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In recent years, Congress has considered, but failed to adopt, dozens of proposals to control unsolicited commercial e-mail. Meanwhile, more than half the states passed laws banning specific forms of e-mail deception and requiring affirmative disclosures. California's much-discussed anti-spam law took the next step, prohibiting commercial e-mail sent without consumers' affirmative, opt-in, consent. This legislation, which was set to take effect Jan. 1, forced the e-mail marketing industry to lobby Congress for less restrictive, pre-emptive federal legislation. The result was the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the Act), which President Bush signed Dec. 16, and took effect Jan. 1. The Act pre-empts state laws, except to the extent that they prohibit any e-mail message or attachment falsity or deception. This article provides a detailed look at the new federal Act ' including the possibility for e-mail marketers to continue shaping the law in upcoming rulemaking proceedings.

Online digital file sharing enjoys massive popularity. Its wide use, however, threatens to destroy the interests of copyright owners. Yet, its broad consumer support and touted technological potential have raised questions about who should bear the risks of such activity, and who &mdash; <i>ie,</i> Congress or the courts &mdash; should make such determinations.

When an insured's personal finances are essential to establishing a monetary motive for his or her conduct (particularly in insurance fraud cases), it is necessary to ask pointed, and, yes, sometimes embarrassing questions at examination under oath or deposition.

While the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) was designed to rein in commercial Web sites that target children as buyers of goods, it has caused legal difficulties for those who provide services such as camps, schools, after-school activities and sport clubs. The providers of such services must regularly wrestle with the ways they collect prospects from their sites.

Recent developments in Internet law and in the Internet industry.

The Playboy bunny hopped out of the nation's largest appellate court recently with a ruling that could put a wrinkle in one Internet advertising business model. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ' with the reservations of at least one judge on the unanimous panel ' ruled that search engines are barred from displaying advertising related to trademarked search terms. In other words, you can't point customers in the direction of one company if they're searching for another.

A Manhattan federal judge has enjoined an Internet advertiser from delivering "pop-up" ads to visitors of a retail Web site. Contact lens retailer 1-800 Contacts Inc. requested the injunction pursuant to its suit against Internet "adware" purveyor WhenU.com for trademark infringement and unfair business practices.

On Jan. 21, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced the filing of a new round of lawsuits against 532 peer-to-peer (P2P) users in its ongoing campaign to deter illegal online trading of copyrighted music. While this is not the first round of such lawsuits directed at P2P users offering large numbers of unauthorized music files for others to download, this round is novel because the cases were filed against 532 "John Does" ' unidentified persons whom the RIAA can identify at this point only by their IP addresses. The balance of this article will briefly discuss the potential hurdles that the RIAA will face under this new strategy, and what it likely means for the long term success or failure of the industry's effort to deter unauthorized online downloading and recapture lost customers.

On Dec. 16, President George W. Bush signed the "can spam" legislation passed earlier in the month by Congress. The legislation provides for jail time and hefty fines for serious violators and calls for the creation of a "do not spam" registry.

Slow to start, authorized Internet downloads of individual sound recordings now exceed one million per week. For recording artists, this may mean a return to the heyday of singles sales experienced in the '50s, '60s and the disco era of the '70s, when singles were created to stand and sell on their own, with little or no relation to other tracks contained on an artist's album. A single in that era routinely consisted of a record with an A and B side, the sale of which rarely produced anything more for an artist than promotion for the artist's live performances. However, with increases in royalty rates and CD retail prices during the '80s and '90s, successful major label artists were able to negotiate provisions in their recording agreements allowing for greater advances and royalties from the production and sale of albums in CD form. Over the past few years, major labels, in large part, have discontinued the release of commercial singles in an effort to eliminate the cannibalization of higher-profit margin CD album sales. As a result, recording artists and their representatives are carefully watching the consumer change from purchasing albums in pre-recorded CD form to purchasing individual tracks from the Internet. Undoubtedly, a return to living the singles life could have severe financial ramifications for recording artists who have become accustomed to living the CD album life.