An interesting question was brought up over at the Consumer Law & Policy blog yesterday. There is a legal gray area when it comes to debt collectors and voice mail or answering machines. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was enacted in 1977, when answering machines were not in common use. According to Jeff Sovern, debt collectors reach a legal dilemma when faced with such a device.
legal
Meet Sarah: She Paid $3,000 For Downloading Spice Girls Songs
By 5.14.07
Sarah Barg is a sophomore at University of Nebraska-Lincoln who used Ares to download 381 songs, most of them 80s ballads and “Spice Girls tunes.” When she got a letter threatening legal action, she thought it was a scam. Turns out, it wasn’t. Sarah’s parents had to fork over $3,000 to keep Sarah from being sued by the RIAA.
“Technically, I’m guilty. I just think it’s ridiculous, the way they’re going about it,” Barg said. “We have to find a way to adjust our legal policy to take into account this new technology, and so far, they’re not doing a very good job.”
Just for comparison’s sake, in Nebraska the maximum fine for a first time DUI is $500. And those are really illegal.—MEGHANN MARCO
Verizon Specifies How You're Allowed To Link To Its Site
By 5.4.07
Harry Maugans discovered that Verizon thinks it can stipulate how you link to their website.
Cingular Thinks It Can Sue You For Linking To Its Website
By 5.3.07
Cingular thinks it can determine who gets to link to their website, according to this snippet from their terms of service agreement. Somehow their lawyers operate under this misconception that they’re in a position of being to grant, or revoke, the “right” to create a hypertextual link to their site. The likely intent is to try to set the stage so that then they could basically sue someone for linking to their website.
MPAA's Most Wanted: MPAA Compiles List Of Top 25 "Pirate" Universities
By 4.2.07
It wasn’t too long ago that the RIAA compiled their list of the universities most infested by alleged music pirates, and now it seems the MPAA is following suit. The RIAA used their list to target universities, sending threatening letters to the school’s administration, insisting that they forward “settlement letters” to students who matched IP addresses the record companies had harvested from P2P sharing programs. Now the MPAA has a list of its own, compiled at the request of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. Read the list inside…
Fen-Phen Lawyers Run Off With $126 Million of $200 Million Settlement
By 3.27.07
W. L. Carter knew there was something fishy going on when he went to his lawyers’ office a few years ago to pick up his settlement check for the heart damage he had sustained from taking the diet drug combination fen-phen.
NPR Bites Back: Files Motion Against RIAA Internet Rate Increase
By 3.21.07
Today, on behalf of the public radio system, NPR filed a motion for rehearing with the Copyright Royalty Board in response to its March 2, 2007 decision on rates for streaming internet music. This action is the first step in NPR’s efforts to reverse the decision, and it will be followed by an appeal of the Board’s decision to be filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Yeah! They’re bringing the fight! According to Andi Sporkin, Vice President for Communications, NPR: “The Board’s decision to dramatically raise public radio stations’ rates was based on inaccurate assumptions and lack of understanding of the issues. The new rates inexplicably break with the longstanding tradition of recognizing public radio’s non-commercial, non-profit role, while the procedures we’re being asked to now undertake for measurement are non-existent, arbitrary and costly.” Read the filing inside.
JetBlue Defines "Controllable Irregularity" In New "Bill of Rights"
By 3.7.07
ATTENTION: No JetBlue coupons for delays caused by labor unrest!
Gawker Responds To Lycos' Aluminum Foil Sword Rattling
By 2.2.07
Lycos, don’t you have better things to do, like fade quietly into the night?
WABC Looking For Angry Cingular Customers
By 12.22.06
WABC wants to hear from NYC-area Cingular customers who are against the text-message rate price hike.
Ask The Fray: What’s The Legal Definition of ‘Subscribe?’
By 12.21.06
In the correction Cingular offered on our, “Break Your Cingular Contract Without Fee, Thanks 2 Txt Msg $ Raise” post, Cingular contends that text-messaging is not a service that users “subscribe” to.
We Interview Cingular About Cancelling Over Text Message Plans
By 12.20.06
JackLeaker: yes, I’m sure they are…
What Cingular Tells Customers Canceling Over Text Message Rates
By 12.20.06
This is what Cingular will probably tell you if you call up trying to get out of your cellphone contract and service without paying an early termination fee based on their recent text message rate raise.
Bill Gates: Don’t Buy DRM Music
By 12.15.06
- Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitimate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.
Get Your Free Legal Forms Here!
By 10.23.06
Need legal forms? A buying agreement? A selling agreement? Employment contract? A lease? A loan? The Internet Legal Research Group has enough of them to start building a Tower of Babel of Legalese.
