Social networking sites sign pact with EU

Technology Review reports that the European Union has had seventeen networking sites including Google, MySpace and Facebook sign an agreement to improve safeguards against "cyberbullying" -the bullying and abuse of teenagers online. The sites agree to limit the risks of misuse by providing a "report abuse" button allowing users to report "inappropriate contact from or conduct by" another user to the site operator, which will relay the complaint to local authorities. The site operators also must make sure online profiles and contact lists of underage users are set to the highest privacy settings and to ensure they are not obtainable on search engines.

U.S.Federal Court news

News from the Office of the US Courts:
Text messaging support to the federal judiciary's email subscription service is newly available. This service allows visitors to uscourts.gov to receive notifications by email when new information is available, including news, newsletters, specific web site content and other alerts. If you sign up for automatic updates, the service will notify you with an email sent directly to your inbox. In addition to receiving Email Updates, you can now get the Emergency Notices & Updates sent directly to your cell phone or mobile device. The U.S. Courts offers text message alerts for Emergency Notices & Updates on some major incidents (such as a hurricane or other large scale crisis) involving wide-spread court operations soon after official information is made available. Sign up by by clicking here.
Federal Court Management Statistics for 2008, a report that provides profiles for each of the 12 regional U.S. courts of appeals and 94 U.S. district courts - plus national totals - for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, is now available on the US Courts website.
The FY 2009 update to the Long Range Plan for Information Technology in the Federal Judiciary is now available. The update articulates five-year directions and objectives for the judiciary's information technology program, including PACER.

CRS reports available

Wikileaks claims it has published 6780 Congressional Research Service CRS reports on its website, supposedly the entire electronic output made available to all the Congressional Offices (wikileaks claims it's "nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports".) There are additional reports and briefings prepared for specific offices that aren't included. You can access the reports from the Wikileaks website from either an alphabetical list or a chronological list of the reports (the lists are long, please be patient).

NELLCO legal scholarship repository

NELLCO, the New England Law Library Consortium (no, you don't have to be in New England and yes, Barco is a member) has a legal scholarship repository on its website that has grown to include not just working papers but also reports, lecture series, topical collections, workshop presentations, and other scholarship created by faculty and graduate students at NELLCO member schools. It contains, for example, the Cornell Law School Berger International Speaker Series , the Harvard Law School Student Scholarship Series , New York University Law and Economics Working Papers , Yale Law School Student Prize Paper Series , and Vermont Law School LL.M. Dissertations on Environmental Law .

AALL wiki for the recession

From James E Duggan, AALL President, comes this announcement:
In response to the U.S. recession and its impact on law libraries, AALL has created a wiki of Tools for Success in Today’s Economy. On the wiki you will find:

• Tips for operating your law library with a tight budget
• Advice on negotiating contracts with vendors
• How to interview effectively for your next job
• Resources for professional development
• And much more

Any AALL member can add material to the wiki, and all are encouraged to use the tools and share more resources that might help friends and colleagues in AALL.

Collection of Legal information websites

The Legal Information Systems & Legal Informatics Resources website has links to lots of sources of legal information including Blogs, computer-assisted legal research (calr), conferences & conference proceedings , copyright resources , definitions, departments, courses, programs & institutes , institutional & scholarly repositories and ejournals .

Tips for Gmail users

If you're a Google Gmail user - and who isn't? - Lifehacker has a list of 10 features developed in Gmail labs that you might fine useful. A couple that appeal to me are multiple inboxes allowing you to filter your mail into several "buckets", Canned Responses that let you set up canned replies so you can quickly and easily fire off that same old reply, and my favorite, Forgotten Attachment Detector, which scans your email to determine whether or not you had meant to attach a file and alerts you if an attachment is missing (how many times have I done that?).

Energy Law current legal literature

The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas has created a website that providing links and updates to current legal literature in the field of energy law. The website is a resource for keeping informed of current articles about the development and regulation of energy resources and related policy, primarily in the United States. The emphasis is on renewable and alternative energy sources and new developments in traditional sources, including articles about directly applicable environmental law. The articles are hand-selected by law librarians from newly published law reviews and journals. If you use a feedreader, the site provides an RSS feed.

