Justia Law Review

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 :)