Justia Law Review

Last November, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served a national security letter (NSL) on the Internet Archive, seeking records pertaining to a patron of the Internet Archive. Specifically, the FBI requested that person's name, address, length of service, and electronic communication transactional records from the Internet Archive. This National Security Letter (NSL) certified that the information sought was relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities and advised that the Internet Archive was prohibited from disclosing the letter, "other than to those ... whom disclosure is necessary to comply with the letter or to an attorney to obtain legal advice or legal assistance with respect to this letter."

The Internet Archive, American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and Electronic Frontier Foundation then filed a complaint under seal which challenged the constitutionality of the NSL and the NSL statute.

Last week, Judge Claudia Wilken granted a motion to unseal the case. The docket sheet, pleadings, proceedings and orders in Internet Archive v. Mukasey are now publicly accessible from Justia.

Hi Friends,

Here is a great new free case law project that came out (or at least I was made aware of :) a few weeks ago. AltLaw.

Right now AltLaw is focused on getting up the Federal appellate opinions online (US Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Courts). They have aggregated opinions for the last 15 years or so (depending on the court), and have done good job presenting the cases in formated text, in addition to providing the original pdf and in a text only format. It looks like these are the slip opinions, but they can be later fixed up to match the text of the official published opinions.

AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School's Program on Law and Technology, and the Colorado Law School's Silicon Flatirons Program. From the about page.... AltLaw's code was/is written by Stuart Sierra and Professor Paul Ohm, with help from Luis Villa, and produced by Professor Tim Wu. And of course the Federal Judges who wrote the original opinions :)

My take is that one of the keys for free case law will be working with the courts to get them to publish their official final opinions online in their final form. 99.99% of the work has been done (trial, briefs, drafts, slip opinion), we just need to ask (beg?) the judiciary to make the last few text changes to the slip opinion, declare it official and put it online. Ideally this would include a form that can be cited at the time of online publication. Professor Wu clerked for Judge Richard Posner, so maybe he can help influence this influential judge from his previous positions regarding a public domain paragraph citation system (see HyperLaw - Judge Richard Posner's letter (pro West citation system, anti-paragraph citation system), Judge Stephen Williams' letter (pro West/slip opinion page citation system, anti-paragraph citation system) and then contrast to HyperLaw's Alan Sugarman's response/letter to Judge Posner). If the final official published decisions are always being made and published first by Thomson-West, then all other publishers will be at a serious disadvantage.

I will repeat one more time for emphasis... It is KEY that NEW official final versions of opinions are placed online for free in a format that can be cited. That is as important as getting the older previous decisions online in their official form, because it takes us forward.

AltLaw is definitely a worthwhile project. You can read more on AltLAw from on Tim's blog. Onward and onward as they say...

Peace,

Tim

:: Free Bird, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Hi Friends,

One of the cases of interest here in Palo Alto land is the current lawsuit by the founders of ConnectU against Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook gang. In an interesting side light to the case, NYT's John Markoff has written an article on Aaron Greenspan, who developed a social facebook network, called houseSYSTEM, while at Harvard... before either ConnectU or Facebook. The article also covers what Aaron is doing now, including his new company called Qubescape, and a social networking site called Common Room. Of course there is much more about Aaron, Facebook, ConnectU on the blogsphere.

And according to John's article, Aaron has chosen not to be a witness in the following cases...

Connectu, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc. et al in the Massachusetts Federal District Court, filings and other documents.

The Facebook, Inc. v. Connectu, LLC et al in the California Northern Federal District, filings and other documents Court.

Finally here is a 2001 article from the Jamaica Observer about a company Aaron started that used some of its proceeds to send computers to students in Jamaica.

In any case the article "Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges" is an interesting profile of Aaron. I wish him good luck on his new company and projects!

Peace,

Tim

:: If You're Happy and You Know It, My First Album by My First Album Performers

Hi Friends,

This weeks featured Blawg on BlawgSearch.com is the Law Dawg Blawg from the great librarians at Southern Illinois University Law School.

