If you want special help fending of intellectual property lawsuits let Congress beta-test your stuff - This article in Law.com about the BlackBerry Patent dispute is interesting: "in a series of unusual twists, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director James Rogan and BlackBerry devotees in Congress have thrown Research in Motion a lifeline -- and thrown the case into disarray."
Now if we could just get the members of Congress to love Tivos, and MP3's we'd get some proper attention.
Last week in Civil Procedure class we were discussing terrestrial personal jurisdiction - So this week let's talk about personal jurisdiction in outer space. "SCC confirms Quebec Court properly accepted jurisdiction in action by Quebec manufacturer of part of an orbiting satellite which was allegedly damaged by the negligence of U.S. defendants." (Spar Aerospace Ltd. v. American Mobile Satellite Corp., 2002 SCC 78). [via e-Lawg]
My first reaction was what a pain the ass. Then it just occurred to me: the only time I ever physically dial numbers anymore (as opposed to invoking a phone's speed dial function) is at work. I'm going to have to see about having our antiquated phone system upgraded.
9:45:05 PM
I like to think a lot - so why wouldn't I make a good Rand man? As in the policy think tank. The article from the National Law Journal talks about Rand's Institute for Civil Justice, which cranks out some heady studies on things like the economic costs of frivolous litigation.
I wonder, when are they are going to get around to analyzing the high cost of an out-of-kilter intellectual property system? Right now we have fathers getting patents on swings, IBM getting a patent on a restroom reservation system (which I understand they have gratiously donated to the public), some companies forbidding deep linking, others prohibiting any linking without explicit agreement, companies using the DMCA to thwart competitors, copyright terms being extended in perpetuity to promote creativity, and guys in Hollywood and Washington dreaming up new ways to make the tranmission of digital information more accountable, which is to say more profitable.
So, then, I've got my basic materials together. Can someone from the Rand Institute please send me a grant application, or whatever paperwork I need to fill out so I can get started?
9:34:21 PM
Both Parties Wary of Data Mining "An amendment to a spending bill that requires the Pentagon to spill the beans to Congress on its Total Information Awareness project gets bipartisan support. Privacy advocates see it as a step in the right direction." [via Wired News]
Want to give your government the right to search databases and build algorithms that let some software program, which will be more secret than Windows, flag "potentially suspicious people"? Hey this is the same sort of thing that the IRS computers do, except, of course, you won't be suspected of shorting the government money. You'll be branded a terrorist. But only for a little while, until you can prove your innocence.
I heard some politico in NPR last Friday demogaguing this issue by saying that TIS is good because it puts our country's intelligence gatherers on par with Al Queda. After all, he said, if they can get on Google and search for information then shouldn't our government be able to do the same thing? Yeah, that's right I'm going to Google now to see if I can pull up a Supreme Court Justice's financial records. Hold, on I'll be back in a minute with the search results.
8:44:39 PM
New Service Sounds Like Phish Live Phish, a new online paid music service, delivers soundboard-quality live Phish shows only days after the concert. Leave it to a neo-hippie band to come up with an Internet music service that makes both the band and its fans happy. [via Wired News].
Now this is the way to use the Internet to promote music. Too bad the rest of the record industry can't figure this out. Oh, I forgot. This system doesn't work if you are peddling schlock.
8:30:19 PM
News Aggregating - a call for input - okay I've played with NewzCrawler enough to know that this is a much more flexible tool for reading blogs and gathering news. First, as I said it allows me to have a folder organized with my legal blog feeds, which I can order however I choose. It also allows organization of websites, which is useful for keeping abreast of Glenn Reynolds new site on MSNBC because it is not an RSS feed. I'll add more to this post later, but I want to know from the legal bloggers which news aggregator, if any, they are using. If you're not using one then I recommend you try out NewzCrawler. It's free (with annoyances) and then it's $24 if you want to buy it.
11:26:59 AM
News Crawling vs. Aggregating - After reading J.D. Lasica's very interesting article on news readers I decided to try out NewzCrawler. I'm just getting started so I can't really say if I'll like it more than the Radio News Aggregator, but one thing I like a lot so far is the ability to organize feeds into topic folders. This allows me to put all of the legal stuff together. Also I can delete specific entries within categories. Overall the interface seems much more user-friendly, but I'll have to see how it actually performs.
12:46:55 AM
