Peter Gerken is the "Intellectual Property Practice Leader" at OSRM and formerly VP at MMC. He has lots of links to ip "risk management" and insurance that predate OSRM.

A quote from Forbes in Feb. 2003 says:

""Most companies are absolutely uninsured for IP issues at this time," says Peter Gerken, who heads up the intellectual property risk management unit at Marsh, a division of Marsh and McLennan. Gerken says that for many modern companies, some with 80% of their market value tied to intangible assets, it will take a major financial hit to push them into insurance products. "

Lawrence Solum highly recommends a paper by Brian Z. Tamanaha (St. John's University - School of Law): The Perils of Pervasive Legal Instrumentalism (Montesquieu Lecture Series, Tilburg University, Vol. 1, 2005).

Abstract:

In contemporary U.S. legal culture, the law is widely seen as an instrument to serve ends. Many legal theories construe law in instrumental terms (law is an instrument to maximize wealth, law is an instrument of male patriarchy, etc.). Law professors indoctrinate students to reason instrumentally using legal rules and policy arguments. Practicing lawyers manipulate legal rules and processes instrumentally when serving clients. Cause lawyers use litigation as an instrument to bring about social change. Judges increasingly engage in instrumental analysis when deciding cases. Judicial appointments are viewed instrumentally by groups within society dedicated to seating like-minded judges who will render decisions consistent with their preferred ends. Legislation and administrative regulations are seen as empty vessels that can be filled in and applied to achieve whatever ends might be desired. A law that is seen in purely instrumental terms has no integrity onto itself. It is simply a tool - a powerful tool - to be used in pursuit of the tasks or goals at hand.

So pervasive is an instrumental view of law today that we seldom recognize that it is relatively new - having become entrenched in the course of the late 19th and 20th Centuries - and we have forgotten how radically different it is from previous understandings of law. In a real sense, we have embarked upon a social experiment of the greatest magnitude, with no predecessors to offer guidance or to warn of pitfalls. There are now plentiful signs that this experiment may be ill-fated.

The core thesis of this essay is this: if the law is viewed in instrumental terms in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good, what will follow is a Hobbsean war of all against all that takes place within the legal order over control of the legal apparatus. Opposing groups within society will attempt to seize or co-opt the law in every context possible, and in every way possible, to enlist or wield it on behalf of achieving the ends they desire. Even those groups that might prefer to abstain from seizing the law are forced nevertheless to engage in the contest, if only defensively to keep it out of the hands of their less restrained opponents. Spiraling conflicts will ensue with no evident halting point or termination (short of exhaustion of resources or total victory by one side).

[...]

From the paper:

[L]egal instrumentalism, and the battle it has generated, threatens to corrode the integrity of law, in at least two different respects. A distinguishing characteristic of law has always been that it is a manifestation of public power that is to be wielded in furtherance the public good. The legitimacy of the law, its claim to obedience, is based upon this claim. Without this characteristic law is raw coercion. If the law is an empty vessel, an instrument to be filled in and applied to the advantage of any group that successfully controls it, then law will involve the application of public power to private advantage, in the pursuit of a private agenda. When that is case, it is not obvious why there would be an obligation to abide by the law. If more and more people come to hold this view, the law may lose the widespread routine voluntary compliance that it depends upon.

The second threat is to the binding quality that is the core distinguishing characteristic of law, in particular as it relates to judges. Owing to the influence of the Realists, the view that judges' decisions are based upon ideologically preferred outcomes has grown in strength. By the Realist account, this operates as a subconscious process on the part of judges, who perceive the law through their ideologically colored lens. But it can also be conscious: when necessary, in the same way that a lawyer manipulates legal rules instrumentally to serve the interests of clients, legal rules can be twisted by judges to achieve the ends they desire. "The `law'...becomes mere instruments or barriers that judges must utilize strategically to advance their a priori political objectives."

