This is an interesting story:
Law Professors Seek Injunction over ‘Sham’ Treatise Supplement, by Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer, April 16, 2009.
Excerpt: “An ugly dispute has erupted between West Publishing and two law professors who claim they were falsely identified as the authors of an annual supplement to a treatise on Pennsylvania criminal law even though they had nothing to do with writing it.
PI Buzz has a post, with Comments, about a Mexican court records database: Mexico Court Record Index Online.
Finding other countries’ court records databases doesn’t appear to be that difficult in a Google World, however, you should always try and talk to people who use those databases professionally to find out the pitfalls, the shortcomings, the strengths, and the alternatives. Private investigators and librarians who specialized in public and criminal records searching are excellent resources for database evaluations.
(PI Buzz also has a series of articles about Sunshine Week and government transparency.)
Who are “the people” the U.S. Constitution keeps referring to? (Notice how no one has taken up the Wiki Answer challenge to this question.)
This is not an uncommon question in public libraries, law libraries, and in government documents libraries (even after the 2008 election).
It’s also one of those questions to which we all know the answer (or think we do), but that is rather difficult to answer to anyone’s satisfaction because there isn’t a single legal pronouncement that will satisfy everyone.
When you read documents with phrases like this, “ISPI misappropriated the dongles,” is it any wonder that people want to return to darker ages (before computers and maybe even before electricity!) or want desperately to flee into the forest, or hide inside a beer, for a long while until the madness settles down?
I’ve been reading, in a rather desultory fashion I admit, news about the (not yet final and not the only digital book project on the planet (see Open Content Alliance story in NYT)) Google Settlement and drifted from the excellent Library Law blog to Rebecca Tushnet’s posts on the subject (which is where the dongle discussion came from).
What’s a person to do to keep up with it all? Not much. My recommendation is to keep up with the things you find interesting, the things you have to keep up with for your work and your families, and turn to the experts when you need a primer on something you’ve never heard before or just confuse you.
I blogged a little while ago about a new website for the Oregon Revised Statutes. In the old days (pre-Web old days) you needed serious money, organization, and infrastructure to set up a publishing business so even if you had a better mousetrap, or a statute compilation, you probably cooled your jets and went off to practice law instead of building your own database.
Welcome to the Zeros (i.e. 2000’s)! If you have an idea, you can run with it, or code with it (yes, “to code” is a verb), web it, blog it, or otherwise unleash your inner online publisher.
The ORS site mentioned above is courtesy of smart, creative, and public-service minded law students (universities and law school networks are behind many a nascent entrepreneurial enterprise).
Blogging is a commitment – it’s not a civil (or criminal) commitment, although it sometimes may feel that way, but it’s still something to take seriously (and I also believe civilly), assuming you the blogger want to be taken seriously. You need to blog regularly to keep up the momentum, your own and your readers. (See my previous posts on blogging, here and on public sector blogging.)
But, it can’t be as difficult as trying to trying to come up with a cartoon a day, which has to be up there with having to put out an interesting newspaper every day (with real articles, not just wire stories) or feeding a family 3 meals a day, day after day, week after week, month after …. You get the point, which may not be what you think it is.
Imagine, each and every single day, day after day, week after …, you are introduced to someone as the “funniest person I know,” and each time someone new looks at you as if to say, “ok, say something funny.” How many of us can meet that challenge?! Daily cartoonists do!
No, this is not a Twick or Tweet April 1st post…:
It was only a matter of time before someone would ask if a Tweet could be copyrighted. I’ll let the lawyers discuss this, but for now this is only a matter of First Impression. I’m sure more discussion will ensue.
Thanks to Ernie the Attorney for the first link, which took me to the Tweet copyright post.
Justice Bedsworth is no Edward Albee (and we’re glad of that), but both can have you scratching your head(s) for reasons that become clear this month with the Justice’s column:
Poof, The Magic Goat Man: “This is what we get when the governor appoints an English major.” by Justice William W. Bedsworth
You can visit California Court of Appeal Associate Justice William Bedsworth monthly at his A Criminal Waste of Space column.
Forget Eat, Pray, Love or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My mantra is fast becoming:
Think, Research, Listen, Speak.
The arguments, legal, profound, profane, insane, in Portland, Oregon over naming a street after Cesar Chavez reminds me how quickly many of us are to speak (or comment on blogs) before doing the research. Most important issues in life, whether personal, professional, legal or culinary, are not simple (see, e.g., Jonah Leher’s, How We Decide).
In California (and at least 7 other states), Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday today. To get to holiday status, one must argue the point, seemingly endlessly, but eventually the Legislature and the Governor have to decide. And sometimes one then pushes on to National Holiday status.
Owning the copyright is not enough. You have to protect it.
If you write books and publish them, in paper or online, through a publisher or by yourself, you need to learn how to protect your copyright interests. Let your imagination be your guide. Who would have envisioned these events? Don’t leave it to the science fiction and fantasy writers to imagine life, and publishing, in the future.
1) Google Book Settlement (See also the Guide for the Perplexed and posts at Library Law, here and here , click on googlebooksettlement in the Library Copyright cloud or at the ALA GBS site.)
Oregon Legal Research Blog