Jenny's post expressing concern about a recent Canadian Court ruling (Libraries Can't Photocopy Research for their Patrons?) prompted Denise to refer to Rory Perry's article: The Law is Free. I think every lawyer should read that article, and every court and government body charged with managing public information should too.
I'm not in favor of "big government," but one thing that government is supposed to do (because it is in the best position to do it) is make public resources (like legal opinions and other jurisprudence) available online. Historically, legal publishers like West have done this because (arguably) at one time the task of publishing such materials was too hard for governments (or at least some governments) to do. At one time West laid claim to pinpoint cites (cites that go directly to a particular page of an opinion) and this claim intimidated potential legal publishers who knew that the de facto standard that everyone used was the West opinion. This meant that if a prospective legal publisher of court opinions couldn't cross reference their publication to the page breaks on the West opinion then no one could figure out how to pinpoint cite and the propective publisher's work would be severely diminished in value. In Louisiana, we have adopted a uniform system of citation for state cases decided after a certain year (I think it's 1994). It's a total joke now, although the idea was to even the playing ground for those prospective publishers. So, it had a noble purpose when it was created.
Most lawyers in Louisiana probably don't even know about the uniform citation rule. And those who do know, and dutifully follow it, probably have no idea why the rule was created (see monkee story). And almost no one knows that the rule is totally obsolete now (West no longer is claiming the right to protect its pinpoint cite, at least that's what I've heard). So now we have this rule that (1) no one understands but (2) they follow 'cause the court rule says you have to, and (3) is irrelevant because everyone is still using West cases as the gold standard. Something is really out of tune here, and whenever I think about it it annoys the hell out of me.
Hey government! Publishing on the Internet is cheap and easy. Can you get around to making public information available online using the money we taxpayers gave you?
Oh, and one last thing (in this already too long post). There is a case in the US 5th Cir now involving a guy who wanted to simply publish public information that wasn't available online ('cause it was mostly local gov type stuff). The guy, a retired airline pilot, had a server and had all this really useful information, including the building codes for a particular little town in Texas. So guess what happens? The guy gets sued because it turns out that the city had outsourced the publishing rights to the building code to some third party who had a copyright on the material. Is this ridiculous or what? I mean here is a guy taking information that is necessary for the public, and doing what the government should be doing and he gets sued for doing it. I don't know the name of the case offhand, but if you want it E-mail me or post a comment and I'll get it and post it or whatever. The guy lost at the panel, and as I recall the 5th Circuit is taking it up en banc.
Stephen Wolfram has finally published his A New Kind of Science. The culmination of twenty years of private and furtive work by the creator of Mathematica, A New Kind of Science purports to revolutionize science and mathematics through the application of cellular automata. Normally, claimants with such hubris are laughed off by serious scientists, but Wolfram is arguably one of the brightest minds in science. With this book, Wolfram begins his attempt to take his science to the mainstream and put his name besides those of Einstein and Newton. Here are several articles from Forbes, the New Scientist and the New York Times on the book and Wolfram. Via [kuro5hin.org]
11:03:47 PM
Movie Review - Changing Lanes
Monique and I went to see Changing Lanes tonight, and I have to give it high marks. It got a good review from Check the Grid (which is an interesting review site) so I figured it would be good. The fact that it is about a lawyer (Ben Affleck) faced with a moral choice about his profession also was enticing. Basically, it is a modern day morality play. So a lot of what happens (which is somewhat improbable) you have to take as a set up for the point that is made by the movies' two characters: the lawyer played by Affleck, and the poor struggling alcoholic played by Samuel L. Jackson.
The cinematography was quite interesting, especially the transitions between scenes. This is not something that most people will notice, but since I'm into photography I guess I pay more attention to such things. Anyway, the most important part of the cinematography is that it supports the overall message of the movie (which I won't get into other than to say, as I have, that it is about morals). I'm not saying it's a candidate for an Academy Award, but it is definitely a good movie, and it took some chances which could easily have resulted in failure. Instead, the movie succeeds in making you think about what it takes to act in an ethical way.
10:49:02 PM
The Ideal Blog Conference (Winer's view & then my suggestions)
Sometime in 2002 we should have a conference with premeditated (not ad hoc) bloggability. On stage four bloggers in a panel. In the audience, bloggers with tables, power strips, laptops. A microphone on every desktop. Projected on screen the blog of one of the people in the audience, the designated official blogger..... [Scripting News]
Yeah, that would be cool, but I would have people use Instant Messenging to ask questions. That would be non-disruptive and the speakers could see if several people had similar questions. And there would be a way to post comments on the topics covered at the conference on to the "official blog"
8:51:44 PM
I promised you Rich Westling, and now it looks like he's started transmitting
Well, thanks to my friend Ernie the Attorney, I am now a blogger. It may take me awhile to get the hang of this and to figure out what I want to say, but I am inspired by many other blogs and look forward to contributing my thoughts and hearing yours. [Attorney for the Defense]
Jenny and Rick you guys will want to add Rich to your subscription. And Denise well you'll just have to visit his site manually.
