"The Wild West days of the Internet's digital frontier could be tamed, as bloggers await the outcome of a lawsuit in which one of their own was sued for comments posted on his Web log or "blog.""

"... in what could be the beginning of the end for the Big Music cartel's vicious sue 'em all marketing campaign, RIAA victim Tanya Andersen has just counter-sued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices"

"A WOMAN who was sued by the Recording Industry of America for file-sharing has countersued the outfit for hacking. Tanya Andersen, a 41-year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation."

"The Canadian Internet law community is buzzing about this month's release of two new cases from Ontario and British Columbia that focused on the jurisdiction of Canadian courts over content posted online."

"A California judge ruled Friday that Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. don't have to send individual warnings to thousands of consumers whose personal account information was stolen during a high-tech heist uncovered earlier this year. "I don't see the emergency," San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer said in rejecting a request for an order against the nation's two largest credit card associations. "I don't think there is an immediate threat of irreparable injury" to consumers."

"A bank whose website was incorrectly identified by Earthlink%92s anti-phishing toolbar as "potentially fraudulent" cannot sue the ISP, a judge ruled last week, finding that Earthlink was not the publisher of the information in terms of a US law."

"The unanimous ruling by a three-judge Court of Appeals panel upholds a trial judge's pretrial ruling in favor of a man who had sued a mortgage company in 2001 after it sent two unsolicited text messages to his cell phone. Rodney L. Joffe claimed that the calls by Acacia Mortgage Corp. violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991."

"The Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled on Friday that Ontario courts do not have jurisdiction to hear a $10 million damages claim by a Guinean national, resident in Ontario, over articles published by The Washington Post in 1997, but still available online."

"George "Ed" Avila hopes a lawsuit that named him, his wife and others involved with the Canterbury Unofficial Town Forum as defendants will end soon with their names cleared. Resident Robert Noiseux filed a defamation suit in July against the Avilas, Jennifer Hart and Raymond Sulich, who are administrators of the Web forum."

"The mother of an 8-year-old boy who was handcuffed and accused of battery and assault on a kindergartner has filed a federal lawsuit against the Washoe County School District and two school officials... The lawsuit alleges that the detention and arrest of her son was without probable cause"

"A federal judge ruled that the state's do-not-call list law does not violate the First Amendment... Indiana's do-not-call law is one of the toughest in the nation, and allows charities to make solicitation calls only if they use employees or volunteers to make the calls. The charities that sued used professional telemarketers to solicit donations."

"Cliff Stanford, founder of Demon and Redbus, is planning to launch an appeal after receiving a suspended prison sentence for illegally intercepting emails... This is a landmark legal case as this is the first time anyone has been prosecuted for this offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) 2000, according to the defence counsel."

"the Heise Publishing House has filed a constitutional complaint against two rulings by courts in Munich. The judges had issued a ban prohibiting the publishing house from inserting a hyperlink to a foreign website in an online report."

"While a state investigation has concluded that North Branford Superintendent Dr. Robert Wolfe violated no privacy rights when he accessed an employee's school e-mail account, Wolfe still faces legal action from the aggrieved employee... state police who initially suspected that Wolfe might have violated a law that bars unauthorized people from copying electronic mail. According to police reports, two personal e-mails including one her attorney were forwarded from her account to Dr. Wolfe's on April 11."

"The trial at Southwark Crown Court began with the counsel for the defence asking for the judge to rule on certain legal arguments."

"...the gunmen's parents are fighting a newspaper's request for public release of the videos, audio recordings and writings Harris and Klebold made in the months before they killed 12 students and a teacher in April 1999. The Colorado Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday from The Denver Post, the parents and the Jefferson County sheriff's office, which also opposes the release."

"The Colorado Supreme Court blocked the release of hundreds of romantic or sexually explicit e-mails between the former Arapahoe County clerk and an employee, ruling Monday they were not public record. The Rocky Mountain News and Arapahoe County commissioners had sought the release of the e-mails, arguing they were public record because they were written on county computers."

"Brian and Sarah Doom were shocked when police showed up at their Wichita home accusing them of child pornography. The Dooms had never been in trouble with the law. On Aug. 12, 2004, they found themselves being accused of activity that disgusted them. But the police had the wrong house, based on mistaken information from the Dooms' Internet service provider, Cox Communications."

"A rave broken up in Spanish Fork Canyon last month may result in a restraining order against the Utah County Sheriff's Office... "We want a court order that while the lawsuit is pending, the sheriff cannot enforce the ordinance based upon his 'predictions' as to how long a concert may last," attorney Brian Barnard said in an e-mail to the Daily Herald."

"A community advocacy group is suing the State Board of Elections over an obscure rule the board says prohibits organizations from paying people to register voters. Leaders of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which filed the lawsuit yesterday in Montgomery County Circuit Court, say banning payment of voter-registration workers violates the group's freedom of speech."

