Denise says
The Live Web is adept at blurring the boundaries between various types of use. Is a college professor’s personal blog that participates in Google’s AdSense program (which shares advertising revenue with Web site owners whose sites drive traffic to the ads), commercial, noncommercial, educational, or, more aptly, its own unique blend of all of the above? As California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown noted in her dissent in Nike v. Kasky, we now live in a world in which “personal, political, and commercial arenas no longer have sharply defined boundaries.” Justice Brown was discussing the commercial speech doctrine, but her comment applies with equal force to the intellectual property arena, particularly given the tendency of the Live Web, and those who use it, to transcend the quaint notion that it is possible to separate entities from the individuals who comprise them, or to distinctly compartmentalize “business” and “personal” pursuits and interests.
I’m almost afraid to quote her, afraid as I am of trespassing on the IP of someone with an IQ like hers.
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