Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Listen: The Lawfare Podcast discusses zombies in the context of international law and national securityIf you’ve ever wondered how international law, laws of war and national security policy might be applied to a zombie apocalypse scenario, listen to episode 89 of The Lawfare Podcast. The law and …Wednesday, August 20, 2014
The Economist wrote in 2011 about the end of the legal industry’s lofty heights, saying of one large but ill-fated American firm: Howrey’s boss, Robert Ruyak, blamed two new trends for his firm’s demise. Howrey had begun acceding to clients’ demands for flat, deferred or contingent fees, causing …Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Larry Lessig fighting for campaign finance reform with Mayday PACLawrence Lessig’s Mayday PAC is using the very system it decries to attempt to bring that system down. In other words, Lessig et al are hijacking the virus (the influence of big donors on American politics via election contributions) …Thursday, July 3, 2014
Listen: This Week in LawWhen it comes to my own website, editorial calendars always give way to real life. I’m back with the latest in a series that would be more accurately called the “Podcast of the Month.” I really need to step it up with these, as I still have about 70 of them to which I listen …Sunday, June 29, 2014
Houston, We Have A Public Domain ProblemParker Higgins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, lamenting the recent removal of a public domain NASA clip he posted on the audio sharing site SoundCloud: The real goofy bit is that before I started at EFF, I worked at SoundCloud. I actually uploaded …Saturday, May 17, 2014
Gino Barrica on self-hating lawyersGino Barrica, responding to yet another article1 cautioning against the pursuit of a law degree: See, I’m not a self-hating lawyer. I’m not one of those who hang my head in shame when people ask what I do and I’m not someone who tells people to run for the hills …Thursday, May 8, 2014
Condoleezza Rice backs out of Rutgers commencementThe Associated Press reports: The school’s board of governors had voted to pay $35,000 to the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony. Any question involving …Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Plagiarism in Legal BriefsGerard Magliocca, writing at Concurring Opinions: If I cited [someone else’s] brief in an attempt to fairly attribute the source when I made the same point, then I’d look like an uncreative doofus. If I did not cite the brief, though, then that would (or could) be …Sunday, April 13, 2014
Government agency NTIS charges for docs you can get online for free, loses money doing itGood thing a bipartisan bill aims to end that embarrassing situation. The things the National Technology Information Service does which don’t involve charging hundreds of dollars for free stuff and bleeding …Friday, April 11, 2014
The DATA Act and legislative definitionsAndrea Peterson reports1 at The Washington Post the Senate has passed a bill, the DATA Act, which would require federal financial data be published in a common format. It sounds like a great idea and something those nerdy data journalists are going to love. …Tuesday, April 8, 2014
“Notable toupee”I wanted to share this because it’s a funny phrase, and I think it’s important to keep an eye out for humor, intentional or otherwise, in civil litigation filings. Film studio Paramount Pictures, in its motion to dismiss a defamation suit by a plaintiff alleging the film The Wolf of …Sunday, April 6, 2014
Note: I’m not your lawyer, you’re not my client, and nothing in this article is, or should be construed as, legal advice. Companies that don’t sell anything and exist only to enforce patent rights, sometimes purchased from the original patent holder solely for the value of enforcement, are known as …Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The image above is the first screen you see when you open Popcorn Time. The app, available on Mac, Windows and Linux, streams movies from the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent. The technology is similar to what old school music swapping service Napster used from about 1999 to 2001, …Saturday, February 22, 2014
Disgraced Scientist Granted U.S. Patent for Work Found to be FraudulentIt’s hard to believe this patent should ever have been approved by a patent examiner acting in good faith, especially considering the criminal convictions standing in stark contradiction of the purported “inventor’s” affidavit of …Thursday, February 20, 2014
DHS wants to track license platesICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen, on the license plate tracking system recently proposed by the Department of Homeland Security: It is important to note that this database would be run by a commercial enterprise, and the data would be collected and stored by the …Monday, February 17, 2014
CrossFit sends trademark takedown demand The lesson here: the Digital Millennium COPYRIGHT Act contains no enforcement mechanism for TRADEMARK rights.Sunday, February 16, 2014
What is Intellectual Property Law?It’s not surprising that more scholarship self-identifying as IP-focused is about patents. After all, they drive much of commerce and innovation (and arguably the problems with the two) in the industrial and technology sectors. It’s worth noting though that, unlike …Saturday, February 15, 2014
Sens. Cruz and Lee Introduce State Marriage Defense ActAt this point the anti-Constitutionalists are trolling themselves. A choice bit from this piece of garbage: The bill will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man …Friday, February 14, 2014
Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.Mr. Stern’s headline sums it up very well. If you don’t believe it can really be that bad, read the PDF. It is that bad. Ignorance is one thing, but open hostility like this cannot stand and anyone who supports this bill commits the intellectual …Thursday, February 6, 2014
What is the maximum constitutional duration of a traffic stop?The answer is, perhaps unsuprisingly, not clear. But while too few people know you don’t have to allow a vehicle search, the power differential during a traffic stop probably overrides abstract constitutional notions. As the article says, …Friday, January 3, 2014
Developing the Law of Cyber WarfareGood article by lawyer, legal journalist and fellow Temple Law alum Amaris Elliott-Engel. The law, or lack of it, as it relates to cyber warfare is near the top of my list of legal interests.Thursday, January 2, 2014
Facebook scans messages for ad targetingI know this is an unpopular stance, but if you operate on any assumption other than that this happens all the time on myriad services you use, you’re a crazy unrealistic person lacking in the minimum amount of cynicism (read: realism) required to use the …Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Apple and “market realities”Apple, it turns out, is not happy about the legal consequences of its ebook price-fixing scheme. I would be unhappy as well if the attorney assigned by a federal judge to make sure I reformed my anti-competitive practices was sending me $1,100-per-hour bills. …Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Judges are, and aren’t, competent to rule on intelligence issuesLots to parse on this one, although it looks like a new chapter in the “Surveillance Wars” Edward Snowden started with his leaks. Two choice quotes really stood out to me in this article, though, especially because they are in …Friday, December 13, 2013
CrunchBase and People+ settleA TechCrunch reporter had this to say about his employer’s sister product: Put another way: The CrunchBase team ended up looking like it didn’t really understand how Creative Commons worked, or at least that’s what the vast majority of online commentary suggested. …Thursday, December 5, 2013
Personhood for chimps? Not any time soon.It’s a noble cause, but a flawed strategy. Victory is unlikely, but even if achieved it will be quickly squelched by legislation redefining personhood as belonging only to human beings. That’s one of the problems universal marriage proponents have had: some …Wednesday, December 4, 2013
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwideBarton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, reporting at The Washington Post: The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal …Saturday, November 16, 2013
10 misconceptions about copyright and fair useEveryone on the Internet should have to read these.Thursday, November 14, 2013
Judge calls Google book-scanning fair useGreat news for fair use doctrine, and a big win for word geeks. Judge Denny Chin said much in his ruling granting Google’s motion for summary judgment, but this part stuck out to me: Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data …Wednesday, November 6, 2013
AOL lawyers don’t understand Creative Commons. At all.David Kravets writes at Wired about AOL’s demand that an app called People+ stop using a complete replica of AOL’s tech company database. AOL’s CrunchBase is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution: We provide CrunchBase’s content …