Westlaw Headnote reclassification Feb. 27 - Mar 1

From Feb. 27th through March 1st, Westlaw will start their 2009 Headnote Reclassification. They will be uploading approximately 245,500+ headnotes and 105,700+ full text documents.
Westlaw users may see discrepancies in old and new key numbers as they release new/revised headnotes for the 2009 Headnote Reclassification starting late Friday evening (after 10:00 pm) and ending on Sunday (February 27 - March 1).
Two new topics will be added: PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATIONS AND CONFIDENTIALITY and PROTECTION OF ENDANGERED PERSONS.
These topics have been completed revised: CONVICTS, DISORDERLY CONDUCT, PRISONS, and PRODUCTS LIABILITY.
Dozens of other areas of the Key Number System have been given minor improvements, particularly in the topics COUNTIES, CRIMINAL LAW, INDIANS, INFANTS, NEGLIGENCE, and PROCESS.

CCH: Financial crisis news

CCH has a financial crisis news blog intended to provide the legal community and others with news and links to vital information on the current financial crisis. Maintained by a staff of CCH attorney-editors, the site tracks ongoing developments and the responses from lawmakers and regulatory agencies. Users can also receive the site’s RSS feed or subscribe via e-mail.

Penn Law students start underground newspaper

University of Pennsylvania law students have launched a new publication: an Onion-style underground legal newspaper called Goat's Milk (PDF). The lead story reports that students are blaming the disastrous economy for bad grades, bad luck in getting dates and even a favorite football team's recent loss.

SSRN adds eJournal for legal information & technology

Lee Peoples has announced that with the help of other law librarians he has successfully begun a new eJournal on SSRN called the Legal Information and Technology eJournal. The journal features the works of law librarians and other academics in the legal information field. The eJournal will allow us to get feedback on works in progress, develop the profession’s scholarly agenda, and present our work to a wider audience. It is hoped that it will inspire more of us to write, to share our work more readily within the profession, and to extend our knowledge to the broader legal academy and other disciplines interested in our field and expertise. The journal welcomes all significant contributions to legal information scholarship and to the practice of law librarianship.
They are in the process of inviting LLJ, LRSQ, IJLI, and Perspectives authors to post their works back to 2005 and welcome all other publications from that time frame fitting within the journal’s subject matter.

Testimony from Madoff whistleblower available

Harry Markopolos, the "whistleblower" who contacted the SEC about Madoff's "Ponzi scheme" several years ago, testfied before a hearing of the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets yesterday. You can read his submitted written testimony and supplemental documents that he submitted along with the testimony including email exchanges and lengthy memos he sent to the SEC documenting irregulaties in Madoff's operations. Markopolos said he began his investigation into Madoff in late 1999 when a marketing executive from Rampart Investment Management Company Inc. told him of Bernard Madoff’s fantastic returns. Markopolos said he determined in less than four hours that Madoff’s operation was a fraud.
The Wall Street Journal has made the Court Document: Madoff Client List available. It is 163 tightly spaced pages long.

Surname distribution in the US

Dynastree, a website where you can create your family tree, has a cool feature: type in a surname and it will show you the distribution of that surname throughout the US. Surnames frequently searched for: Gonzalez, O'Connor, and Obama.

Local startup's technology adapts RSS feeds to your preferences

Pittsburgh's online weekly Pop City has an article today about interesting Pittsburgh startup mSpoke, working "at the hot intersection of the semantic and implicit web, an area that involves the synthesis of personal web data." Try mSpoke’s FeedHub personalization technology for RSS feeds. It's very easy to use. Just upload the OPML from you feedreader (if you use Google Reader you can easily export the OPML for all your feeds). Then add the FeedHub feedreader to your homepage on Google or Google Reader. The cool thing is that it looks at all the feeds you subscribe to (for example, mine include Jurist, LawLibTech, Legal Scholarship Blog, Madisonian, Wired, CNet, the WSJ law blog, and other law/technology types). FeedHub will then "feed" you information by choosing great posts based on what it has learned from your OPML.
FeedHub chooses personalized content for you based on both your reading behavior and explicit feedback. The more posts you read, and the more you tell FeedHub how you feel about your content, the better we'll get at choosing content to feed you.

LexisNexis representative change

Jim O’Leary, our LexisNexis representative, has taken a job as the Lexis rep for Duke law school in North Carolina starting immediately, so we are without a Pittsburgh-located rep for a while. The regional manager, Tom Berdan (in Philadelphia) is fielding our LexisNexis questions until they hire a new rep: tom.berdan@lexisnexis.com .

