Welcome to the website of the Digital Media Law Project. The DMLP was a project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from 2007 to 2014. Due to popular demand the Berkman Klein Center is keeping the website online, but please note that the website and its contents are no longer being updated. Please check any information you find here for accuracy and completeness.
In the days of unwarranted government surveillance and elaborate data collection, people increasingly rely on anonymizing services to keep their online activities private, such as proxy servers, encrypted cloud storage, and virtual private networks. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, route online communications through a secure and encrypted private network to a remote server (sometimes in a jurisdiction with greater protection for freedom of speech or weaker law enforcement).
If you haven't heard of The Pirate Bay by now, you may want to emerge from that cave, wipe the sleepies from your eyes, and start getting caught up on your backed up WIRED magazines in the bathroom. The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a website run by a few Swedish intellectual property anarchists. TPB provides a comprehensive indexing service for BitTorrent files.
Disqus is a provider of a website comment system, which enables website operators and bloggers to fight spam and manage the comments appearing on their platforms. It also allows commenters to create profiles that store their comments from all websites and blogs using the Disqus system and incorporate ratings from other Disqus users. In December 2007, an individual claiming to be the president of a European company sent an email to Daniel Ha, a Disqus co-founder. The email complained about a comment appearing on a Disqus-enabled site. (In his post about the situation, Mr. Ha declined to identify the businessman or the site where the comment appeared.) The email demanded that Disqus remove the allegedly defamatory comment and threatened legal action in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States if the company failed to comply.
Mr. Ha refused to remove the comment and responded to the email, arguing that the decision about whether or not to remove the comment belonged to the site operator originally hosting it, not Disqus. He also invoked CDA 230, which protects providers and users of interactive computer services from tort liability for the statements of third parties. Mr. Ha exchanged further correspondence with the unnamed businessman, but maintained his position that Disqus would not remove the comment.
In a follow-up comment to his blog post on the situation, Mr. Ha indicated that the site owner contacted him and indicated that the comment would be removed. The situation thus appears to be resolved.
We are looking for contributing authors with expertise in media law, intellectual property, First Amendment, and other related fields to join us as guest bloggers. If you are interested, please contact us for more details.
Copyright 2007-24 Digital Media Law Project and respective authors. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License: Details. Use of this site is pursuant to our Terms of Use and Privacy Notice.
In the days of unwarranted government surveillance and elaborate data collection, people increasingly rely on anonymizing services to keep their online activities private, such as proxy servers, encrypted cloud storage, and virtual private networks. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, route online communications through a secure and encrypted private network to a remote server (sometimes in a jurisdiction with greater protection for freedom of speech or weaker law enforcement).
If you haven't heard of The Pirate Bay by now, you may want to emerge from that cave, wipe the sleepies from your eyes, and start getting caught up on your backed up WIRED magazines in the bathroom. The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a website run by a few Swedish intellectual property anarchists. TPB provides a comprehensive indexing service for 
Description:
Disqus is a provider of a website comment system, which enables website operators and bloggers to fight spam and manage the comments appearing on their platforms. It also allows commenters to create profiles that store their comments from all websites and blogs using the Disqus system and incorporate ratings from other Disqus users. In December 2007, an individual claiming to be the president of a European company sent an email to Daniel Ha, a Disqus co-founder. The email complained about a comment appearing on a Disqus-enabled site. (In his post about the situation, Mr. Ha declined to identify the businessman or the site where the comment appeared.) The email demanded that Disqus remove the allegedly defamatory comment and threatened legal action in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States if the company failed to comply.
Mr. Ha refused to remove the comment and responded to the email, arguing that the decision about whether or not to remove the comment belonged to the site operator originally hosting it, not Disqus. He also invoked CDA 230, which protects providers and users of interactive computer services from tort liability for the statements of third parties. Mr. Ha exchanged further correspondence with the unnamed businessman, but maintained his position that Disqus would not remove the comment.
In a follow-up comment to his blog post on the situation, Mr. Ha indicated that the site owner contacted him and indicated that the comment would be removed. The situation thus appears to be resolved.