Randy Barnett (Boston University), who argued for respondents in the ‘Medical Marijuana’ case, Gonzales v. Raich, has some very interesting commentary, headlined “The Ninth Circuit's Revenge”:

The Ninth Circuit finally got its revenge on the Supreme Court justices who seemed to delight in reversing it. In Gonzales v. Raich, it gave the conservatives a choice: Uphold the Ninth Circuit's ruling favoring individuals engaged in the wholly intrastate non-economic activity of growing and consuming cannabis for medical purposes as recommended by a doctor and permitted by state law, or retreat from the landmark Commerce Clause decisions of U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000). Either way the Ninth Circuit wins. But with Justices Kennedy and Scalia on the liberal side of the Court, the Ninth Circuit won big.

[...]

Justice Scalia now joins in expanding the reach of the Commerce Clause power beyond even that which the Court had endorsed in Wickard v. Filburn. In oral argument he admitted, "I always used to laugh at Wickard." Now it's Judge Stephen Reinhardt and the Ninth Circuit's turn to laugh.

[...]

Gonzales v. Raich has placed the future of the New Federalism in doubt, which makes future appointments to the Supreme Court all the more important. Will the president name someone who, like Justice Thomas, is truly committed to federalism? Or will his nominee be a fair-weather federalist, as Justice Scalia has turned out to be when the chips were down?

Via both Orin Kerr and Lawrence Solum.

One of the articles is about the growth of Linux in Asian markets, especially China.  They particularly focus on the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (a sort of English version) and that bank's (the largest in China) plan to move to Turbolinux for "front-end banking operations".  I came across this little gem of news:

ICBC is switching to Linux to replace applications that currently run on The SCO Group Inc.'s version of Unix. The bank wanted to upgrade these systems and chose Linux largely because it wanted better performance and vendor support, according to Nielse Jiang, an analyst at IDC in Beijing.
ICBC isn't alone. Several of China's largest banks are also expected to move their front-end applications from SCO Unix to Linux, Jiang says.

What the hell is wrong with all these folks. I could get three notes sounding pretty much however you want it to sound in a minute or two,  call it five minutes in front of a mic to get it just right (and you get to diddle it with the software anyway).  

So there's no claim in my little mind that three notes can be enough of a performance to be distinctive.  But there's no way there's any excuse for clipping it from somewhere else.

The first judge to see this, once it was clear that it came down to just a couple notes, should have said;

defendent - guilty, pay 10 dollars to the artist and 10000 to the court for being a fscking idiot.

plaintiff - pay 10000 in court costs for being an aggravating fscking idiot.

Now I'm sure that there were probably other claims and presentments initially, but everything should have been dismissed PDQ once it got down to that.

The problem with the courts, as we're seeing in the SCOX cases are that pretty much anyone with enough cash to hire a lawyer can sue anyone and the courts don't really have enough to discretion to throw the bums out and levy fines for frivolity.  

www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6408455464.html

OSRM offers a number of insurance products, such as software patent infringment insurance, that it says help protect companies using open source software. However, the seminar will focus solely on licensing issues, with no mention of OSRM products, the company says.

In an opinion "SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITING" [PDF], Mr. Chief Justice Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court denied sanctions against attorneys contesting the 2004 Ohio presidential election.

This case originated as an election contest challenging the results of the November 2, 2004 election in Ohio for President and Vice-President of the United States. [...]

[O]n January 11, 2005, contestors applied to dismiss their election contest. That application was granted, and the case was dismissed. Moss v. Bush, 104 Ohio St.3d 1449, 2005-Ohio-71, 820 N.E.2d 934.

Before me is a motion filed January 18, 2005 by Secretary of State Blackwell and Ohio's 20 presidential electors seeking the imposition of sanctions against the attorneys who represented the contestors. The movants assert that counsel for the contestors filed a meritless complaint without having adequately researched the law relative to their grievances and failed to adhere to the procedures and time requirements set forth in the election contest statutes and the Rules of Civil Procedure. They claim that the complaint was based on "theory, conjecture, hypothesis, and invective" rather than evidence and that the contestors filed this contest proceeding "only for partisan political purposes." The movants note that the petition accused Ohio election officials of blatant misconduct, including fraud, and assert that contestors had no evidence of fraud, let alone the clear and convincing evidence that a finding of fraud requires. They accuse opposing counsel of filing meritless and frivolous motions and demanding unwarranted discovery. They assert that the contestors acted for the purpose of "generating headlines and harassing the rightful winners of the election" rather than legitimate purposes.