Overview of the US Intelligence Community

The Director of National Intelligence has released the Intelligence Community's report "An Overview of the United States Intelligence Community for the 111th Congress" (29 page pdf). The report includes a description of the various programs, departmental components, armed services components, and contact information for legislative affairs offices of the intelligence community.

What is a recession?

The February issue of Liber8, the newsletter of the Research Library of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, has an article that answers the question "What is a recession?". The article explains how the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research studies data and decides when the economy is in a recession (and yes, we are in one and have been since Dec. 2007).
The article has links to other Federal Reserve Bank articles on the recession.

Dutch agreement on orphan works digitization

Open Access reports that Netherlands Library Forum and the Netherlands Association of Organisations for the Collective Management of Intellectual Property Rights have issued a joint declaration on the digitization of orphan works that is a significant "step forward" for orphan works still under copyright. "Orphan works" are works whose rights holders cannot be traced. As far as is known, this is the first agreement of this type anywhere in the world between libraries and right holders. The essence of the agreement is that the libraries that are represented receive permission, on certain conditions, from virtually all right holders to digitize their collections and make them publically available on their own premises for teaching or research purposes. The libraries do not need to pay the right holders as long as the works are only made available on their own premises. Separate consent is required, however, if the digitized works are made more widely available via the Internet. In that case, an agreed payment must be made, but the library will not need to go in search of the right holders because this will be done by collecting societies.

Search personalization

Google has been working to "personalize" search results, so that when you do a search after you've logged into Google it will remember your prior searches and adjust your results accordingly. Technology Review reports on a new Web search personalization app from Surf Canyon. You can download the sofware and install it on your Firefox or Internet Explorer browser. It will then enhance your individual searches on Google or other major search engines by evaluating which links you click on, and then instantly giving you revised search returns, including three sites that relate in some way to the site you clicked on. "We have invented real-time personalization," says Mark Cramer, CEO of the company.

Legal citation

The Irish legal blogger cearta.ie has a post in which he discusses various legal citation standards. He looks at the various legal citation formats in the English-speaking world including the Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) used in the UK, the Australian Guide to Legal Citation and the bilingual English-French Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation . He has this to say about the Bluebook: "However, one citation system stands out, and this is one situation where you really can judge a book by its cover: the Standard System of American Legal Citation is universally called The Bluebook, because of the colour (or, I suppose, the color) of its cover. It was first published in 1926.. it is now in its eighteenth edition. I’m not a fan: it is clumsy and overly pedantic, premised as it is on the formalist Langellian conceit that there can be a rule for every possible citation occasion. Worse than that, quite frankly, it simply looks ugly on the page."

hat tip: Tom Bruce

Big Day for western PA

Our beloved Steelers made Superbowl history last night, becoming the first NFL team to win SIX Superbowls. The 'burgh was rocking. Even in staid Squirrel Hill, where I live, the streets were filled with whooping, screaming fans, honking cars, and fireworks everywhere.
And today, of course, is Groundhog Day - so many intrepid Pittsburghers drove out to Punxatawney, about an hour northeast of Pittsburgh, to see what Punxatawney Phil would predict. More winter, of course.

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report

Newly released : The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)Quarterly Report to Congress [January 2009] and The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)Quarterly Report to Congress [January 2009]. The reports have been broken into many smaller parts to allow for easier downloading. The Iraq report includes a section of Highlights from the Report and a List of Contracts (Excel).

Google Streetview fighting crime?

The Google subnet has a story about how Google StreetView & Google Earth is being used to solve crimes. In one case, StreetView was instrumental in returning a kidnapped Massachusetts girl safely to her home (she was kidnapped by her grandmother and taken to a motel in rural Virginia and police were able to track her down using her cellphone and Google StreetView). In another case, GoogleEarth helped a Swiss police team detect a 1.2-acre marijuana field and nab the gang responsible.
These incidents may help make up for the recent story of a Google StreetView camera car killing "Bambi" - a baby deer.

Superbowl closing

The Barco Law Building and Barco Law Library will close at 6 pm on Superbowl Sunday. Pittsburgh police will close the streets of the Oakland neighborhood, home of both Pitt and CMU, at 9 pm. on Superbowl Sunday.
Go Steelers!

Legal Professionals on Twitter

Justia has compiled a list of legal professionals on Twitter, complete with pictures and a map of locations.