"If you are a company that has been banned from Google for allegedly rigging search engine results on behalf of your clients, and people throughout the industry are talking smack about you, what do you do? You retain a lawyer and sue, claiming theft of trade secrets and libel."

""We just consider it to be a tremendous invasion of privacy," Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Robin Nicol said Friday. "Customers look at their wireless phones as one of the last bastions of privacy that they have.""

"Heise Zeitschriften Verlag [Heise Publishing House] will file a constitutional complaint against a decision by the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Munich. On July 28 2005 the OLG decided that the publishing house's news service heise online was not permitted to insert a hyperlink to the software manufacturer Slysoft. According to the management's assessment this ban constituted an inadmissible infringement of the freedom of the press guaranteed by Article 5 of Germany's Basic Law (GG), the management of the publishing house declared."

"A graduate student has sued three term-paper Web sites, accusing them of selling one of her terms papers without her permission. The case could be the first of its kind, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The student (Blue Macellari) has sued the operator (Rusty Carroll) of the Web sites, and a company he owns (R2C2 Inc.) alleging violation of copyright, invasion of privacy, and damage to her reputation. She seeks $100,000 in damages."

"... In separate lawsuits, believed to be the first of their kind by a U.S. wireless provider against telemarketing firms, Verizon Wireless is seeking injunctions against the two companies, Intelligent Alternatives of San Diego, CA, and Resort Marketing Trends of Coral Springs, FL, that apparently made hundreds of thousands of calls to cell phone customers using pre-recorded messages and auto-dialers in violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act as well as state laws."

"In a legal case being watched closely by bloggers, an Internet company has sued the owner of a Web log for comments posted to his site by readers... Traffic-Power.com sued Aaron Wall... alleging defamation and publication of trade secrets. The suit, filed in a Nevada state court earlier this month, also listed as defendants several unnamed users of the blog. At issue are statements posted in the comments section of Mr. Wall's blog..."

"City resident Robert Johnson was shocked last fall when he saw an old military photograph of himself on a mass-mailing advertisement by Milford Photo. Johnson, who took the photograph to Milford Photo nearly two years ago to have it restored, filed a lawsuit against the company in Superior Court Thursday. Bridgeport Attorney Jeff Beck, who is handling the case for Johnson, said the photograph appeared in three "Valu Pack" mailings."

"Hollywood studios filed a new round of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday, for the first time using peer-to-peer companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online."

"A federal court judge ruled last week that a jury must hear several of the claims included in former Board of Education member Clifton Freedman's privacy rights lawsuit against the town, and called for juror selection to begin in early September."

"A major online advertising company that has been accused by security experts of fueling the spyware problem says it is taking legal action against seven people in six countries who, it claims, used viruses to spread ad software to thousands of computers without their owners' consent."

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation -- a nonprofit organization that works to preserve freedom and privacy on the Internet -- has decided to challenge new laws in Michigan and Utah that would tax senders of ordinary e-mail while leaving spammers untouched."

"... "I didn't do anything wrong," she said. "Why should I pay them?" She never used the Kazaa program - one of the networks that facilitates file sharing - that was downloaded onto her computer, she said. She didn't even know what it was before she was sued, she said. The Kazaa account name in the lawsuit belongs to a friend of her children's, not to her or anyone in her house, she said."

"The digital equivalent of homemade tapes are the next target of the Recording Industry Association of America. After asserting that the RIAA's educational and lawsuit strategies were working to stall the illegal downloading of music, the organization's president and chief executive Mitch Bainwol told music retailers Friday that burning and ripping is a greater threat to the industry."

"Kiss-and-tell is as old as love itself. Fortunately, most indiscreet paramours limit their blabbing to a few confidants. Not Jessica Cutler. In May 2004, she spilled out the graphic details of her sexual exploits on Capitol Hill on a blog accessible to hundreds of millions of Internet users. Now a federal lawsuit by one of her past lovers has set up a potentially high-stakes battle between privacy and speech rights and could give new meaning to the idea of safe sex in a wired world."

"A federal lawsuit claims officials of an upstate town issued five false criminal subpoenas to make Time Warner Cable identify the RoadRunner e-mail subscribers who were anonymously criticizing emergency services."

"A lawsuit seeking to identify anonymous posters to an Internet Web log will be decided in the Delaware Supreme Court, a case some say could set precedents for free speech online. The case, filed last year by Smyrna Town Councilman Patrick J. Cahill and his wife Julia, alleges that four anonymous posters to a community issues blog "defamed" the councilman and his wife in late 2004."

"A California state court has ordered CardSystems Solutions Inc. and three other defendants in a class-action lawsuit to preserve evidence related to a major breach of the Atlanta credit-card processor's computer systems. The court also has set a date for CardSystems, along with MasterCard International Inc., Visa U.S.A. Inc. and Merrick Bank Corp., to argue over who bears ultimate responsibility for informing customers of the breach (see "Security breach may have exposed 40M credit cards")."

