10 February 2024

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today…

That AOL had to potentially pay (sorry, it doesn't scan, but this is the 'net after all in an infinitely-reflexive inquiry). It's still good law, as much because it's civil procedure as it is copyright law or law (hah!) of the 'net: If you're required to establish a contact point and take steps to ensure you don't have to deal with people using the published contact point, you don't get any benefit of having provided the contact point. That's a hint to online providers who provide only FormMail-like web interfaces for making complaints about IP and unfair-competition infringments: You'd better actually read things that come in, even if it's inconvenient (or inconsistent with your ideology) inappropriate to respond, let alone do anything.

Internet law that remains citeable, and is cited, two decades later.

ETA (17 Feb 2024) This was a scheduled post that the "scheduling" system glitched for unknown reasons. So sorry, "technical difficulties" not yet resolved (this is a manual force-post). I will refrain from commenting on the irony, because if you don't get it immediately it'll take about 500 words to unwrap — by which time it will no longer have any hint of amusement, only of pedantry.