Dept. of Defense releases annual review of mission

The Department of Defense has announced the release of the 2009 Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review (QRM) Report to Congress (48 page pdf) in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. Although the department has completed similar reviews in the past, this was the first review conducted with the intention of establishing a framework for performing roles and missions analysis on a recurring basis every four years.
In the review, the DoD defines its core missions and core competencies and reviews recent efforts undertaken across the force to improve its ability to conduct joint operations in several evolving mission areas.
The report concludes with the DoD's vision to support maturation of "whole-of-government" (interagency) approaches to national security problems.

"Browse Topics" looking for volunteers

Browse Topics, a pathway to federal websites by topic, is a service of the Federal Depository Library Program. It is maintained by volunteers from the FDL community from institutions across the United States and sponsored by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The editors are looking for contributors in the area of Agriculture; anyone interested in contributing should see the Contributors page on the Browse Topics website.
The topics in the area of Agriculture include:
Animals and Livestock
Education and Outreach
Food and Nutrition
History, Art, and Biography
Laws and Regulations
Marketing and Trade
Plants and Crops
Research and Technology
Rural and Community Development

Census report on Educational Attainment in the US

The Census Bureau has released a new report, “Educational Attainment in the United States, 2007,” (16 page pdf). The data comes from two separate sources: the estimates of current educational attainment come from the 2007 American Community Survey (ACS), while historical trends in median annual earnings come from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Some of the statistics it contains: Of people age 25 or older who live in the United States but who were born elsewhere, 10.9 percent have an advanced degree, while only 9.9 percent of those born in the United States have one; 10.7 percent of men have an advanced degree v. 9.6 percent of women; among racial and ethnic groups, 19.6 percent of Asian Americans have an advanced degree, followed by 11.3 percent of non-Hispanic white people, 5.8 percent of black people, and 3.9 percent of Hispanics. A map on page 7 showing the "Percent of People Aged 25 and Over Who Have Completed High School or More Education Relative to the National Mean by State: 2007" is remarkably split along north/south lines, with only New York joining southen states in being below the mean and only Florida joining northern states in being above the mean.

PACER news

Yesterday I emailed PACER to ask about the cost and payment system for court documents - over a year ago there was a pilot project offering free access to PACER from a few select libraries with the hope that eventually PACER might be free in other libraries. Here's the answer I got back from PACER today: "The free access from certain libraries has been suspended indefinitely. There is no plan to change our payment system in the future." Sounds pretty final.

NFL oks Superbowl in churches

The NFL says that churches can show the Superbowl coverage big-screen TVs without fear of violating copyright laws, according to a report. In 2007, many churches cancelled Super Bowl parties after the National Football League (NFL) warned an Indiana church that it would be illegal to show the game on anything larger than a 55-inch screen. But members of Congress threatened to change copyright laws, and the NFL dropped the restriction beginning with this year's Super Bowl. Churches may show the game on any monitor, so long as they do not charge admission and hold the party at a location used for other large gatherings.

New lawyer directory launched

The Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell law school recently launched a new, free online directory of lawyers. The directory is the result of a year-long collaboration with Justia, and promises to be a useful and comprehensive source of information about lawyers.

New website about the author of "Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties"

Government Documents and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have announced the launch of a website entitled Charles J. Kappler - A Life Beyond Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. The site provides a portrait Kappler (1868–1946), the person who was the first to compile these important American Indian legal materials. He was a staff member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs; served as co-counsel in the first case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague; brought important tribal issues before the courts just a quarter century after the Battle of the Little Big Horn; and participated in a number of major Indian law cases before the United States Supreme Court, prior to the creation of the Indian Claims Commission.

Panorama of the Inauguration

During the Obama Presidential Inauguration last Tuesday photographer David Bergman attached a robotic arm called the Gigapan Imager onto a railing and snapped 220 images with his Canon G10 to create this amazingly detailed image.
A regular camera fits into the Gigapan Imager. The photographer marks the corners of the panorama and Gigapan calculates how many pictures the camera needs to snap. The robotic device captures hundreds or thousands of photos, and Gigapan software integrates the image afterward. Bergman says that it took his Macbook Pro six and a half hours to finalize the nearly 2 gigabyte image--the highest resolution panorama of the inauguration.
The Gigapan Imager was developed as part of a larger project between Carnegie Mellon University, Google, NASA and National Geographic to create high quality images for maps and disaster relief efforts.

