From Inter Alia in the past few weeks, links to some interesting new blawgs, including:
Counterfeit Blog
Online Liability Blog
RICO Law Blog
Law of the Game Blog
Would a records check on you erroneously show a criminal conviction? If it did, what steps would you take to clear your record?
For example, what would you do if in the course of applying for a mortgage or a job or looking for an apartment, the bank, employer or apartment manager told you, “forget about it” because a background or credit check came up with a criminal conviction on your record. So you didn’t know you even had a “record” did you? Well think again. This type of identity theft (or besmirching) is happening, again and again.
Trying to fix this type of criminal record error makes clearing your financial record after a financial identity theft look like a walk in the park (ok, a really big park, with a lot of really steep hills). This is partly because the reason for the error can be located anywhere from the criminal impersonator (if there is one) to errors by a law enforcement agency, by the database vendor, or by whomever is contracting for the information. (There are probably others in this chain.)
Over the years I’ve heard from more than a few lawyers who have had rental car or other travel “legal adventures” while out of the country. (Law librarians learn an awful lot from the trouble other people get into.) Here’s a new one for you, linked to from an Oct 8th Ernie the Attorney post, “International law of golf car rental.” It’s funny, but not so much either.
The Oregon State Bar (OSB) has published their 2008 Law Library Values grid.
No, you can’t always believe what you read (you didn’t know this already?), but this is not cause for despair. While print authors remain forever frustrated when they notice errors after publication, especially those who know they aren’t likely to be corrected in future printings, online authors, and especially journalists, have an easy if imperfect fix. Jonathan Franzen of Corrections fame, has nothing on newspaper Corrections. There is even a “corrections” blog, Regret the Error, which on top of being very funny, has links to the corrections pages of many major newspapers.
Our Oregonian doesn’t have a link at Regret the Error, but it does have a Corrections section on its web page (and in the print edition).
Bloggers have the best “correction” options of all. We can edit, include the correction in a Comment, or the mother-of-all-corrections – we can delete (though imperfectly). This, as you can imagine, is why law librarians want the laws printed on paper. Shenanigan-free (mostly).
There are lots of uses for online videos, especially when you want to show and not just tell via picture rather than word – and YouTube is not the only game in town (at least in the librarian “town”).
Jason the Content Librarian presents a pithy comparison of YouTube and blip.tv in his Oct 8th “Exploring Internet Video Resources” post.
Tip of the day: there are always other games in town just as there are always other fish in the sea (figuratively speaking that is – I can’t promise this in real life)
Washington State Bar Association has posted a link to this amazing Breast Cancer Legal Resources Guide. While a lot of the information is Washington State-specific, there is a lot of relevant general and federal information as well. (I haven’t yet found an equivalent guide for Oregonians.)
Here’s my earlier post on the Breast Cancer Legal Advocacy Project of Oregon.
Daylight Savings Time: the new Hot Topic everywhere I go – and no one has a clue. So here you are:
Your clock will (but you may have to make it) fall BACK one hour at 2 a.m., Sunday, November 4th, 2007. For more information Go Navy!
(Thanks to the excellent Wisconsin State Law Library newsletter for the reminder and the link.)
The Oregon Division of Finance and Corporate Security (DFCS) has a lot of useful information at their web site, including information now on:
1) the 2007 Identity Theft law that allows you to place a security freeze on your credit file:
Oregon Consumer Identity Theft Protection Act (2007 SB 583). More on this new law from Julie Tripp at Oregonlive.
and
Newspaper websites getting into the public records $$ business?
Excerpt from From PI Buzz:
“It had to happen. Newspapers that publish public records databases have been attracting more viewers to their sites. I don’t know if this translates into subscribers or other ways papers make money, but the Memphis Daily News is taking the direct approach, selling access to Tennessee public records. The paper has partnered with the Chandler Reports, which sells property profiles and business filings. There are no free searches, although they do the usual gimmick of presenting search fields but then require a fee to see any results.”
Oregon Legal Research Blog