Author Archive
I am currently in Milwaukee Wisconsin for the WLA Annual Conference. This has been a great conference, people out here are very kind.
Many of the panels have focused on new tech, ebooks and using libraries as community meeting spaces. Yesterday I spoke on ToS’s, Wikileaks, and Ebooks. Here are are the slides:
I am guest lecturing on remix, Free Culture and Fair use November 8th at Seattle Central Community College in Ingrid Mattson’s Media Law and Ethics class. For those curious here are the assigned readings. I love speaking to this class as it is all film makers.
Read through:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues
Section 107:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
InfoCamp 2011, an amazing half traditional conference and half unconference is now open for registration. I will be showing up to test run my talk for Wisconsin Library Association’s annual conference on ebooks, ebook readers and digital freedom. I hope to see some people there and could use the feedback on the talk!
InfoCampers!
We’re happy to announce registration for InfoCamp Seattle 2011 is OPEN! To secure your spot at InfoCamp Seattle 2011, visit http://infocampseattle2011.eventbrite.com.
What: InfoCamp Seattle 2011
When: October 8 & 9
Where: Mary Gates Hall, University of WashingtonThis year we’ll be gathering at the University of Washington’s beautiful Seattle campus on October 8th and 9th. The Saturday opening festivities and keynote is in the Kane Hall auditorium. All other events, the sessions designed and led by you, our fearless InfoCampers, will happen in Mary Gates Hall (home of the UW’s Information School).
We will be recombining tried and true structures along with fresh new ideas to encourage engagement and collaboration. As always, it will be you, the participant, talking amongst yourselves, driving the content of InfoCamp, and drinking massive quantities of coffee!
For more information, check out http://seattle.infocamp.org.
Can’t wait to see you there!
-The 2011 InfoCamp Planning Committee
Earlier this week an Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) motion was filed in Oregon in a $1 million defamation case revolving around Twitter and a blog post. I am involved in the case, I have submitted a Declaration in support of the Anti-SLAPP motion with regards to Twitter. Here are some of the the case documents including my Declaration regarding Twitter:
Craig - Case No. 1107-08823
DEFENDANT’S MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF SPECIAL MOTION TO STRIKE
Rowe – Declaration in support of Defendant’s pending Special Motion to Strike – Twitter Testimony
Read more about the suit at: Portland Mercury: The $1 million twitter fight
Two people have emailed me now asking if this was my blog. Sadly the answer is no, this is not my blog although part of me wishes it was mine. Those that know me well are aware I can be very critical of law school myself. The blog is bringing up some real problems with law schools. This type of honest critic is what is needed, if we are going to improve law school for future students. My only major critic of the blog is that I wish the author would provide more solutions. It is easy to tear the system apart real reform needs solutions.
Let’s look at a few of the topics:
Would you pay $100,000 for a law review article?
Law review articles are mostly useless and read by no one:
Specifically (Chief Justice) Roberts claimed that legal scholarship is not relevant to the work of lawyers and judges, saying he is on the same page with Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who believes there is a great “disconnect between the academy and the profession.”
Roberts continued, “Pick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the bar.”
Roberts added that he doesn’t necessarily think anything is wrong with such an approach, albeit a relatively irrelevant one. “If the academy wants to deal with the legal issues at a particularly abstract, philosophical level,” Roberts continued, “that’s great and that’s their business, but they shouldn’t expect that it would be of any particular help or even interest to the members of the practice of the bar or judges.”
I completely agree, and would even go further to state that most review articles are rubbish that no one reads, nor should they. Law review articles are reviewed by students that often know nothing about the substantive area of law they are reviewing. They are also written in nearly unreadable jargon that makes the law appear much more archaic then it need be.
We need to update legal scholarship to include open access legal blogs that are reviewed in real time by peers in the profession posner and becker have the begins of this. If you add a good comment / credit system you could have some every educated and useful legal scholarship done that is read by people and accessible.
The practice of hiding the law in closed access locked journals and writing in intentionally obfuscating ways must stop. For the law to apply to everyone we need to start translating more of it back into plain language and make legal debates publicly accessible.
Now, how much work does teaching a long-term average of less than three classes per year actually represent? Compared to other forms of teaching, law school teaching is not exactly time-intensive. For one thing, the traditional law school class features very little in the way of evaluative responsibilities for the professor. Students are given one test at the end of the semester, and the professor need not bother with any other formal evaluation of their performance. For another, with the exception of grading (and law school is structured to produce the minimum amount of grading possible), large classes are much easier to teach than small ones.
Teaching a 12-person seminar in which all the students are expected to participate with the professor in a genuine dialogue about the material is difficult.
Teaching a 100-person class, in which the professor can either drone on while students check their email and Facebook accounts, or can harass individual students while everyone else checks out even more completely, is relatively easy.