hat tip: MIT Technology Review

PACER recycling

Carl Malamud and his organization Public Resource have a project to "recycle" documents that you buy from PACER, the Federal Judiciary's centralized registration, billing, and technical support center for electronic access to U.S. District, Bankruptcy, and Appellate court records. They have a page of FAQs to answer any questions you may have - and, by the way, provide some interesting stats on PACER usage and fees.
Here are the simple instructions from the site for how to recycle your PACER documents:
"Just upload all your PACER Documents to our recycling bin. Click on the recycle bin and you'll be presented with a dialogue to choose files to upload. Then, just hit the “Start Upload” button and you'll hear the sounds of progress as your documents get reinjected into the public domain.
We'll take the documents, look at them, and then put them onto bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/pacer for future distribution. This is a manual process and you won't see your documents show up right away. But, over time, we hope to accumulate a significant database of PACER Documents. "

HeinOnline blog demos

The HeinOnline blog uses the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision to demonstrate how to use their new social indexing tool, Hein's ScholarCheck. They show how you can look up the case in the Supreme Court library (or just by searching) and once you have the case you see immediately the number of scholarly journal articles that cite to it and how many times these articles are cited by other scholars.

Mednar search engine for health information

Deep Web Technologies’ Mednar has been named the 2008 best health information search engine by AltSearchEngines, a well-respected blog that focuses on specialty search engines.
Mednar (still in beta) is a one-stop federated search engine designed for professional medical researchers. It enables users to quickly access information from a multitude of credible sources, including deep web content not indexed by popular search engines. “Mednar offers access to an array of databases that are simply not mined by other health search engines and features a dependable email alert service that enables users to keep up on the latest publications on the medical topics of their choice,” said AltSearchEngines reviewer Hope Leman. “Mednar is the Secretariat and gold medal winner of medical search at this point.”

Advice on dealing with law school debt

Slate has an article entitled "The Law School Debt Trap: How to escape it and have a career in public service law" prompted by a question from a law student with $100,000 in debt. The article offers several partial solutions ranging from debt forgiveness programs to fellowships to frugal living.

Britannica 2.0

Search Engine Journal reports that Britannica 2.0 is ready for launch, and among its new features it will allow users to edit, enhance, and contribute to the online encylopedia Wikipedia-style. Any changes or additions made to Britannica entries online would have to be vetted by one of the company's staff or freelance editors before the changes were reflected on the live site.
The encyclopedia had set a benchmark of a 20-minute turnaround to update the site with user-submitted edits to existing articles, which are written by the encyclopedia's paid expert contributors. They hope that researches will turn to Britannica 2.0 as a more authoritative source of information which still has the agility of Wikipedia.

New: Who Runs Gov blog

The Washington Post has launched a new blog called "WhoRunsGov". According to the first post, "With a new presidential administration in town for the first time in eight years, there will be hundreds of new faces appearing on the subway, in congressional hearings, on K Street and of course in the White House. And many of us will be asking: Who Are They?". The blog will be an ever-growing database of government power-brokers containing key information on new administration officials, lawmakers, senior Hill aides and ultimately interest group and think tank experts. The WaPo staff are currently adding professional profiles of people in the government - you can browse the list; the blog says that eventually readers will be able to add or edit profiles too.

The Clery Act and campus crime stats

The Chronicle of HIgher Education has a story that discusses the Clery Act and its effectiveness. The Clery Act is a federal law that requires colleges to send the government lengthy reports on campus crime each year, detailing their policies and tallying their total crimes. It was intended to inform families, to change students' behavior, and to keep them safe. But research on the use of the reports shows that very few students look — and even those who seek solid information can't find it. The article concludes that the Clery Act has created more bureaucracy on campus yet the information on campus crimes tends to be deceptive and confusing.

Are law schools exploiting students?

The ABA Journal has a report that the dean of New York Law School, Richard Matasar, said that law schools are exploiting their students who fail to succeed. He made the remarks, available in a podcast, at a program at the recent Association of American Law Schools meeting. He is quoted as saying that “We own our students' outcomes. We took them. We took their money. We live on their money. … And if they don't have a good outcome in life, we're exploiting them. It's our responsibility to own the outcomes of our institutions. If they're not doing well ... it's gotta be fixed. Or we should shut the damn place down. And that's a moral responsibility that we bear in the academy.” In a recent year at 50 law schools, 20 percent of the students either flunked out, can’t find jobs or have unknown outcomes. And many students graduate with a staggering amount of debt: another ABA Journal article tells the story of divorcing law school grads who were unable to cope with their combined $190,000 debt despite both earning six figure salaries. Both articles point to a recent story in Forbes magazine entitled "The Great College Hoax" that questions the idea that higher education is always a good investment.

