As it happens, I have a more-than-the-usual-passing interest in the goings-on at the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. My oldest friend (I say we met in kindergarten, though he seems to think it was 1st grade), Eric Nadel, who has spent the last 30 years or so down in Texas as the voice of […]
Author Archive | David Post
Our Ridiculous Copyright Regime, Cont’d: Part 239
A federal court in Illinois has recently decided that Sherlock Holmes — or, more precisely, the characters and incidents in the Sherlock Holmes stories published prior to 1923 — have, indeed, finally fallen into the public domain. Not, mind you, anything post-1923 – but, via the complex workings of the Copyright Act, the pre-1923 stuff […]
Scandal!
The front page of today’s (print edition) New York Times has the following lead headline in the upper right: “Christie Faces Scandal on Traffic Jam Aides Ordered” That strikes me as a very odd headline. “Facing” a “scandal” is not a reportable fact – is it? Where, exactly, is this scandal? The answer, of course, […]
The “Law Revolution”
Although there have been endless reports/commentaries etc. about the crisis in legal education and the legal profession, this one, by Jordan Furlong, struck me as particularly cogent and well put together.
Aereo, and the Strange Case of the “Public Performance” Right in Copyright Law
As you can see in this very informative infographic and blurb, there’s been a LOT of activity recently, with a good deal more on the way, involving the question of whether Aereo’s technology (or that of a copycat service, formerly called “Aereokiller” and now “FilmOn”) constitutes a “public performance” of the underlying copyrighted TV shows. […]
The History of the Internet, Typography Division, Cont’d
As regular readers know, I have the proverbial bee in my bonnet in regard to the necessity for retaining the initial capital “I” when writing about “the Internet.” I think it actually matters a good deal — see here and here if you’re interested in my reasons for thinking so. But in any event, my […]
Ominous Developments on the “Internet Governance” Front
The future of Internet governance is starting to look more and more worrisome, and that should concern anyone interested in the Net as a platform for free and open global communication. This past week brought us a Declaration by the major Internet standards-setting organizations — ICANN, the Internet Society, the Internet Architecture Board, the World […]
What the Hell Happened? The Campaign Against (and Defeat of) SOPA
I trust that most of you remember the rather astonishing events of late 2011/early 2012, during which something resembling an Internet insurrection helped stop the Administration’s proposed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) dead in its legislative tracks. [I was pretty actively involved in the efforts, and blogged about the events on a number of occasions […]
Our Extremely Messed Up Copyright System: Item 137
Sometimes, it is difficult to explain to people the very substantial downside of a copyright (or other IP) regime. Paul Heald’s new study, reported on here (“The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish”) should help on that score. As the Atlantic’s headline puts it: “A book published during the presidency of […]
My Summer Vacation, part 1
I have — really! — been doing productive work this summer; more on that later. But I have also spent prodigious amounts of time learning alternate-bass fingerpicking on the guitar, something I’ve longed to be able to do for 30 years or so. [If you don’t know what “alternate-bass fingerpicking” sounds like, listen to the […]
Rot at the Court!
An interesting new article by Raizel Liebler & June Liebert in the Yale J. of Law and Technology on “link rot” in Supreme Court opinions finds that almost 30% of the Internet URLs cited in Supreme Court opinions since the first such citation in 1996 (!) no longer work. It’s not the end of the world, […]
And Onto More Important Matters . . .
My fears that we were facing a summer without top-class futbol have proven unfounded. The Confederations Cup tournament, now underway in Brazil, has been a nice reminder that in just over a year or so, there will come a moment when 30 or 40 percent of the world’s population will be simultaneously engaged in the […]
SCOTUS: Genes (in their Natural State) Not Patentable
The Supreme Court today issued its much-awaited decision in the Myriad Technologies case. At issue in the case were Myriad’s patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes — genes which are important genetic markers for determining susceptibility to breast cancer. Myriad discovered “the precise location” of the two genes (on chromosomes 17 and 13), and […]
Still More on Justice Scalia’s Footnote
Eugene has a somewhat different take on Justice Scalia’s now-infamous footnote than I did . . . He writes [M]y sense is that the footnote is just a somewhat indirect way to remind lawyers of a useful rule of brief writing — always decode any abbreviations that you use. Of course, as David points out, it’s not […]
Dumb footnote, cont’d
So I received a few interesting responses from readers to my post on Justice Scalia’s silly footnote in City of Arlington v. FCC. First, Jacob Gershman over on wsj.com writes: To be fair, though, it’s not exactly obvious what CTIA stands for. Yes, the group was originally called the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. But before […]