Meathook Reality

Eminem’s new video is worth a look-see.

Vote.

Hey, Diebold has managed to start the ball rolling on making fair use easier to defend! And I’m too busy studying to do much more then post a snip of Fred von Lohmann’s article and run.

In granting summary judgment to OPG and the Swarthmore students, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel easily concluded that the republication of the Diebold email archives was fair use as a matter of law. Pivotal to the court’s conclusion was the fact that there was no commercial market for these e-mails, and thus the re-publication in no way diminished the (nonexistent) commercial value of the works.

According to the Court, “Diebold sought to use the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions – which were designed to protect ISPs, not copyright holders – as a sword to suppress publication of embarrassing content rather than as a shield to protect its intellectual property.” The court held that §512(f) imposes liability on any copyright owner who sends a DMCA takedown notice that “knowingly” and “materially” misrepresents that copyright infringement has occurred.

…more…

Here’s a fun little tidbit from a contracts case involving a farmer who thought he had $25,000 coming to him after a coal miner failed to fix up his land when they were done. The $25,000 would’ve improved the value of the property by a whole $300! ( Peavyhouse v. Garland Coal and Mining Corporation)

“We therefore hold that where in a coal mining lease, lessee agrees to perform certain remedial work on the premises concerned at the end of the lease period and thereafter the contract is fully performed by both parties except that the remedial work is not done, the measure of damages in an action by lessor against lessee for damages for breach of contract is ordinarily the reasonable cost of performance of the word; however where the contract provision breached was merely incidental to the main purpose in view, and where the economic benefit which would result to lessor by full performance of the work is grossly disproportionate to the cost of performance, the damages which lessor may recover are limited to the diminution in value resulting to the premises because of the non-performance.”

So, I’m putting together some business cards, because I hear that I’ll have to do some serious schmoozing in order to get me a job for next summer. However, my cards are a little boring if I just include a name, phone number, and dubiously-ranked law school. I’m thinking about a headshot, but I’ll have to make myself look presentable for the picture (or spend 9 hours with Photoshop, making myself look like George Clooney).

I’ve heard that this looks like “the beer of business cards", but also that it may not be the image I’m looking for. On the other hand, it’s kind of fun to explain Burningman to people.

If anyone has any suggestions or advice for someone who’s looking to make a solid, fairly straightlaced, and distinctive business card for a student 1L planning on doing IP and tech law, it’d be fun to hear back.

Remember to verify your vote. I’m one of those lamers who would rather vote absentee a week ahead then actually hike down to the polling place, so I voted last night, but if you’re curious as to what you would run into, Verified Voting can help.

BULLETIN
KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH “THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT”

For any who didn’t already know, this weblog was named for a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We’re all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60’s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling consciousness expansion without ever giving a thought to the the grim meathook realities that were lying in wait for all those people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who though they could buy peace and understanding, for $3 per hit.

Anyway, I purchased this domain in the hopes of creating a website to report on the fallout of the crash of the tech industry in silicon valley, way back in 2000. It never really took off, but when I realized that I might as well ‘blog about law school, this was the place to do it.

One problem is that the Gonzo style of writing really doesn’t fit into the legal framework. Too subtle.

Well, I was told that all the cool kids have technorati cred, so I figured I would jump on the bandwagon.

I was surprised to find that I’ve already been linked to!

Here at the university, we all get the opportunity to take our tests the “proper” way, by scratching our answers onto sheets of pressed wood pulp with sticks dipped in ink (most students use the newfangled self-dipping sticks). Some would say that this is the way god intended it. If he had intended for us to do it any other way, he would not have issued us bluebooks and ballpoint pens.

Oddly enough, even though the computer is a relatively new and troublesome invention, causing great confusion to the masses, and rarely working for more then ten minutes at a time before inexplicably “crashing” and destroying all current work, previous work, and sometimes bursting into flames and immolating the hapless user, it is acceptable by the school as a medium of test submission.

Of course, as lawyers-to-be, all students are trusted not to in any way commit fraudulent acts regarding tests. We’re all adults here, and afforded every benefit of the doubt in consideration of our future duty to hold ourselves to a high moral standing.