Google calendar desktop gadget

If you use Google calendar, you will be pleased to hear that Google has just released a gadget that lets you keep your Google calendar on your desktop. You can click on an event to see details, including a map of the location, a list of attendees, and start and end times.

Peanut butter recalls from the FDA

The FDA has provided an online website and search form that lets you find out whether a peanut butter or peanut butter product that concerns you is on the recall list. It includes everything from Keebler peanut butter crackers to Trader Joe's celery with peanut butter to Peanut Toffee Buzz Clif bars.

Westlaw FormFinder now in academic passwords

Westlaw FormFinder is now included in Westlaw Academic passwords. You can use it when you're looking for a single, specific form. FormFinder contains literally hundreds of thousands of forms including federal, state-specific, and general forms. It includes major national treatises and form sets as well eforms and checklists. The forms are indexed into 45 distinct categories with subcategories to help zero in on a needed form. It's available from the top navigation bar on the Westlaw screen.

Inauguration coverage live from MSNBC

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama Inauguration Coverage

For coverage of the Obama inauguration, check out Obama.alltop. Forty five websites and blogs including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Twitter--all at quick glance and updated continuously.

Mergent Web Reports database

Mergent WebReports is now available through ULS. This database provides access to a vast archive of corporate and industry related information. It consists of the full contents of the Mergent/Moody's Manuals back to 1909. ULS will receive future editions of the Mergent Manuals via this database rather than in print.
NOTE: This title is not yet on the Databases A-Z list; it may not go up before everyone at ULS heads to the winter ALA meeting. There is a record in PITTCat with a link or you can just go directly to Mergent WebReports .

GPO's Federal Digital System now in beta

GPO’s snazzy new website called the Federal Digital System (FDsys) is now available in beta, and they want your feedback. The site provides public access to government information submitted by Congress and Federal agencies and preserved as technology changes. According to the site, the migration of information from GPO Access to FDsys will be complete in mid-2009. The migration is occurring on a collection-by-collection basis. Collections currently available on FDsys are:
Compilation of Presidential Documents (1993 to Present)
Congressional Bills (103rd Congress to Present)
Congressional Documents (104th Congress to Present)
Congressional Hearings (105th Congress to Present)
Congressional Record (1994 to Present)
Congressional Reports (104th Congress to Present)
Federal Register (1994 to Present)
Public and Private Laws (104th Congress to Present)

In conjunction with the change of administration on January 20, 2009, the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents will provide more timely access to Presidential Documents by making materials available in electronic format on a daily basis.
Visually, the site is light years ahead of the GPO Access site. We'll have to test whether it's better at finding information.

Judge rules RIAA case can be televised

A federal judge ruled today that Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society can broadcast online a hearing in a recording-industry lawsuit scheduled for January 22. Sony BMG Music Entertainment is suing Joel Tenenbaum, a graduate student at Boston University, for alleged copyright infringement. "The public benefit of offering a more complete view of these proceedings is plain, especially via a medium so carefully attuned to the Internet Generation captivated by these file-sharing lawsuits," Judge Nancy Gertner wrote. Coverage will be gavel to gavel. Courtroom View Network will work with the court's IT department to stream video footage from cameras already installed in the courtroom to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Berkman will cover all costs for the streaming and the video feed acquisition, and the footage will be placed on the web for all to watch.

Congress on YouTube

YouTube has launched 2 new channels in conjunction with Congress, one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. According to the YouTube blog, "as the 111th Congress kicks into gear, many of your elected representatives are starting their own YouTube channels. They're posting videos direct from their Washington offices, as well as clips of floor speeches and committee hearings alongside additional behind-the-scenes footage from Capitol Hill. " When you go to these channels you can click on a map of the US to find out if your representatives have any videos on YouTube.

hat tip: Sallie Smith

Twitter for lawyers?

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer there is an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of Twitter as a tool for legal professionals. Twitter , a popular social networking and micro-blogging service has been both praised and shunned by legal professionals. Law.com bloggers and co-hosts J. Craig Williams and Robert Ambrogi discuss the pros and cons of Twitter and whether it is a phenomenon or a necessity for lawyers and law firms with Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of LexBlog and owner of LexMonitor, and attorney Scott Greenfield, author of the blog Simple Justice.
Download or listen to the show at the Legal Talk Network.

