Random: Recent stories of interest

There's a lot out there that's happening, but I don't feel compelled to write in-depth on any of them, so this post is sort of a news-in-brief. By the way, if anyone's curious, my sources for stories and news are primarily: law email newsletters (Prof. Michael Geist's BNA News Highlights, Martin Samson's Internet Law Update, Declan McCullagh's Politech Newsletter, EFFactor EList, CDT Newsletter), online news sources (Wired, CNET, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, Salon, ect.), Blogs (Technorati, Boing Boing, ARS Technica, the blogs listed on the links page), and some other assorted sites. Almost all of it is freely available online...

I was inspired to mention my sources after reading this article in the New York Times about Wal-Mart's recent practice of using bloggers in its PR campaign. Interestingly, the article shows Wal-Mart in a fairly positive light, noting that the mega-corporation has been extremely forthcoming about what information it disseminates. The only issue was that the bloggers themselves often didn't mention where the information came from... although I don't know of any journalistic or PR platform that is completely transparent with its sources (one would assume this would dampen public discourse somewhat).

Speaking of the New York Times, there was an article yesterday about a deal reached by New York City on online cigarette vending. The settlement between Mayor Bloomberg and esmokes will allow the city to pursue residents for up to $35 million. From the article:

The most recent settlement was filed last Wednesday in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Tampa, Fla. The online cigarette vendor, eSmokes, agreed to give the city an electronic database of all its sales to addresses in New York State from 2000 to mid-2003. The company also agreed to stop selling cigarettes to customers in New York State. The company, which began operations in 1999, filed for bankruptcy protection last May.

...another example of the information gathering ability of the Internet used to persecute law-breakers. Also, there's the question of whether or not this sort of regulation remain in the realm of state (not federal) power for long (Supreme Court Case?). For more on this, check out my post on the recent actions of the Phillip Morris company.

As long as we're talking about questionably legal online commerce, I should mention this CNET article about a new company designed to allow the swapping of physical audio CDs, much like NetFlix allows the swapping of DVDs. The venture-backed company, La La Media, hopes that such a system will avoid the legal pitfalls of p2p networks.

And that's it for this week. Next week, I'll report on this weekend's IP law conference at Stanford entitled "Culture Environmentalism at 10." Featured speakers include Stanford's Lawrence Lessig, Duke's Jamie Boyle, Boalt Hall's Pamela Samuelson, Cardozo's Susan Crawford, among a long list of fantastic law professors. Plus, starting March 29th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from Ebay and MercExchange regarding the issue of permanent injunctions. Should be good.