The legal advice in this eBook, ‘Name Copyrights’, namely that you can avoid getting tickets for moving violations by having your ‘name copyrighted’ is likely incorrect.  To the best of my knowledge,  no provisions of either the Lanham Act or the Copyright Act will provide protection against moving violations or parking tickets for that matter.  Both McCarthy’s on Trademarks and Nimmer on Copyright virtually ignore the entire subject of operating a car.

For another story on the relationship between intellectual property and driving, see here (please do not email to tell me that this is a joke).

The Pew Research Center has released a report in its “Pew Internet and American Life” series.  The report is available here.  The introduction states (emphasis mine):

“The struggle to enforce copyright laws in the digital age continues to be an uphill battle for content owners. Data gathered from Pew Internet & American Life Project surveys fielded during March – May of 2003 show that a striking 67% of Internet users who download music say they do not care about whether the music they have downloaded is copyrighted. A little over a quarter of these music downloaders – 27% – say they do care, and 6% said they don’t have a position or know enough about the issue.

The number of downloaders who say they don’t care about copyright has increased since July-August 2000, when 61% of a smaller number of downloaders said they didn’t care about the copyright status of their music files.

Of those Internet users who share files online (such as music or video) with others, 65% say they do not care whether the files they share are copyrighted or not. Thirty percent say they do care about the copyright status of the files they share, and 5% said they don’t know or don’t have a position. “

Via Internetnews.com, Judge Garlad Bruce Lee of the Eastern District of Virignia has released a decision holding that WhenU’s pop-up ads do not infringe the trademarks or copyrights of U-Haul.  I have not gotten my hands on a copy of the decision yet.

Google Toolbar 2.0 that block some but all pop-ups (apparently neither WhenU’s nor Gator’s) available for free download here.

WFUV is my favorite radio station.  Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight” is one of my favorite radio shows.  You can listen to WFUV’s live streaming audio by clicking on “Listen Live” at www.wfuv.org here.  If you are interested in why the station can’t reproduce its exact radio programming on the Internet, click on the “Why no Idiot’s Delight . . . ” on the Listen Live page for WFUV’s discussion of how the DMCA affects a radio broadcaster.

More on the arrest of Zuccarini here.  I assume that this is a courtroom artist sketch, appearing in the NY Post account of the arrest, the first arrest under the Truth in Domain Name Act.

By the way, Zuccarini’s domain names, such as botthebiulder.com, are still active at the time of this posting.  By his own admission (according to published reports) Zuccarini deliberately chose names that would appeal to children because ‘children mispell things.” The names lead to porn sites.

Alternate title for this piece: End of Cupcake Party? (explanation: Zuccarini used many aliases, many of which included the word ‘Cupcake.’  One alias was Cupcake Party).