Copyright Law

Goodbye, Uncle Walter

Posted on July 20, 2009
Back from Planet California. Opposing counsel in that appeal I was out there to help handle (I did the prep work; my colleague actually argued) blew it. There's an old aphorism that one cannot win an appeal at oral argument, but one can lose it. Although the court's remarks prior to beginning the argument indicated that we had won on the briefs, opposing counsel did not help her client, and her

Road Sausages

Posted on July 15, 2009
I'm out on Planet California for a couple more days here, helping a colleague out on an appellate matter later in the week. Thus, this sausage collection is somewhat more organic1 than usual. It is definitely another planet out here: Breakfast places don't open until 7am, and the major-chain pharmacy nearest to the hotel in LA didn't have the local paper (the much-maligned LAT) yet, because

Uninspected Sausages

Posted on July 09, 2009
No USDA inspections... not that the government could competently inspect much of anything on the 'net anyway. Copyright Office fees are changing on 01 Aug 2009 - mostly up. Copyright registration is one of those self-perpetuating little annoyances: Once the system is in place, it's awfully hard to keep it from becoming more expensive over time, and there's really no longer a justification

Gambling in Chief Illiniwek's Admissions Offices

Posted on July 06, 2009
I think I've finally figured out why the Chicago Tribune is so bent on excoriating the "clout list" at the University of Illinois: U of I undergraduate admissions standards - and, in particular, to (in order) the College of Engineering, the College of Business, and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - are now too high for any of the so-called "journalists" at the Tribune to meet...

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It Was a Dark and Stormy Link Sausage

Posted on July 02, 2009
... and the ingredients were blending their flavours as teh internets churned themselves from chopped striated muscle of castrated young steer, and of pig that had never seen daylight, and of turkey that was so stupid it wouldn't recognize daylight - and, not incidentally but not officially, the stray fingertips of illegal immigrants staffing the processing plant somewhere in Iowa - and stuffed

Last, not First, Monday

Posted on June 29, 2009
Caffeine- and sleep-deprived. I think I'll poach the next batch of sausages in Turkish coffee. In the "free speech for me, but not for thee" department, consider the forthcoming documentary film Some Speech Is More Free Than Others... which, if done correctly, couldn't be shown on broadcast television because it would necessarily include the routine in the clip on the right...

Brutus

Posted on June 26, 2009
The putative "king of pop" is dead. Long live the king, whoever he may be. I come here not to praise Jackson, but to bury him. Friends, literati, countrymen - lend me your pixels. Being a grouchy SOB myself, I'm not going to spread praise where little or none is deserved...

Sausage Links Ouroboros

Posted on June 25, 2009
... because they just go around in a circle until they end up where they started, biting their own tails. And if that's not a mixed-enough metaphor, just consider that they're sausages... In a particularly delicious bit of reflexive irony, Chris Anderson - one of the advocates of long-tail economics, and especially for creative works - has been accused of plagiarism by the Virginia Quarterly

Bleary-Eyed Monday Morning Link Sausages

Posted on June 22, 2009
I'm bleary eyed, not the link sausages - the grinder did a pretty good job with their eyes. Here's an amusing thought: ROTC for spies proposed. I wonder if they'll be required to wear trenchcoats on campus uniform day? With the number of work-study and grad-school students who end up working in places at any decent college/university who will have access to the data necessary to figure out

At Any t > 0...

Posted on June 21, 2009
Jay Lake points to some interesting, if ultimately incomplete (and therefore unlikely - but not impossible! - to be correct) comments on the dubious future of the publishing "industry". For one thing, Mr Stevens' article fails to acknowledge that there is no publishing industry; there are, instead, thirteen (or perhaps eleven) distinct publishing niches with various degrees of cross-niche

These Internet Sausages Neither Kashrut Nor Halal

Posted on June 19, 2009
It may be Friday, but (as indicated by the last three items below) I have no objection to pork products. It's one thing to honor one's ancestry; it's another thing entirely to be bound by it (and what is the binder in these dubious internet sausage links, anyway...

Buggy Sausage Links

Posted on June 17, 2009
No chocolate-covered ants here - just ant-covered sausages. Dodgy accounting extends to "self-sufficient" athletic departments, which leads to yet another question regarding college athletics: Particularly for public universities, are they paying a minimum wage? Contrast this objectively verifiable problem with Illinois's right wing papers' continuing bleating concerning the U of I's

Sausage Pot Pourri

Posted on June 12, 2009
This one's for you, Dittoheads: Did altruism arise from the pointy end of a spear? I suspect this says much more about dubious assumptions in the model than it does about anything else... because "altruism" appears in species (such as T. truncatus) with no comparable analog to intra-species warfare...

Kangaroo Sausages

Posted on June 10, 2009
...because they're just hoppin' off the grill, and they're not made from the usual mix of ingredients. Here's an interesting piece in the NYT on bullying and how it (might) be prevented. The real problem with the article is that it doesn't go nearly far enough, as it's limited to children...

How Much Is That Jurist In the Window?

