mind spun.  Green.  Not the green marking.

 The smile he flashed was all teeth.  Pure, pissed off vampire.  “I don’t wear knickers.”

No.  He didn’t.  The damn man went commando, actually.  “Okay.  Let’s keep calm here.”  She tugged on her earlobe, forgetting once again about the nervous habit.  “So.  We need to leave Dublin and ride out to the Blarney Stone.  Legend has it if you kiss the stone, you won’t turn entirely green.”  Probably.  A green vampire.  Interesting.  She just couldn’t tell people she was in love with a green vampire.  They had to fix this.

“I’m not kissing the Blarney Stone.”  Jordan reached for the sidetable to pour a whiskey.  He downed it in one gulp.  His tongue darted out to lick his lips and she fought a groan.  Sexy.  Even facing certain greenhood, the vamp was sexy.

“Yes you are.”  She leapt to her feet, dislodging the book from her lap.  Damn him.  She knew what he planned.  “You can’t seriously think to outsmart a leprechaun.”

“Don’t need to outsmart him.”  Jordan glanced at the fireplace.  “I hid his pot of gold.  If he wants it back, he’ll remove the marking.”

Emily chewed her fingernail.  “If you make him mad, he’ll never take away the marking.”

“You don’t cuddle a leprechaun, sweetheart.  You take his gold and kick his ass.”

She stood.  “I took the pot of gold out from behind the fireplace and hid it.”

The air shifted.  Jordan’s golden eyes flashed.  “Excuse me?”

 Fire flashed down to her toes and her breath caught.  She struggled to concentrate.  “You took the gold because he sent me that pretty silk scarf with the large shamrock on it.  You were being silly.  So I planned to give him back his pot of gold.”  Honestly.  A vampire jealous of a leprechaun.

“Is that a fact?”  Jordan’s voice lowered to a rumble that echoed along her skin.  “Well then.  We’ll take him his gold, he can remove this marking and then I’ll make good use of the silk scarf.”

She smiled.  Now that was a plan.

Here are the words and point values:

love 1
smile 1
kiss 1
tongue 1
cuddle 2
nipple 2
earlobe 2
fingernail 2
green 3
fireplace 3
book 3
whiskey 3
ride 4
Dublin 4
shamrock 4
knickers 4
silk scarf 5
leather boot 5
Pot of Gold 5
Blarney Stone 5
“Why is it green?” 10