[...]

R.C. 3515.11 provides that "[t]he proceedings at the trial of the contest of an election shall be similar to those in judicial proceedings, in so far as practicable, and shall be under the control and direction of the court which shall hear and determine the matter without a jury, with power to order or permit amendments to the petition or proceedings as to form or substance." Accordingly, this court has employed the Rules of Civil Procedure in adjudicating election contests. [...]

In the case at bar the movants rely upon Civ.R. 11 and S.Ct.Prac.R. XIV(5) to support their request for an award of costs and sanctions, asserting that the contestors engaged in misconduct in connection with the filing and initial prosecution of the election contest prior to dismissing it. However, that dismissal occurred before a trial had even been scheduled. I conclude that Civ.R. 11 and S.Ct.Prac.R. XIV(5) cannot be deemed to pertain to the trial of the contest, as contemplated by R.C. 3515.11, in these circumstances.

[...]

I conclude that an award of sanctions in this case is not authorized by the statutes governing election contests. I therefore overrule contestees' motion for costs and sanctions. The motion of the Secretary of State and Ohio's presidential electors is overruled.

Motion denied.

AP via Yahoo, “China Orders All Web Sites to Register”:

Authorities have ordered all China-based Web sites and blogs to register or be closed down, in the latest effort by the communist government to police the world of cyberspace.

[...]

"The Internet has profited many people but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence and feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits," the MII Web site said in explaining the rules, which were quietly introduced in March.

For those who didn't get the reference in the subject of this post, I was tempted to post this as a comment under my diary entry on England's Licensing Act.

More news:

http://techlawadvisor.com/blog/2005/06/27/grokster_decision.html

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2005/06/grokster_stream.html

Film at 11.

Last week, a company filed a complaint [PDF]in federal district court against the Internet Archive, operators of the well-known “Wayback Machine”. The complaint revolves around the robots exclusion protocol.

The complaint also names several other defendants. Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Early, Follmer & Frailey, et al. was filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on July 8th, 2005.

Counts VIII through XII of the complaint allege causes of action against Internet Archive:

• Breach of Contract
• Promissory Estoppel
• Breach of Fiduciary Duty
• Negligent Dispossession
• Negligent Misrepresation

William Patry notes:

The complaint appears to be the result of an earlier failed suit brought by Kevin Flynn and Healthcare Advocates (Flynn is the President) against Health Advocate, Inc. and others for various trademark and related type claims.

Copyfight reports “Hyperlinking Considered Infringement Down Under”. According to Alan Wexelblat:

After a two-year battle, the Cartel have won the right to make Australians put their fingers in their ears and sing "la la la" very loudly. That is, according to ZDnet Australia, a judge has ruled that it's against the law to merely link to sites that host files that might be considered infringing. Oh, and the ISP is also in trouble, as it's also against the law to host a site that has links to a site that hosts...

[more]

In comments , the usually reliable Australian blogger Kim Weatherall “protests” that he knows Tamberlin J, and essentially claims that his fellow Australian is not a lunatic. Based on the published report, though, Weatherall's claim appears doubtful.

http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=24638

Pretty cool huh?

Reading the documentation from http://www.fingergear.com/downloads/COS_User_Guide_V1.0.pdf, I noted the following (emphasis mine):

What happens if I reformat my COS?
You cannot reformat your COS without reformatting the entire drive.  If you reformat the device, you will erase all data, and you will also erase the entire FingerGear Operating System.  Currently, FingerGear does not offer the Operating System as a download to restore the OS.  The device, if reformatted, will behave as any standard USB 2.0 flash storage device.

http://www.gcn.com/24_17/interview/36245-1.html

I thought this was the most interesting part:

GCN: Microsoft argues that once you factor in the costs of hiring an engineer to support free software, the total costs of ownership can actually be higher.

Hall: That argument is irrelevant, and I'll tell you why. Say I just went out and bought a piece of software for $500. I bring it back to my company and it doesn't do anything I want it to do. It is worthless to me. The TCO of that software is $500 but the value of software is zero.