Posted on June 08, 2009
Just some side thoughts - the paperwork snowstorm has not abated (if anything, it's worse). Today, the Supreme Court decided that the title question of this post does, in fact, have an answer... and if it is "too much," then the judge may not hear certain cases...

Spring Snowstorm

Posted on June 05, 2009
A bit snowed under in paperwork for a few days here... at the moment, I'm just sticking my head out of the drifts for a moment to catch some air. Some humid, pollen-and-cropdust-filled Midwest farmbelt air, but it'll have to do. Some PIs do shoot first...

No Caffeine

Posted on June 01, 2009
These aren't diet, but they are uncaffeinated. Appellants' briefs will be filed today in Post-Tasini (aka Muchnick). Amicus briefs supporting reversal are due in a week; the opposing brief is due on 07 August. Why should y'all care? This case will try to answer this question definitively: Does 17 U...

nRT/V

Posted on May 30, 2009
I'm pissed at the Illinois papers - including (but not limited to) the Nazi-Zeitung - for their current flagwaving over the admissions process at the University of Illinois.1 Most "premier" universities - and, sadly, for many of its undergraduate programs the University of Illinois probably does not qualify as such - have this little thing called a "letter of recommendation" in each candidate's

Grouchy, Chunky Sausages

Posted on May 29, 2009
Oscar the Grouch ain't got nothin' on me. Professor Tushnet points out something important about the new Star Trek movie: it ignores the difference between individuals and institutions. And, not incidentally, ignores science... but that's another story entirely; or, perhaps, just a story - or at least back story - that should have been in the movie...

Geeky Leftover Sausage Links

Posted on May 27, 2009
OK, so I didn't get around to posting again yesterday. Consider these the leftovers. At least for IP nerds like me (that's right: I'm a civil procedure geek, but an IP nerd), there's a fascinating piece at the IP Financing blawg that asks how much should be spent on anticounterfeiting measures...

Coloring Not FDA Approved

Posted on May 26, 2009
I got them post-holiday back-to-the-daily-grind blues - which does not reflect any ingredient of the following sausages. RIP Professor/Dean/Chancellor Cribbet. Although the Cribbet & Johnson property casebook is not considered the most "rigorous," in many senses it is: It pays attention to language, time, and context in a way that its competitors don't, and it provides a solid foundation for

Holiday Weekend Annoyances

Posted on May 24, 2009
I'm easily annoyed. The vegetarian intended for our holiday-weekend vegetarian barbecue crawled out of the marinade. We'll just have to substitute lamb for beef (both are vegetarians... usually, anyway; ok, it was a really bad movie, but you get the point)...

Weekend Update

Posted on May 23, 2009
As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, my preparations for a vegetarian barbecue proceed forthwith. Hopefully, the vegetarian won't crawl out of the marinade this year... An interesting article discloses some practical flaws in long-tail theory...

This Augers Poorly

Posted on May 21, 2009
Mostly ridicule today. Surprised? Don't try this one at home: ER doctor saves patient with standard household drill... under telephone guidance from a neurosurgeon. GBS "news": Google agrees to give some libraries that provide books for scanning a say on price...

Leftover Barbecued Internet Sausage Links

Posted on May 19, 2009
Slightly more finely and evenly ground than the last couple of batches: Sublieutenant Ogilvy is as alive as ever and living near Kaluga. Ironic that post-Stalinist Russia is adopting Stalinist Soviet tactics satirized by Orwell... I'm not sure which is more disturbing: The Poz's new book on the financial crisis that rejects a pure-market, laissez-faire solution for everything...

Blind Justice

Posted on May 15, 2009
As Arlo Guthrie said, here's another case of typical American blind justice, and there's nothin' [anyone] can do about it. Or should. There's a longrunning dispute over the name and logo of the Washington Redskins, including several back-and-forth trips between the US District Court for the District of Columbia and the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...

Slightly Smaller Chunks

Posted on May 14, 2009
These sausages remain chunkier than normal. "News" that Amazon wants to be a publisher, starting with "reprinting" self-published books... that is, the most-desperate market of authors least likely (and able) to negotiate terms. Combine this with some disturbing news out of Penguin USA about quasi-in-house authors (unfortunately, the sausages available for linking on this one appear to be

Rather Chunky Internet Sausages

Posted on May 11, 2009
Diving right into the sausage grinder, set for unusually large chunks... In the "when not to call a joker the ace of spades" department, Writer Beware and Lee Goldberg have an unplanned dialogue on efforts to make vanity publishing, and to a lesser extent self-publishing, sound more respectable...

Google Library Project Settlement (tangent)

Posted on May 10, 2009
How You Lose Matters The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) One of the major problems with the Google Book Search settlement is buried in the field definition: It is limited to books for which there is a valid, and renewed, copyright registration...

Where What Is?

Posted on May 08, 2009
Just a couple of quick thoughts today, then (hopefully later today, if no more emergencies arise) that analysis of the civil procedure opinion I promised earlier this week and how it implies that the Google Book Search settlement is dead in the water...

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