The Law Dawg Blawg is full of great information and tips for legal researchers, as well as being a central online community setting for SIU Law School. But what makes the Law Dawg Blawg standout are the Law Dawgs. These are Dawgs of Law, who work with and and protect law students, legal librarians, lawyers and their families. Little Sheba the Hug Pug was a special guest law dawg last year!

You can find out what a Saluki is here :)

 

You can also check out the other online resources put together by the SIU law librarian team on their SIU law library site!

Peace,

Tim

:: Check It Out, The Lonesome Jubilee by John Mellencamp

Hi Friends,

For those following the Floyd Landis arbitration at Pepperdine Law School... the blog to read is Trust But Verify -- News, Research and Commentary About the Floyd Landis Doping Allegations -- from David Brower. Pepperdine Law Professor Roger Alford also has some thoughts on witness tampering on Opinio Juris.

Trust But Verify - Floyd Landis Doping Allegations Blog

I am pretty sure Landis is going to lose anyway, but threatening Greg LeMond, and his buddy's phone call... not good. The raw information before all of the 30 second media spin (but a lot of comments) are on Trust But Verify in the Hearing Coverage Section.

Peace,

Tim

:: Down to the Waterline, Dire Straits by Dire Straits

Hi Friends,

Today Google filed an answer to Viacom's complaint, basically saying Viacom's complaint is in conflict with the DMCA (the "careful balance" established by Congress between copyright holders and the Internet users and companies). There is the standard paragraph by paragraph admit and deny the allegations and facts stated in Viacom's complaint and...

then the Defenses:

1. DMCA Safe Harbors Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part because Defendants are protected by one or more of the DMCA Safe Harbors in 17 U.S.C. S 512.
2. License Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by licenses, express and implied, granted or authorized to be granted by Plaintiffs.
3. Fair Use Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of fair use.
4. Failure to Mitigate Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part because Plaintiffs have failed to mitigate their damages, if any.
5. Failure to State a Claim Plaintiffs' allegations fail to state a claim for copyright infringement of any work not listed on Exhibit A of the Complaint.
6. Innocent Intent Plaintiffs' damages, if any, are limited by Defendants' innocent intent.
7. Copyright Misuse Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of copyright misuse.
8. Estoppel Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of estoppel.
9. Waiver Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of waiver.
10. Unclean Hands Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of unclean hands.
11. Laches Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of laches.
12. Substantial Non-Infringing Use Plaintiffs' claims are barred in whole or in part based on the doctrine of substantial non- infringing use, although Defendants submit Plaintiffs bear the burden of proving the doctrine's inapplicability.

You can see all the e-filed documents for Viacom v. YouTube / Google here. They are updated daily, and you can subscribe to an RSS feed to be alerted to new documents.

We will be adding more cases in the near future as we build this section out. The current cases we are tracking can be seen on our Cases in the News section. All for free... of course :)

Prediction -- Google wins based on the DMCA Safe Harbor defense.

Peace,

Tim

:: It's Not Safe, I'm With Stupid by Aimee Mann

Hi Friends,

Sabrina Pacifici's new LLRX.com site is.... finally here!

Sabrina had us work on the redesign of the site, with a lot of work on the user interface and search functionality. We also did a lot of data clean up, going through years and years of articles. We are still making some fixes, and adding some features. But the design is nice and much cleaner.

The key to the LLRX site though is the editorial content. The site has thousands of articles written by respected lawyers, technologist and librarians. The topics covered range from law office software to legal research to running a library. LLRX has been up for over 10 years, and has consistently been named one of the top legal Websites on the Internet. We are glad we were able to work on the site for Sabrina. LLRX is a great place to do some research... so check it out and subscribe to updates by RSS or email.