Now let's say I bought a similar piece of software and it also costs me $500. I install it, and it solves all my problems. It saves me a million dollars, it runs all the coffeepots in my organization. The software does everything I want it to do, so to me that software is close to infinitely valuable.

So which piece of software is better? The one that is infinitely valuable. Total cost of ownership is a non-issue. The question is, "How much is that software worth?"

You can't be blinded by just a TCO study. You have to have the highest-value solution, not just the lowest cost. It has to be a lifetime study.

Open-source code gives you control. If a project leader of a particular open-source project dies, you can make a business decision to switch to something else or hire someone to maintain that package until you're finished with it. With closed-source software, that business decision is taken away from you.

Sadly, in my print version this interview is facing the page for this article on Windows still rules government OS world.  I find it regrettable that 82% of respondents reported they were not likely to switch to Linux at all (and even more unfortunate is the text of the article that portrays it as "rejected altogether the notion of a switch to Linux").  Maybe this is better than what I perceive it to be?

Via Yahoo:

China hires 'cyber-agents' to control public opinion on the Internet

Thu May 19, 1:37 PM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - The Chinese government has started using "cyber-agents" to spread positive political messages on the Internet and better control public opinion, state media reported.

Several cities have set up special "online propaganda troops" who pose as ordinary Internet users in chatrooms and other cyber-forums as they spread favorable spin for the government, the Southern Weekend newspaper said.

Article continues...

* Wrote an article for Groklaw about how the kernel development process really works this past weekend, but it doesn't look like it's made it there yet. Possibly because it kind of goes against what some people have been thinking is how things work. If it doesn't show up in a few more days, I'll publish it here, as I think it needs to be said.

posted Thu, 28 Apr 2005 in [/diary]

I promised not to say anything on Y SCOX about GL for a while, but I have to say that in a very few words you've summed up the problem with Groklaw more eloquently and succinctly than I've ever seen done before.

Very well done!

A story titled:

Linux vs Microsoft XP: Optimizations Make Linux the Killer Desktop

-------------

The Domino theory.
by: ColonelZen
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell     05/26/05 12:41 am
Msg: 268700 of 268700

I copped this from LT, so give lt the click if you're feeling inclined.

http://linuxtoday.com/it_management/2005052600426OPDT

It leads to:

http://consultingtimes.com/Linux_XP_comparison.html

I don't know the history of Consulting Times, but it doesn't appear to be a linux rag as such. So this may be one of, if not the first domino in a long train. Happy reading, Bill.

Blizzard sold a series of games (Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, Diablo II) and offered hosting services for internet gaming.  Some of their customers were unsatisfied with the hosting service and wrote their own, called bnetd, after reverse-engineering the protocols.

Blizzard sued, and the lower court ruled for Blizzard.  The defendants appealed, and the hearing was today, three blocks from my office.

Groklaw provides more background in a recent article.

I hope to write a fuller account tonight.  What I can say briefly is that the three-judge panel at least didn't obviously lean one way or the other.  What was most telling to me was that the attorney for Blizzard pounded more on the table than on the law.  He repeatedly summoned the dread spectres of piracy (the defendants all had legal copies of the Blizzard games) and copyright infringement (all copyright claims had been dismissed with prejudice by the lower court).

Given other recent events, news about Steinbuch v Cutler may be topical. Mr. Steinbuch's complaint (PDF) against the "Washingtonienne" blogger was filed in federal district court last month:

I. Introductory Statement

1. This civil action for invasion of privacy for public revelation of private facts arises from the dissemination, on the World Wide Web, of a "blog" compiled by the Defendant Jessica Cutler, describing in graphic detail the intimate amorous and sexual relationship between Cutler and the Plaintiff. Cutler's outrageous actions, setting before anyone in the world with access to the Internet intimate and private facts regarding Plaintiff, constituted a gross invasion of his privacy, subjecting him to humiliation and anguish beyond that which any reasonable person should be expected to bear in a decent and civilized society.

[...]

