Legal 491S Blog Post W/E 4/8/07

"Microsoft sues retailers for peddling student-only software" - BNA article headline

This article jumped out at me. It pertains to smaller companies who were selling Microsoft software that was solely allowed for use by students. I found this article interesting mostly because I did not realize until I took this class that even though I bought Microsoft Office when I entered college, it is not mine. Microsoft is "leasing" it to me, in a way. This idea intrigues me because I am also taking the Second Life class and there are issues with intellectual property that arise in these virtual worlds. Linden Labs, the owner of SL, in its EULA both gives and does not give its users control over the things they create. The writing is very ambiguous. As I read articles like this and see how things are progressing in virtual worlds, it is amazing to me how very soon things will reach boiling point. There are so many internet related law issues that need to be cleared up and it needs to happen now.

A second thing that I was intrigued by in this article was that the way that this "fraud" was purported was that the software that the company had was intended to be bought by universities to offer to its students at a cheap price. However, the company that was supposed to do this, instead sold to retailers in the United States. This brings up the idea of jurisdiction. Should the cases be heard in the courts in the United States or in Jordan, the country where the company was based. Considering the tenuous relationship between the two countries, this could present a problem if the Jordanian company just ignores Microsoft's lawsuit. It seems more and more that there needs to be a sole internet jurisdiction in which ALL LAWS are followed by every single internet entity. Obviously, there is an issue with the pragmatism of this idea. Who decides these laws? Will under-developed for countries, for example, have no say? Should it be based on countries with the most users? Does this unfairly bias the system against highly-technologized countries with small populations i.e. Sweden et al.
These things must be resolved.