Federal judge strikes down gay-marriage ban in Alabama
Friday, January 23, 2015
Federal judge strikes down gay-marriage ban in AlabamaI’ll just leave this right here…
South Dakota same-sex marriage ban falls
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
South Dakota same-sex marriage ban fallsI’ve probably used this line before, but I can’t help myself… Another one bites the dust.
A Reminder To Ditch The Disclaimer This Tax Season
Monday, January 12, 2015
A Reminder To Ditch The Disclaimer This Tax SeasonKelly Phillips Erb, writing at Forbes: According to the final Regs, “the rules in the final regulations are intended to eliminate the need for unnecessary disclaimers.” In other words, the IRS gave a nod to how crazy things had become, noting, “These types of disclaimers are routinely inserted in any written transmission, including writings that do not contain any tax advice.” The rules and the lack of understanding of the rules “contributed to overuse, as well as misleading use, of disclaimers.
Join the bone marrow registry
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Join the bone marrow registryDrew Olanoff (@drew) is facing cancer for the second time. He is fighting it in public again, this time to bring greater awareness to the bone marrow registry. Go sign up for a free registration kit. I did. It only took me ten minutes. I did it on my iPhone. Skip your next round of Twitter browsing or Facebook liking or email reading and do something really, really easy that brings you one step closer to saving someone’s life someday.
Google Calendars as a timekeeping tool
Monday, January 5, 2015
Google Calendars as a timekeeping toolKeri Mahoney of Law Technology Today writes about using Google Calendar to track and bill for attorney time, but this is a clever technique for anyone who needs to track time. Alternatively, Toggl is great for basic time tracking and Harvest is even better if you want integrated invoicing and payment processing.
Message scanning lawsuit against Facebook won't go away
Friday, January 2, 2015
Message scanning lawsuit against Facebook won’t go awayJohn Timmer reports at Ars Technica: The court responded to this request by pursuing an extraordinarily rare course of action: it read Facebook’s entire terms of service. And, in this case, their vague language—typically used to provide broad immunity—became a liability: “[the document] does not establish that users consented to the scanning of their messages for advertising purposes, and in fact, makes no mention of ‘messages’ whatsoever.
What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2015?
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2015? Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years.
Some policy thoughts on corporate "revenge hacking"
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson, reporting a fascinating story at Bloomberg: In the U.S., companies are prohibited by the 30-year-old Computer Fraud and Abuse Act from gaining unauthorized access to computers or overloading them with digital demands, even to stop an ongoing attack. The act exempts intelligence and law-enforcement activities, allowing the government to respond more aggressively than private-sector firms. There’s little indication, though, that military and intelligence agencies have used their most powerful tools to shut down attacks on businesses, as the U.
Treatment of Transgender Employment Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Friday, December 19, 2014
Treatment of Transgender Employment Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 It’s about damn time. According to a DOJ press release: Attorney General Holder announced today that the Department of Justice will take the position in litigation that the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status. Attorney General Holder informed all Department of Justice component heads and United States Attorneys in a memo that the department will no longer assert that Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex excludes discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender discrimination, reversing a previous Department of Justice position.
Employees sue Sony over email leaks
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Employees sue Sony over email leaksSaba Hamedy and Meg James, at the LA Times: Hackers began releasing sensitive data after the studio’s security breach became public on Nov. 24. The group, calling itself Guardians of Peace, has released data including thousands of pages of emails from studio chiefs, salaries of top executives, and Social Security numbers of 47,000 current and former employees. Many are warning of the intellectual property fallout of hacks like this.
A court of beginnings
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Photo of Pike County Courthouse by the author Several excellent writing professors have told me throughout my life that you start by starting. Introductions, caveats and excuses delay your goal and bore or confuse the reader. Don’t tell people what you’re going to do. Do it. But they also advised me always to write with my audience in mind. This is a blog, and you’re still reading, which suggests you like to read blogs, or at least my blog.