Actually, that’s bullshit. We’re allowed to carry a couple of pens and maybe a bottle of water into the testing room, whereupon proctors keep an eye on our every move, just hoping that we’ll step out of line so that we can be brought up on charges before the school’s tribunal. We’re told that we will be reported to the ABA shortly after we clear airspace on the way to camp X-Ray. This is because they assume that your average law school student believes that smuggling their 800 page outline into a class in order to answer a 4-issue Torts program will improve their grade.

They do not, however provide computers for the students: they allow us to use our own. Aha! You say, then I’ll be able to cut and paste a prescripted answer into my essay! Nope–they’ve got that covered, too. A company called ExamSoft has created software that reboots your computer into “Secured Test Mode", so that you have no access to your desktop. Pretty slick – as long as it works. And trust me, they’ve got quite the disclaimer for you to read before the test indicating that if it doesn’t work, you’d better be ready to whip out a pen and start bluebooking, pal.

Christy Brothers Circus v. Turnage: the plaintiff who had a circus horse relieve itself on him was allowed to recover for his distress without proving the excretion’s impact caused any significant personal injury.

<M> I wonder what the Dave Matthews settlement will end up being

Great guest post on The Legal Underground by Federalist #84, breaking down how to start and build a great weblog.

Let’s see if any of his advice sinks in, or helps.

Wired actually has an article worth reading, about the way that WestLaw locked up and commercialized the cases we love so much, creating a media empire in the process.

On one hand, they’ve provided a hell of a service: headnotes, commentary, organization, distribution, subscriptions to updated reporters and indexes.

On the other hand, they’ve maintained their monopoly status through some tight copyright control over the page numbers of the citations people use on a day-to-day basis. While many jurisdictions are moving to a “public domain” citation format, most of them still require citation to a specific reporter or set of reporters. And guess what: if you have the same page numbers as West, you’re in violation. If you even provide a translation (unless you are Shephard’s, I guess. I suppose they have a license) you would be in violation.

Over at blawg wisdom they’re talking about the evils of the socratic method.

Here’s how my professors do it:

Contracts: Scheduled Grilling, Well-done, by seat order. And my contracts professor knows her cases. She knows the opinions. She knows the story. She knows precidents, tangents, and other fun things. She went off on a 20 minute explaination of horse-race handicapping, cockfights, and how they relate to the statute of frauds. The grilling has some seasoning: once you’ve been grilled on a case, you are responsible for it for the rest of the year. If you drew Schnell v. Nell, for instance, you’d better perk up every time someone mentions a pretense of a bargain.

Civil Procedure: Pepper the Audience. This is a fairly new professor, so she’s not so great at crowd control. We get a lot of waiting for volunteers, followed by calling on the usual volunteers. She’s started shifting to calling on people randomly, just to keep us on our toes. Since you can usually say anything at all, it’s not too much of a hassle.

Torts: Strictly-managed Pepper the Audience. On Friday, he looked down at his chart, said “Hmm, I think I’ve called on all of you” and then called my name and asked me about Thompson v. County of Alameda. After our midterm, he’s decided to crack down and be significantly heavier on the grilling. I think it’s a good idea, actually.

Criminal Law: Strictly Scheduled Medium-Rare (seat order again) followed by Heavy Volunteerism. The good part is that she’s looking for answers to her questions. The better part is that she releases her powerpoint slides before the class, so you know her questions and their answers. Then we shift to volunteerism for general discussion. Very abstract instructor, so we get a lot of wild tangents and eliptical arguments, usually provided by the usual gunners.

While I generally disagree with Overlawyered, his perspective may be in the right place in some cases. Here’s a great article more related to Copyright. It also helps to remember that there are extremists on both sides of the copyright issue – and that one set of them is currently in power.

Interesting reading over at The Uncivil Litigator.

For the record, while I understand that it is fairly expensive to live in a society in which an $800 insurance claim can take up a huge pile of public resources, I would prefer that to a society in which expediency is preferred over fairness, or even the written law, as Overlawyered seems to prefer.