VI. Cause of Action for Invasion of Privacy

29. Plaintiff repeats the previous paragraphs here.

30. Cutler's action constituted an invasion of Plaintiff's privacy, satisfying the elements of the tort of publication of private facts. Cutler caused widespread publication of private intimate facts concerning Plaintiff in a manner that would be deemed outrageous and highly offensive to an ordinary reasonable person of average sensibilities, subjecting Plaintiff to severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, and anguish. [...]

32. These disclosures were not made for any purposes relating to the dissemination of news or material published in the public interest. These disclosures were instead cruel and malicious exposures of the most intimate details of Plaintiff's life to a world-wide audience.

33. The disclosures of private facts would be highly offensive to any reasonable person. [...]

Julie Hilden discusses this case in her recent article at FindLaw's Writ: Are Accounts of Consensual Sex a Violation of Privacy Rights? The Lawsuit Against the Blogger "Washingtonienne'.

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165702845

The story itself is about data collected, created, maintained, and distributed by the National Weather Service and how that impacts the private sector weather information industry (think AccuWeather or The Weather Channel).

I found it interesting having had to work with the dissemination of government information and whether taxpayers need to pay for it again.

If I have some time, I might dig into Santorum's record on other IP/tech issues.  Could be interesting.

Susan Crawford links to the transcript of oral argument before the U.S. Supreme court in Brand X (argued 29 Mar 2003). Professor Crawford notes:

The BrandX transcript is worth reading, even though it's heavy sledding for the non-telecom-literate. To the extent the Court's intentions can be gleaned from its questioning pattern, the FCC surely lost this argument.

Also: Ernest Miller blogs his thoughts on the argument at The Importance of...

Via Donna Wentworth via Ernie Miller via Frank Field:

United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Hearing on Piracy of Intellectual Property will be held today, May 25, 2005 at 2:30pm in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The Honorable Mr. Senator Hatch will preside.

Webcast link.

The Free Expression Policy Project reports on yesterday's amended opinion on rehearing in the Sixth Circuit:

Under the [Sixth Circuit]'s latest ruling in Bridgeport Music v. Dimenson Films [PDF], even two notes sampled from a sound recording is automatically copyright infringement. (The court acknowledged that taking one note probably would not amount to infringement, since copyright law defines a sound recording as "the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds.")

The case involves a two-second, three-note guitar riff sampled from the song “Get Off Your Ass and Jam,” which was changed in pitch and “looped” into another song, “100 Miles.” “100 Miles” was used in the soundtrack of a movie, I Got the Hook Up. The moviemakers were the defendants in the case. A federal trial court ruled that the copying was de minimis and therefore not actionable under copyright law. The Sixth Circuit reversed last year, but then agreed to grant “rehearing.”

The decision on rehearing essentially repeated last year's ruling. [...]

The judges thought that a “bright line” rule would be easier for the music industry to follow than the uncertainty of trying to predict when a sample is unrecognizable, or otherwise short enough, to be de minimis.

[...]

“Get a license or do not sample,” the judges write. “We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.” [...]

(Link to decision added.)

From the panel's decision:

In granting summary judgment to defendant, the district court looked to general de minimis principles and emphasized the paucity of case law on the issue of whether digital sampling amounts to copyright infringement. Drawing on both the quantitative/qualitative and “fragmented literal similarity” approaches, the district court found the de minimis analysis was a derivation of the substantial similarity element when a defendant claims that the literal copying of a small and insignificant portion of the copyrighted work should be allowed. After listening to the copied segment, the sample, and both songs, the district court found that no reasonable juror, even one familiar with the works of George Clinton, would recognize the source of the sample without having been told of its source. [...]

The heart of [plaintiff-appellant]'s arguments is the claim that no substantial similarity or de minimis inquiry should be undertaken at all when the defendant has not disputed that it digitally sampled a copyrighted sound recording. We agree and accordingly must reverse the grant of summary judgment.

[...]

The music industry, as well as the courts, are best served if something approximating a bright-line test can be established. Not necessarily a “one size fits all” test, but one that, at least, adds clarity to what constitutes actionable infringement with regard to the digital sampling of copyrighted sound recordings.

[...]