Supreme Court clerkships

Prof. Brian Leiter at the University of Chicago law school has compiled a list of law schools that have placed students in S. Ct. clerkships and the total number of clerks hired from each law school by an active justice of the Supreme Court. He also looks at class size , saying that "the total number of clerks divided by recent class size is not a measure of the likelihood of getting a Supreme Court clerkship, but rather some indication of the relative success of schools in placing graduates as Supreme Court clerks taking into account their size."
No surprises, the top 5 are Harvard, Yale, U. Chicago, Stanford and Columbia.

Law professor Barack Obama

There's a fascinating video interview on CNBC in which Douglas Baird, University of Chicago Law School professor, discusses how he gave President-elect Barack Obama his academic career start and Prof. Obama's teaching style.

VisualWikipedia

If you like Wikipedia, take a look at a new site called VisualWikipedia. It contains the same information as Wikipedia (All article text is derived from Wikipedia and licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License- the site has no connection to the Wikipedia organization) but presents the information differently, more visually. It makes iteasier to navigate the huge amounts of information. When you point your to one of those many internal Wikipedia links a window pops up showing the first paragraphs of text on that page - so you can find out if the page is of interest before you click.
Other features: each article is followed by a tag cloud and often a mind map detailing how the subject of the article relates to other concepts; and in the right margin of the articles you can browse related YouTube videos. The Main Page has news articles, a featured article, a section of "On this day", and some interesting factoids from recent Wikipedia entries.

Sign Language Dictionary

Technology Review has an interesting story about some researchers at BU who are developing a searchable dictionary for sign language, where any user can enter a gesture into a dictionary's search engine from any online computer by signing in front of a built-in camera. It is still a work in progress but a very interesting one.

Supreme Court

Cornell's Legal Information Institute blog reminds us that the Supreme Court January argument round starts today, and they kindly provide the schedule of cases that will be heard as well as links to the LII analysis of each case:
Monday, 12 January:
Coeur Alaska v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (w/ Alaska v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council)(Clean Water Act, mining discharge, effluent limitations)
Ministry of Defense of Iran v. Elahi (Iran-US Claims Tribunal, Terrorism Risk Insurance Act)
Harbison v. Bell (Terrorist Death Penalty Enhancement Act, counsel, capital punishment)
Tuesday, 13 January:
Montejo v. Louisiana (insanity, habeas, ineffective assistance of counsel)
Vermont v. Brillon (indigent, assigned counsel, Wingo test)
Knowles v. Mirzayance (Sixth Amendment, Miranda)
Wednesday, 14 January:
Puckett v. United States (sentencing, plain error doctrine)
Boyle v. United States (RICO, due process, 5th Amendment)
Wednesday, 21 January:
Corley v. United States (Miranda, FRCP 5a, McNabb-Mallory)
Kansas v. Ventris (6th Amendment, right to counsel, perjury)
Nken v. Mukasey
And US Law Week reports that the Supreme Court today denied review in 94 cases on its appellate docket.

TWEN and course websites now on one page

With the help of WL rep Ryan Vandegrift and Law School webmaster Mark Frey I've created a webpage on the law school site that has links to all the TWEN courses for the spring semester and also has links to course websites that have been created by faculty on their own. Hope it's useful.

2009 Consumer Electronics Show

The 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)is underway in Las Vegas. This is where techies from all over the world gather to check out the hottest new and emerging technologies. So far the standout entry is the Palm Pre, which won't be available for 6 months. Here's TechCrunch's Peter Ha and Pop17's Sarah Austin describing the Palm Pre - and saying that they will immediately toss their iPhones and Blackberries when they can get their hands on a Palm Pre.

Blooks

I was recently lamenting that published collections of epistolary correspondence will soon be extinct. But here's something new that reflects modern ways of communication: the blook. Legal Blog Watch reports that one law blogger has compiled 471 of his past blog posts (on outside counsel management) into a 290-page PDF blook (a hybrid of a blog and a book).

Word Warriors: words that deserve more use

Wayne State University has started a website called Word Warriors, a list of neglected but eminently useful words that they would like to bring back into fashion. According to the webiste, "Not all these words will make our list of top choices, but there's a great deal of quality here, most are wonderful additions to anyone's vocabulary, and all could use some exercise." Best of all, you can nominate your fave words for inclusion in the list. Hmmmm.