Hey, for anyone out there reading, not only am I really no good at visual design, but I’m short of the time it takes to fumble css into shape. Contributions, suggestions, or just bitching about what sucks is appreciated.

I’m only marginally anonymous, partly because I’m a little lazy, and partly because I don’t see much reason for it. As someone who has been involved with the various levels of what passes for civilized discourse on the Internet and other electronic media for a little shy of two decades, I think it’s a little overrated.

First: being truly anonymous is hard. The first way to find out who I am is to do about 30 seconds of digging into who owns the meathookreality domain. This is something that I could theoretically hide, either by lying to the registrar (which is becoming against policies or illegal) or by using some remote identity for that purpose. But that would only make it tougher, not impossible. This is a side-effect of my insistence of running my own services. If I were to use one of the services that provide the hosting and blogging, I would be as anonymous as they are willing to make me. In this case, I would be giving up trust and adding even more uncertainty to the question of “Does anyone out there know who I am?”

Second: knowing the first, that assured anonymity is nearly impossible, does anyone really want to get into the habit of making the assumption? Does it afford any security, or merely a perception of security that can be dangerous? Knowing that I am merely pseudononymous , the onus is on me to hold myself to a civil standard. This differs from those who feel that their anonymity allows them to somehow be “more creative” or “more true.” I would prefer to hold myself to the standard of someone who does not slander professors or make personal fun of gunners then to give up that responsibility.

So, while it may take a few moments to find out who I am, where I am, and who my professors are, ya’ll are welcome to. This binds me to saying nothing that’s likely to cause problems.

Last night, I visited the EFF’s presentation of votergate, a documentary put together to explain some of the current issues with electronic voting.

With the exception of the SAM-voiced, green-screened computer that presented the inter-issue cuts and “announcements", and being a little more frenetic then your average documentary, it wasn’t half-bad. They did a decent job of explaining a lot of the issues, and the general disorganization and misunderstanding by many about the security of voting machines.

Anyway, with such a close vote, it’s important that people monitor what’s going on. This morning on the radio I was hearing about a case in Nevada where it seems that election officials were destroying democrat voter applications. I’ve not tried to track down more information, but if so, I’d like to see some serious charges going down. This shit will not stand, man.

Update: It appears to be true. And they’ve allegedly moved to Oregon.

Ok, I admit that I sit farther back then I sit forward, so I get to see a fair amount of what’s going on people’s screens.

Can’t you people get something more entertaining then Freecell?

I gotta get me some!

So, things have been a little quiet of late (other then the fundimental shift of policies regarding blogging software).

I had a Torts midterm a week ago, and a Civil Procedure midterm this last weekend.

Torts: at that point, we’d learned just intentional torts (Battery, Assault, Tresspass, etc) and negligence, as well as their defenses. There’s only so much you can test over that, but it’s more then enough to fill up a 1-hour exam. I think I did a bit better then ok – while there may be some unspotted issues, those that I did find, I felt were pretty-well backed up. There’s some question regarding my interpretation of some negligence per-se, but we’ll find out what the professor thinks of that.

Civil Procedure: it’s all about personal jurisdiction, baby. Going into it, I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on, but when I started hitting the facts, things got kind of soggy. The fact pattern wasn’t too terrible, but after a while I think I was just throwing out cases and hoping they would stick. Pennoyer? McGee? Hanson v. Denkla? Asahi? Hustler? They’re all in there. I even cited Pavlovski, although I’m pretty sure she was hoping we would hit that one.

Oddly enough most of my classmates feel that they were shakier on Torts, although I feel quite the opposite. Anyway, it’l be a while before we know, as the graders are slow and students keep telling the professors that they don’t want to hear about the midterms, or their fragile egos will be shattered.

Now it’s smooth sailing until finals…

Ok, I’ve made a few modifications. Rather then running my own homebrew software, I’ve caved in and installed WordPress since that’s a little more useful, and being developed that much faster.

I’ll see if I can migrate all the old stuff into the new system, for historical reasons (I got more then 100 entries!).

Ok, it has been a while, things have been busy. There is stuff to write, but I’ll have to forego them just a while longer. I’m in the process of migrating to wordpress, having given up on writing my own weblogging software.