"The New York Civil Liberties Union will file suit against the city Thursday to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said. The suit, which will be filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, will claim that the two-week old policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and prohibitions against unlawful searches and seizures, while doing almost nothing to shield the city from terrorism."

"In the legal dispute between Heise Zeitschriften Verlag and eight companies in the music industry, the Intermediate Court of Appeals (OLG) of Munich has upheld the ruling of a lower court. heise online can thus continue to report about software that can be used to crack copy-protection mechanisms on DVDs. However, heise still may not provide a hyperlink to the homepage of a vendor of such software."

"Matthew Righetti says companies that leak consumer data should be forced to pay. But the San Francisco plaintiffs lawyer can't say how much. Or, for that matter, whether any court would agree with him."

"Australian ISP ComCen Internet Services last week lost a copyright case brought against it and its customer Stephen Cooper by the Australian music industry over links on Cooper%92s website to thousands of illegal music file downloads. It is thought to be the first time that an ISP has been found liable for copyright infringement by allowing its infrastructure to be used for linking to music files."

"Andrew Schultz was just one of many consumers whose banks notified them last month that computer hackers had filched their credit- and debit-card information. Now Mr. Shultz may help decide who is liable. The Marin County, Calif., salesman, along with two other plaintiffs, has filed a class-action lawsuit in California Superior Court in San Francisco against CardSystems Solutions Inc., which last month acknowledged that hackers had obtained information on approximately 200,000 credit- and debit-card accounts."

"THE federal Court has found a website linking to illegal MP3s and the Sydney service provider that hosted liable under copyright infringement laws. The music business' copyright enforcer, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) said the ruling by Justice Tamberlin that internet service provider Com-Cen and parent company E-Talk Communications had been made liable by hosting the website was the first decision of its kind in Australia."

"... The court found that even though the Web site stated that answering the questionnaire would not create an attorney-client relationship, California law required that the information remain privileged and out of the drug maker's reach. Barton v. SmithKlineBeecham, No. 05-71086."

"A man arrested when police showed up to break up a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house has filed a lawsuit, arguing he has a constitutional right to get drunk on private property as long as he doesn't cause a public disturbance."

"The lawyer for a current and former township official who has asked to examine the computer hard drive of two accusers, has opened a hornet's nest that has now drawn the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit was filed in January by Charlene and Scott Uhrmann of Budd Lake, who claimed that current Township Councilman Bernhard Guenther and former Councilman David Scapicchio were were not entitled to thousands of dollars in health insurance coverage paid by the township. As part of his discovery process, the officials' lawyer, Ronald Heymann of Mount Olive, received approval from Superior Court Judge D. Hunt Dumont to examine the Uhrmanns' computer hard drive."

"A class action lawsuit filed after millions of credit card accounts were compromised by a data breach at payment processor CardSystems Solutions now also demands unspecified monetary damages for consumers and merchants. The amended complaint was filed on behalf of California credit card holders and card-accepting merchants Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco."

"Like most of us, Joe Wagner hates spam. Unlike most of us, he's doing something about it. Wagner, a 37-year-old mechanical engineer and founder of Hypertouch, a modest California internet services provider, has fired off several lawsuits against companies that he believes have violated the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing, or Can-Spam, Act."

"... "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court. At issue was whether the file-sharing services should be held liable even if they have no direct control over what millions of online users are doing with the software they provide for free. As much as 90 percent of songs and movies copied on the file-sharing networks are downloaded illegally, according to music industry filings."

"A federal lawsuit filed Thursday argues that a new Florida law requiring physicians to notify parents when their minor daughters seek abortions could endanger the girls by delaying emergency treatment. The Center for Reproductive Rights and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America hope to block the law before it takes effect July 1. The law covers girls 17 and under unless they are married or have already had a child."

"Stepping into the debate over repressed memory, the California Supreme Court decided Wednesday to review whether a famed memory scholar can be found liable for defaming and invading the privacy of the subject of a psychological case study. The court voted without dissent in a closed session to accept an appeal by UC Irvine psychology professor Elizabeth F. Loftus, who was sued after publishing what she called an "expose" of a case study in which a 17-year-old purportedly recalled a memory of her mother sexually molesting her 11 years earlier. Two lower courts had ruled that the lawsuit could go to trial."

"From www.epic.org: EPIC joined eight civil liberties organizations to submit a "friend of the court" brief (pdf) in Forensic Advisors v. Matrixx Initiatives, a case before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in which a pharmaceutical company is attempting to force a newsletter publisher to disclose his subscriber list. The company wants to use the list in connection with a law suit it filed against numerous unidentified people who posted derogatory comments about the company on Internet discussion boards. The brief argues in favor of protecting the list under a Maryland law that protects journalists' sources. It also argues that the list is protected under the First Amendment, since disclosure of the list would deter readership and violate constitutionally established privacy rights."