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By Andis Kaulins

We have gone through our links on the LawPundit law blogroll to update URLs and to provide selected recent information about those linked websites or blogs. This posting covers Links on the LawPundit Main Page : (2) (f) The Law Blogroll - F:

The Faculty Blog at the University of Chicago Law School is one of our personal favorites, and they currently have an ongoing debate on the legal regulation of virtual worlds. The debate is between Orin Kerr of George Washington Law School and of the Volokh Conspiracy and Dean of the Law School at Chicago, Saul Levmore, "the current president of the American Law Deans Association." The salient question is of course the permissible extent of government intervention in virtual worlds, and there is a surprising division of opinion on this new field of cyberlaw. Kerr takes the first shot with his article, Criminal Law in Virtual Worlds, forthcoming in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Levmore has already posted his first reactions to Kerr's article and and Kerr has replied.

Kerr's major concern seems to be overcriminalization in a legal area where as he writes:
"Computer crimes are so new that we just haven't figured out what we're criminalizing."

Levmore takes what he calls a pragmatist and positivist approach, writing:
"Any area of activity that generates outcries (as will Second Life and other planets in the virtual world when they become more populated and when some inhabitants resort to hate speech, and other offenses to majoritarian sentiments) will generate regulation over libertarian objections."

Obviously, both scholars represent views that will exert a force on cyberlaw development.

The Fair Use Blog, which is undergoing a changing of the guard, is at "The Crossroads between First Amendment Rights and Intellectual Property Rights". This is simply an exploding area of law, as exemplified by their recent posting on User-Generated Videos that use copyrighted materials but can most certainly avail themselves of the fair use defense in certain cases. Michael Kahn, who is leaving the Fair Use Blog for a law firm, directs our attention to Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generate Video (full .pdf here) a study by Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi at the Center for Social Media at American University in Washington D.C., who observe:

"This study showcases user practices in use of copyrighted works within their own online videos at the dawn of this process. It identifies nine common kinds of re-appropriation practices, including satire and parody, criticism, and video diaries. It shows that a substantial amount of user-generated video uses copyrighted material in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration, although no coordinated work has yet been done to understand such practices through the fair use lens....

[A] code of best practices [see e.g. the Documentary Filmmakers? Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use] around fair use in online video needs to be articulated, both to educate new makers and to provide guidance for regulators private and public. Some creative communities have been able to establish best practices in fair use themselves. By contrast with filmmakers, musicians, or teachers, however, online media makers do not represent a mature, bounded community of practice. Thus, online video creators cannot develop a community consensus on fair use?at least not in these early days of the practice. Nor are corporations struggling with the challenge of maintaining and creating business models motivated to investigate fair use implications of today?s anarchic practices. Legislative intervention to re-tailor the delicate fabric of fair use could do more harm than good. And yet guidance on fair use, both for makers and for businesses, is a critical tool to nurture expression within law.

In these circumstances, a deliberative body, made up of practicing lawyers, legal scholars, and scholars in communications, sociology and related fields may be able to provide needed guidance. They would be tasked to provide best practices on fair use, grounded in law and precedent but also supportive of emerging free-speech practices. This ?blue ribbon? group?s recommendations could then help to shape regulatory practices, both private and public, for a participatory media era."

For those of you looking for good staff - and that is half the game in many a business or professional office - Frank Addante's FounderBlog has a posting titled Great Athletes versus Great Resumes where Frank highlights some essential factors not necessarily found in resumes, but which mark his team:

"[T]hey ALL:

1. Have PASSION
2. Are QUICK LEARNERS
3. Have EXTREME PRIDE in their work and CARE
4. Are highly COMPETITIVE - they refuse to lose
5. Have FIRE IN THE BELLY"

There is definitely something to that approach for many things in life, not just jobs.

Freedom to Differ, a blog by Peter Black, carries the slogan that it is "A blog that speaks freely about legal and policy issues facing the media and the internet." We read there that The Guardian has compiled a list of what someone there has selected as the world's 50 most influential blogs, and we must be number one .... of the blogs that did not yet make that list. The list is clearly erroneous for missing such important blogs as Instapundit. There are two kinds of influences in this world, who and how many. There is a difference. But do take a look at that list to see what the masses actually read ... because that is also what they BUY, either commercially, politically or otherwise.

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).