Peace,

Tim

:: Stockton Gala Days, Our Time in Eden by the 10,000 Maniacs

Hi Friends,

I had a great meeting yesterday with my friends at vLex.com. vLex has relaunched their Website, which has laws from many different countries (vLex is based in the EU, and have offices in South America and the USA ). I was given a full tour of the vLex system. They have nicely cleaned up the user interface. The only thing I would add is having the country flags on their home page glide back and forth like album covers on iTunes :)


vLex also has great plans for their future, which I am sure they will announce when they are ready :) vLex truly listens to their users, as the product development shows. I am very excited about the new vLex features that will be coming online, and have full faith that what they are doing will be a huge win for practitioners throughout the world. Check them out at vLex.com. And best of all the USA information is free :)

Now I am going up to Bellingham and Seattle to see Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog, interview students and drink beer (with Kevin, not the students :). And I have to find out what Avvo is doing, beyond the rumors (maybe a Zillow of lawyer owned homes :)

Peace,

Tim

:: Now More Than Ever, Whenever We Wanted by John Mellencamp

Hi Friends,

Congrats to Susan Athey who was just awarded this years John Bates Clark Medal in Economics for the top young economist under 40. She is the first woman to have won the medal. This is a BIG deal in the male dominated arena of economics.

You can read more about her work on the American Economic Association site here and visit Susan's Web page at Harvard here. Many years ago, I had a few classes with Susan and she was very nice and very very smart (she once taught our class when the teacher was out, even though she was in it herself :). While she was getting her PhD from the Stanford Business School, she was the obvious star among the economic students going into teaching/research. Needless to say it was early attention that was well deserved and an initial light on what was to come. Again congrats to Susan.

UPDATE: Susan's former classmate, co-author and Melbourne Business School Professor Joshua Gans has written up what Susan did to win the award and added some good stories to go along with the research.

Peace,

Tim

:: The Law and Economics Podcast, Journal of Law, Economics and Policy at George Mason University

Hi Friends,

Cicely and I made a presentation to the Stanford Law School Advanced Legal Research class today. There was a law librarian Liza MacMorris from Wilson Sonsini who gave students the reality of research working at a large law firm and a guy from Bloomberg who gave details on Bloomberg's plan to run for President and showed their docket search (which seemed kind of like Justia's Free Federal Court Civil Filings Search + a Pacer account for the documents, but Bloomberg also has runners who will get dockets that are not in the system and is tied into other investor and legal information and of course it costs money). Well he certainly hinted that Bloomberg might run, although like most New York Republicans, he more suited to run as a Democrat.

We covered the free part of alternatives to paid Lexis and West. California is in pretty good shape for free information. We focused on free sources like LexisOne and Cornell, as well as some inexpensive alternatives like FastCase and VersusLaw. And of course quite a bit of focus on blogs.

Peace,

Tim

:: All Right Now, Fire and Water by Free

And here is little Sheba the Hug Pug when she visited Stanford Law School a while ago :)

Hi Friends,

As promised... here is the Conrad Johnson - Jimi Hendrix montage of multimedia, legal education and Google.

As you may know, Conrad runs the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia Law School. He also plays guitar.

Conrad talks about his Creating Multi-Purpose Content for the Web article on the Jurist site and Jimi Hendrix, while Bernard, Nancy Rapoport and John Palfrey look on.

Like Jimi... Conrad is also a guitar player..

Here is a closer shot :)

Conrad explains that thanks to his article and Google search results, he is now seen as the guitar playing professor.

Conrad's Jurist article ranks high in the Google world for Conrad Johnson Jimi Hendrix :)

Check out Columbia's Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic and their use of technology for tenant rights.

Peace,

Tim

:: Purple Haze, Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Hi Friends,

Here are some photos from the Jurist 10th aniversry conference.

Jurist's Bernard Hibbitts opens the conference.

Terry Davis, Secretary General, Council of Europe via Video

Geoffrey Corn makes a point about US prisioner policy, while Jonathan Freiman listens.

ALM's Tony Mauro. He did not know who Bruce was planning on selling ALM to.

Ethan Katsh and Bernard talk while drinking iced tea.

Falcon and prey.

... more photos later.... including Conrad Johnson playing Guitar :)

Peace,

Tim

:: Beautiful Day, All That You Can't Leave Behind by U2