Blawg Review # 178 Rocks the IP World from Down Under
Run, don't walk to what may well be the Best BlawgReview of the Year at Freedom to Differ with these tasty IP and technology morsels.
Law, blogs and technology
At one of my favourite blawgs, The UTube Blog, Edward Lee blogged that NBC praises YouTube technology in keeping unauthorized Olympics videos off the Internet — is Viacom’s case against YouTube now toast?
At PrawfsBlawg Marc Blitz pondered the privacy implications of a video game that you control with your mind. Meanwhile Sam Bayard from The Citizen Media Law Projectblogged that YouTube announced changes to its community guidelines last week, prohibiting the upload of videos inciting others to commit violent acts, giving Senator Lieberman a partial victory on terrorist videos.
On Pointwondered whether the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals tried to cover up a particularly deplorable decision in a civil-rights case by not publishing it, only to have the videotape of a Florida police officer repeatedly tasering a handcuffed motorist showing up on YouTube - with the apparent support of the dissenting judge.
The Greatest American Lawyer observed that Cell Phones Can Distract ... And Kill: Metrolink Engineer May Have Been Texting In Deadly Train Crash. While on that tragic accident, Traverse Legalreported that it appears that cybersquatters immediately prey upon the publicity that surrounds a mass accident.
Adam Frucci noted that an anti-consumer 8,000 words update to AT&T's 2,500 pages-long customer agreement (called a "guidebook" by the company) probably won't be read by many of its customers, but it is attracting attention from regulators who may require the telecom giant to rein it in.
Mike Masnick doubted that peer review is sufficient to help the somewhat dysfunctional American patent system. Gene Quinn wrote that patent trolling has subverted the system from one protecting innovation to one simply redistributing wealth.
And with a shrink-wrap license on a bag of grapes in a supermarket, Mike Madison suggests that contracts have finally "jumped the shark" while Timothy Zick looked at Meatspaces, Cyberspaces, and (Relative) Expressive Freedom and Michael Dorf chanted Spam, oneSpam Spam Spam Spam Spam, Glorious Spam,
Susan Crawford, the founder of One Web Day, urged us to contribute to the e-Democracy Time Capsule at timecapsule.onewebday.org:
Anyone across the country and the world can contribute by adding text, images, and video that celebrates e-Democracy to an open blog. We invite you to add the following entries:
Best of the e-Democracy Web: Your favorite tools, citizen journalist site, etc. What empowers you to act online?
E-democracy heroes: Brag about your friends and colleagues- who is behind the best political technology, content, and critical policy fights today?
Legislation and Policy: What are the issues we face in delivering the best possible future for e-Democracy?
Letters to the future: How do you see the e-Democracy Web growing (or failing) in the future?
However, one law blogger is in a little bit of trouble with the Recording Industry Association of America seeking to have attorney-blogger Ray Beckerman declared a "vexatious" litigator. According to Wired'sThreat Level blog the RIAA alleges that Beckerman, one of the nation's few attorneys who defends accused file sharers, "has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs ... Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions." Read more here and visit Beckerman's blog, Recording Industry vs The People.
Submission guidelines for next week's issue here and if you're brave enough to follow Aussie Peter Black's lead, there are a lot of free dates open for next year's hosts for Blawgreview in the right-hand sidebar.