The ethics of reporting on the Sony hack
Monday, December 15, 2014
The ethics of reporting on the Sony hackEmily Yoshida (@emilyyoshida), entertainment editor at The Verge, one of my favorite tech news sites, on the publication’s ongoing and deep contemplation of the ethics of reporting on unethically leaked information: The contents of the leak are already public; they’re just not in a very user-friendly format until a news outlet decides to amplify a piece of it. Which means, one could argue, that the press is merely drawing lines of best fit through a dataset.
Google recognizes non-binary, fluid nature of gender identity in new settings
Thursday, December 11, 2014
This is another post that began as a mere link post and became, by the time I was done writing it, an article in its own right. When I’m doing more than brief commentary, an article of my own feels more appropriate. There’s more room for opinion in a full article, and I like few things more than expressing my opinions. I was heartened to read that Google Plus will allow custom gender self-identification.
HBO without cable confirmed for April 2015
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
HBO without cable confirmed for April 2015Finally, although HBO’s decision to use MLB Advanced Media instead of HBO’s own streaming tech prompted CTO and former Xbox executive Otto Berkes to resign.
Tim Cook will lend his name to Alabama LGBTQ bill
Friday, December 5, 2014
Tim Cook will lend his name to Alabama LGBTQ billApple initially expressed corporate reluctance, but Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell later told Pamela Todd, Alabama’s only openly gay lawmaker, that CEO Tim Cook “would be delighted” to have a bill named after him which would protect LGBTQ Alabama state employees from discrimination. Cook said when he came out publicly in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek that while he doesn’t usually like to draw attention to himself,
Searching Google Scholar
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Searching Google ScholarI’m trying to post fewer links, which means I’ve been posting less frequently in general. I’m working on some articles, but until they’re ready to publish I’ll still share the occasional link. This one is a great article from the American Bar Association’s Law Technology Today blog about getting the most out of Google Scholar. Legal research platforms are usually very expensive, so Google’s free alternative is a great way to peruse this stuff.
Serial podcast presents novel collision of law and technology
Friday, November 21, 2014
Serial podcast presents novel collision of law and technologyThe incredible true crime podcast Serial presents a novel collision between technology and the law. This time, it’s not that technology plays or should play a particular part in the case itself, but that a podcast has shed light on a cold case that may lead to an unexpected outcome. The podcast’s producers interviewed Deirdre Enright, director of the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project for Episode 7.
Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program
Friday, November 14, 2014
Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy ProgramDevlin Barrett reports at The Wall Street Journal: The program cuts out phone companies as an intermediary in searching for suspects. Rather than asking a company for cell-tower information to help locate a suspect, which law enforcement has criticized as slow and inaccurate, the government can now get that information itself. People familiar with the program say they do get court orders to search for phones, but it isn’t clear if those orders describe the methods used because the orders are sealed.
Warrantless seizure of child pornography evidence fatal to prosecution's case
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Warrantless seizure of child pornography evidence fatal to prosecution’s caseThe Michigan Court of Appeals issued an opinion on November 6, 2014 affirming a lower court’s decision excluding evidence recovered from Maximilian Paul Gingrich’s (“Defendant”) laptop computer in a child pornography case. Defendant took his laptop to Best Buy for maintenance. An employee noticed suspicious file names while working on the laptop, and notified police. Police arrived at the store and asked the employee to access the files to ascertain whether or not they were actually child pornography.
SCOTUS Servo tracks and announces changes to Supreme Court opinions
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
SCOTUS Servo tracks and announces changes to Supreme Court opinionsGitHub is where most software developers maintain their projects. It provides version control, issue tracking and much more to its users. I even have a few repositories of my own. SCOTUS Servo is developed by V. David Zvenyach, a self-described “lawyer and web tinkerer.” His list of projects is impressive, but SCOTUS Servo is so simple it’s beautiful. Zvenyach’s software watches Supreme Court PDFs for changes to the file and then posts notifications via Twitter user @SCOTUS_servo.