Monthly Archives: July 2011

I Used to Give This as a Hypo In Internet Law

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Now it’s real:

Boingo Wi-Finder is asking whether it can accept Terms of Service on my behalf. What does this mean?

Boingo Wi-Finder is asking whether it can accept Terms of Service on my behalf. What does this mean?

Boingo Wi-Finder may detect some third party companies operating Wi-Fi networks that may require acceptance to a user agreement, Terms of Service or other click-through contract (“TOS”) before access is granted to their networks. You can use Boingo Wi-Finder to automatically accept these agreements on your behalf.

The first time you use Boingo Wi-Finder at a free hotspot location, you’ll receive a pop-up notification, which will ask whether you want to use the Boingo Wi-Finder tool to automatically connect you to free third party Wi-Fi networks.

If you check the Terms of Service box, Boingo Wi-Finder will automatically accept all Terms of Service agreements on your behalf. Please keep in mind that if you select this option, you (and not Boingo) will assent to the Terms of Service of any third party Wi-Fi providers to which Boingo Wi-Finder connects.

If you prefer to review all Terms of Service agreements yourself, please do not check this box. You will still be able to manually search for third party Wi-Fi networks.

Can you give your software the capacity to validly contract on your behalf? Boingo thinks you can. On the one hand, this makes some sense — you want the fast automated service. But in classical contract terms, is there any meeting of the minds? Is advance agreement to basically anything (subject only to unconsionability?) really valid? Should an implicit term of reasonableness be read in here somewhere?

Posted in Internet, Law: Internet Law | 3 Comments

This is How You Win Elections

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I’m happy to see that the DCC has someone who gets how to win an election: start work early.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said it began robo calls today in several districts where lawmakers have encountered questions over campaign finances or other ethics problems. In Florida, Reps. David Rivera of Miami and Vern Buchanan of Sarasota get the treatment.

“Hi, this is Clare calling on behalf of the DCCC. Did you know Congressman David Rivera received over one hundred thousand dollars in secret payments from his mother’s company? The Miami-Dade Police Department’s Public Corruption Bureau and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are investigating Congressman Rivera for it,” reads the script, which also recounts an episode involving Rivera chasing down a truck that carried campaign material from his opponent.

from The Buzz

Posted in Politics: FL-25/FL-27 | 2 Comments

Bitcoin Compared Unfavorably to Game Currency

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Edward Castronova, the leading economist of online gaming, writes that “Experience with game currencies makes me skeptical about Bitcoin“.

Game currencies are good currencies. What are the features of those currencies?

  • You get money only by doing things that can be interpreted as “productive work.” No freebies or handouts, and nothing abstract. You don’t solve puzzles to get coin, you run FedEx quests. 
  • Mild inflation. As in the real world, mild inflation makes people happiest. Small enough to be unnoticeable in the short run, yet gives people a sense over time that their wealth and power is rising (even if it isn’t). 
  • It assumed that the currency will be hacked and exploited. A strong central authority is in place to seize illicit funds and roll back damage.

Bitcoins don’t have these features.

One thing, though: the last point is probably not consistent with strong anonymity. If you think that’s a valuable part of your coin model, you usually have to pay a price on the repudiation front.

Posted in Cryptography, Econ & Money | 6 Comments

Yahoo! Not-So-Much-Privacy Policy

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Yahoo! has revised its Privacy Policy. Instead of holding user search and other data for 90 days, it will hold it for 18 months. And then it will not delete it but will just “annonymize” it — something we know doesn’t work very well.

Why move to a so-much-more-evil policy? The stated reason is given as:

To meet the needs of our consumers for innovation, personalization and relevance, Yahoo! is moving to align our log file data retention policy closer to the competitive norm across the industry.

Is 18 months really closer to the “competitive norm across the industry”? Not if you define the industry to include more than the US: In Europe, the law requires ‘anonymization’ after six months. In the US, Google keeps anonymizes IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in search engine logs after 18 months. The EU is not happy about this.

Yahoo! Data Retention FAQ:

Q: Why is Yahoo! changing its user log data retention policy?
A: To meet the needs of our consumers for innovation, personalization and relevance, Yahoo! is moving to align our log file data retention policy closer to the competitive norm across the industry. Once the new policy goes into effect, we will no longer apply a 90-day retention policy to raw search logs or other log file data and will instead hold raw search log files for 18 months prior to anonymization. As for non-search data, we will be removing the current 90-day retention period for these log files as we re-examine the right policy going forward that allows us to meet consumer demand for richer, more deeply personal experiences in our products.

Q: What is Yahoo!’s updated user log data retention policy?
A: Yahoo!’s new policy will be to de-identify search log data within 18 months of collection with limited exceptions to meet legal obligations. For other, non-search log data we collect, that data will be retained for a longer period in order to power innovative product development, provide personalized experiences, and better enable our security systems to detect and defend against fraudulent activity.

Q: When will the updated policy go into effect?
A: Yahoo! is providing advanced notice to our users of our intention to change our log file data retention policy. Yahoo! is rolling out notifications across Yahoo! to help ensure that we have given appropriate notice to our consumers of this change in our policy. Thirty days after we have completed these notifications, we will put the new policy into effect. We expect this will occur sometime in mid-to-late August.

Q: Does this change the data retention period for data collected prior to the update?
A: No – Yahoo! will only apply the updated retention period to data collected AFTER the updated policy goes into effect.

I see that the original announcement was in April. I guess I just don’t use Yahoo! much — and here’s one more reason not to.

Posted in Law: Privacy | 1 Comment

Painful Joke

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The Republican vision is that 20 white male billionaires will own everything and rule the world with an iron whip. The Democratic vision is completely different, in that not all the billionaires will be white men.

via A Tiny Revolution

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on Painful Joke

Taddeo in FL-25?

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Politico says Annette Taddeo is planning to run in FL-25 — the seat now held by Republican David Rivera, a strong contender for most ethically creepy member of Congress.

I was, as longtime readers may recall, a big supporter of Taddeo when she ran for Congress in my district, FL-18.  I even went out and canvassed for her here in my neighborhood.  I do think she’d make a great Congressperson.

But.  Can she pull it off?

I though Taddeo ran a good campaign for Congress in 2008. I was impressed by her work ethic, organization, and by the staff she put together. The fact is that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is just very hard to beat due her giant war chest (she spent $3m beating Taddeo) and, to be fair, also her personal rapport with so many of the voters here, a rapport sufficient to overcome a number of policies that work against the district’s actual interests.

Taddeo then ran for County Commissioner in District 8. As I live (just) outside District 8, I didn’t pay that much attention to the race, but Taddeo narrowly failed to make the run-off in a crowded field.

All of which is preamble to the question whether FL-25 is a good fit? Not that I have someone better in mind, or that I doubt they’d be lucky to have her, I’m just wondering how she’ll play in the district.

Posted in Politics: FL-18, Politics: FL-25/FL-27 | 5 Comments