[U]nfortunately, there is no Rosetta stone for the interpretation of the copyright statute. We have taken a “literal reading” approach. The legislative history is of little help because digital sampling wasn't being done in 1971. If this is not what Congress intended or is not what they would intend now, it is easy enough for the record industry, as they have done in the past, to go back to Congress for a clarification or change in the law. [...]

Via Ernie Miller.

In all the diaries.  Sigh.  I haven't time to zero them all right now.

Not even anything amusing, that silly China foundry's spambot.

Today the US Supreme Court granted certiorari in an antitrust case, Illinois Tool Works v Independent Ink.

Last January, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court's grant of summary judgment for the defendant. The appellate court held (PDF) that “a rebuttable presumption of market power arises from the possession of a patent over a tying product.” In reversing the lower court, the Federal Circuit noted:

Even where a Supreme Court precedent contains many "infirmities" and rests upon "wobbly, moth-eaten foundations," it remains the "Court's prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents." State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20 (1997).

The Supreme Court now will apparently reconsider its 1962 decision in United States v Loew's, 371 U.S. 38.

A Legal Times article states:

In his brief for the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Patrick Coyne of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner says the Federal Circuit ruling conflicts with decisions by the 6th and 7th circuits, a conflict that reflects growing disagreement over the basis of the presumption.

(Via Howard Bashman.)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1837730,00.asp

One of the main sources in the story is Brad Silverberg of Ignition, a VC firm, and former M$ person.  The story reports that (referring to Ignition):

one venture capital firm run by a group of former Microsoft executives has cast a wary eye on investing in .Net-based companies."

And it's clear that open source presents a tremendous opportunity for people to invest."

So, if you have money to invest, better look for a company like SourceLabs, Inc., like Ignition did!

STATEMENT OF BRUCE PERENS

 "You may have noticed that Mr. Jeff Merkey has filed suit against a number of net entities and I. Mr. Merkey subsequently offered to withdraw his claims against me if I would issue a short statement. Of course I was concerned that his request could be an attempt to suppress my right to free speech on the net, but it turns out that the statement that Mr. Merkey asked for contains nothing I would not want to say...

It gives us some names to look up and shows some of the financial information and who owns stock in the privately held Vista.com.

Once again Merkey is acting as his own judge, and thinks he is winning. Here are the latest words of wisdom from merkeylaw.com:

Settlement has been reached with Finchhaven and John Sage of Vashon, Washington and all claims have been dismissed without prejudice as of this date. The following statement has been approved for release by the parties.

"Since finchhaven has withdrawn their disputed content from the public internet, and otherwise satisfied the claims brought in this cause of action, and since there remains no issues of fact, they have been dismissed from the lawsuit without prejudice."

I doubt that this one will ever get filed; but he is "dismissing without prejudice". Since when has an unqualified plaintiff been able to decide that.

I therefore think that this "case" is running only in Merkey's head; and that it has nothing to do with reality.

This is a story of software patents and oil. The companies involved are Halliburton and Smith International

The patent concerns the analysis of test drilling. A computer is used to predict where the oil is. It can be argued that the computer program is analogous to a mathematical formulae.

Halliburton was awarded $41 million in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler, Texas, USA. This is in addition to a jury award and attorney fees. The patent was declared valid.

In a similar case in the High Court, London, England the patent was declared invalid and Halliburton lost.

Here is the ffii report, and a link to the English court case, (warning, very verbose)

The paradox is that two opposite verdicts have been reached, starting with the same facts.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) [PDF] under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM; Pub. Law 108-187).

Public comments due June 27th, 2005.

Via The Register, “FTC wants to tweak CAN-SPAM Act”:

The FTC is in the process of making amendments to its rules for enforcing the [CAN-SPAM] Act and seeks comments on its proposals by 27 June.

These include clarifying the definitions of the terms "person" and "sender" - to help in cases where multiple parties are advertising in a single e-mail message - and "valid physical postal addresses".

It is also proposing to shorten from 10 days to three the time a sender may take before honouring a recipient's opt-out request; and to ensure that when submitting a valid opt-out request, a recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply email message or visiting a single web page.