The system of one grade and no feedback is simply ridiculous. We learn through iteration, trial and error, gaining feedback, dialog. The one grade system sets people up to fail and punishes people who try new things.
Professors are not taught to teach – I see lots of new professors, from schools all over, struggling with how to give students feedback because they are not taught how. 20 years of contracts litigation does not = a good contracts teacher. I am more optimistic then the writer as many new professor I work with actually want students to learn they are just missing the tools they need.
Socratic scare tactics are antiquated and anti learning – I love a good heated conversation with a class, but some professors take this to the extreme of badgering and berating students. If we want students to learn we have to give them useful feedback in the class not scare them to death.
I am recommending the blog to get a glimpse into some of the issues with law school, but it should be taken with a grain of salt. The blog gets a 3.5 for frank honesty but no more as it is lacking in real solutions.
Finlay as a student interested in law school take the issues mentioned seriously and go visit schools and talk to students and faculty, ask hard questions. Find a school with a professor that gives feedback and cares about the area of law you want to go into. One of the only things that kept me sane in law school was having Margaret Chon as a mentor someone who cared about teaching IP law and social justice and being able to audit IP classes from ElizabethTownsend-Gard my 1L year. Finding great mentors will help you deal with the ordeal ahead.
Grats to the DarkLordofDebate for netting $1,000 and creating a better copyright educational video then Google
More at PK’s website:
The brain is a muscle use it or loss it. Chess > music > crossword! I always knew chess was better then Scrabble :
A five year study with 488 participants showed that involvement in at least 11 mind exercising activities per week versus a control group that engaged in 4 or less activities per week, delayed by 1.3 years (Dr. Charles B. Hall, PhD, author of the study and Saul R. Korep Department of Neurology professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine). A further analysis demonstrated those that played only games reduced their risk by 75% and those that played musical instruments reduced theirs by 64%. Crossword puzzle enthusiasts get a 38% lowered risk.
Scientists are still at a loss to determine the actual cause of Alzheimer’s Disease but with nearly 100 million future Alzheimer’s victims in development, we best start writing prescriptions for chess sets for Christmas.”
From the June 19, 2003 New England Journal of Medicine:
“Use It or Lose It — Do Effortful Mental Activities Protect against Dementia?”
Joseph T. Coyle, M.D.
The full article is well worth reading at online chess: Does chess help Alzheimers
updated to correct spelling – i fail at scrabble/crosswords
I am pleased to announce that I am joining the Board of the Washington Lawyers for the Arts. WLA is an amazing organization that is dedicated to supporting the arts through making the law more accessible to artists and the arts community. I have been involved with WLA for for several years. First as a law student attending community education events. Then as a student in the Arts Legal Clinic. Most recently as a guest speaker on topics including Creative Commons and open licensing. I look forward to giving back to the WLA as a board member.
Much of my passion for WLA comes from my own experience in the arts legal clinic. The arts legal clinic was one of the absolute best classes I took in all of law school. In the clinic we advised artist weekly on questions they bring to the clinic. We received the legal questions a few days in advance and then would spend hours researching the problems. Then on Thursday evening we would meet with the clients in person and answer their questions. These evening sessions were very intense, exciting and incredibly useful. Helping people with real problems is incredibly powerful. I strongly recommend taking clinical classes that include direct client interaction.
A new site dedicated to disAbility Rights and social media launched last week DisAbilityRightsGalaxy.com. The site is a news and recent events site like huffington post with social media driven outreach.
Even though the site has only been up for a few week the site has 120 plus post relating to disability rights issues here are a few recent ones:
All content is available via RSS (we are working on adding sectio0n specific RSS feeds currently) and several of the areas have interactive polls or quizzes. I will be participating in the online book club, here is the first book chosen:
“Three Generations and No Imbeciles”
“Three Generations, No Imbeciles” is the Galaxy Book Club selection for the months of June and July 2011. This forum will be devoted to it through July 31, 2011. We hope you will enjoy reading it and join in this forum’s discussion. “The Ugly Laws” will be the featured book in the months of August and September 2011.MODERATOR: We’ll provide a question related to the bimonthly book selection and let you take the discussion from there. A review of “Three Generations, No Imbeciles” by Shannon Sommers appears on Galaxy’s history page.QUESTION: What lesson learned from reading “Three Generations, No Imbeciles” is most applicable today?Post your answers and anything else you would like to say about this book below. Don’t hesitate to ask a question of your own about this book.
Disclaimer: I have proudly worked with Disability Rights Washington to help develop the site and the social media features. Accessibility been a real challenge. Social media and start ups tends to think of accessibility last. If you have practical advise on how to improve the sites accessibility please let us know we want the site to be usable by all and we want to keep up using the latest ways people are connecting online.
White to move:
Spoiler after the cut: Read more