11:18:31 AM
For my author friends who are trying to get published - check this out
"This is an experiment - can a seldom-published writer use a weblog to attract enough interest in a novel to find a publisher?
The novel in question is American Invisible, Inc. Go to this site and you'll see a link to it on the left of the page. It's a tale of three modestly poor people in New York City who suddenly find themselves out of work.
The Towers have fallen, the dot com party has ended, and firms are looking to shed staff, not hire. So, out of desperation and a bizarre combination of skills, the trio set up American Invisible, Inc., probably the most unusual detective agency you could ever hope to avoid.
I'm aiming for a daily publishing schedule for this text version of the book. Next comes the MP3 audio version via download and CD....
With American Invisible I'm trying to invert the system, so readers hear about a book before publishers:
I'm writing the book almost as I publish
I want to publish a section of a chapter every day
Everything is a draft. If a chapter isn't as strong as it should be, I can change it
I'm promoting the book as much as I can, but it'll have to stand on it's own merit, just like anything else. I can't make you like it
And here's the important bit:
Ultimately, if it attracts an audience, it might just attract old fashioned paper publishers, too. And those publishers will already know they're on to a winner
If it doesn't attract much of an audience, at least the book is out there, on the web, where anyone who does want to look, can read for free."
An author chronicling the creation of her work via a blog. What a great idea!" Via [The Shifted Librarian]
11:11:36 AM
Tech-Savvy Texas Justice
Reading the latest Law Technology News' Snap Shot section, I see the profile of Nathan Hecht, who is The Senior Justice on the Supreme Court of Texas. When asked what the most important legal trend is he replies "Internet access to courts -- opinions, docketing information, e-filing." Hallelujah.
Tumbleweed Communications has filed a patent infringement suit against PayPal in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Tumbleweed charged PayPal with violating two of its patents, both related to electronic notification processes and document storage and retrieval. [GigaLaw]
Larry Lessig just announced that he's finished his brief to the Supreme Court on the Eldred case, which will challenge the indefinite extension of copyright (Irving Berlin's copyright will last for 140+ years). He describes the value of Creative Commons with an hilarious anaecdote: He set up a Morpheus server in his office at Stanford to distribute the transcripts of his speech, and he got a panicked call from the Network Police. "There's illegal activity going on in your office! Someone is running a Morpheus server!" His response: "Look, it's still legal in the United States for people to voluntarily make their content available online." The network police clearly thought that this is bizarre, the idea that someone believes that content can be made available for free to others. Most people don't distinguish between perfect control and no control.
When Valenti describes "The terrorist war against the most important industry in America," he's right, but he's got the wrong industry. The entertainment borg is attempting to crush the most innovative, valuable industry in the country: the technology industry. Tim O'Reilly's announced that he's going to offer his authors the ability to put their material under a 14-year "Founder's Copyright," which, for authors that agree, will put all O'Reilly books into the Creative Commons public domain license in 14 years. He got a standing ovation.
Now, David Reed is talking about Open Spectrum, and the idea that radio-waves pass through one another -- interference is what happens when a receiver is confused. With good technology, the capacity of a slice of spectrum increases with the number of transceivers operating in that spectrum . This is a commons in which the sheep shit grass. The FCC regulates spectrum as though use of spectrum reduces it, but the reverse is true. When our radios collaborate with software-defined radio spectrum scarcity vanishes. We need spectrum that we can do anything we want to, a "spectrum commons." (The EtherPEG view of the zeitgeist is full of digital photos of the stage, which someone is uploading to his/her site, presumably) Link Via [bOing bOing]
Denise's firm (Crosby Heafey) sounds like a great place to work.
8:09:53 AM
Internet Technology Investment - It's Hard to Quantify the Benefit, or is it?
One of the challenges tech companies and CIOs frequently face is trying to make the business case to justify investments in technology initiatives. The Net Impact study, a project conducted by Hal Varian of the University of California-Berkeley, Robert E. Litan of The Brookings Institution and Momentum Research Group, and sponsored by Cisco Systems, was designed to measure the current and anticipated cost savings and revenue increases that organizations believe have been created by their investment in Internet business solutions. According to the study, to date, Internet business solutions have yielded $155 billion in cost savings to U.S. organizations. [Study Link]