New databases added to the Pitt ULS A to Z list

Dennis Smith, the Coordinator for Collection Development for the University Library System, has announced that the following databases have been added to the A-Z List. These are databases that are available freely on the internet. They are key resources in their respective fields, and it was determined that they should be added to our list of available databases. 1. Compact Memory: offers actual reproductions of important research journals for German-Jewish history and genealogy research, covering the entire German-speaking world.
EUR-Lex (The portal to European Union law): provides direct access to European Union law. Contains the Official Journal of the European Union as well as treaties, legislation, case-law and legislative proposals.
Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS Online): a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars. Edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities.
Hebrew University Antisemitism Studies: This database searches four sources of information on antisemitism: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism; Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives; Oral History Department – Contemporary Jewry: Demography – Contemporary Jewry.
Latin American Periodicals Tables of Contents (LAPTOC): a searchable Web database that provides access to the tables of contents of more than 950 journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences, published in Latin America. (The ULS is a participating library in this project.)
Latindex: includes a directory and catalogue of scholarly journals produced in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. The interface is in Spanish. Links to online full text are provided when available.
Orion Dead Sea Scrolls Bibliography: This resource indexes books, articles and reviews related to the Dead Sea Scrolls from 1995 to the present.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN): SSRN is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences.

What do you want to know?

The Boston Public Library has rolled out a cool new marketing campaign called "What do you want to know?" Watch the ads on their website - they feature real BPL Librarians. My favorite line: "I can answer any question, big or small, kind of like a search engine... only more awesome."

Pitt Law TWEN courses

With the help of Ryan Vandegrift, our ever-helpful Westlaw rep, and Mark Frey, law school webmaster, we now have a page on the website that lists all the TWEN courses for the Spring '09 semester. The list also provides links directly into a place where students can enroll for that class by logging into Westlaw.

Jury duty = Art?

The online American Gallery of Juror Art features doodles and drawings created by jurors. One of the most pleasing images is by Pittsburgher Elizabeth Perry, a drawing she did during jury duty.


hat tip BoingBoing

Law Journal Rankings Database updated

The law journal rankings database at Washington and Lee has been updated through 2008. According to the a law librarian there, an extra effort was made this year to rank all listed journals (in previous years a significant number of law journals had been listed in the database but not ranked). The rankings use both total cites and impact-factor; the website has a detailed description of how ranking is determined.

US Code on GPO Access

GPO Access has the 2006 Edition of the U.S. Code available online (Titles 1 – 41, with the exception of Title 38A). In addition, the United States Code browse feature has been restored. The browse feature allows you to browse individual U.S. Code titles, down to the section level for the latest available update. In the current browsable Code Titles 1 through 41, with the exception of 38A, are based on the 2006 edition (January 3, 2007) of the Code. Titles 38A, and 42 through 50 Appendix, are based on Supplement V of the 2000 Edition (January 2, 2006) of the Code.
hat tip: beSpacific

Chronicles of America: Jan. 1, 1909

You never know what info the Library of Congress is going to pass along in its Daily Digest Bulletin emails. I wasn't really expecting one on New Year's Day but they did send a couple of interesting links. The first is an editorial cartoon from the Jan. 1, 1909 Washington (D.C.) Herald, "1909 Hopes, Successes...". It depicts the advent of a new year with optimism, displaying a Wright airplane labeled "1909" flying in with "Hopes," "Successes," "Happiness," and "Peace". On the ground, a bearded old man wielding Time's scythe labeled "Disaster" and "Ruin" retreats into the distance in a open automobile labeled "1908."
The second link is to an article in the (New York) Evening World, Jan. 1, 1909 with the title"...Trousers for Women Is the Latest Freak Decreed by Fashion (but Modistes declare it will never be a "Go" here)". Apparently a brand new fashion in Paris in 1909 was the "Robe Androgyne", a "frankly bifurcated garment" that resembled pegleg trousers. The article's author says that the "new fashion is calculated hideously to reveal the defects of the female figure and to conceal its beauties" and that "fashionable dressmakers are unanimous in saying that New York women will not take to the new mode".

The year in social media

WebProNews has an interesting article entitled "The Year in Social Media". Social media are all those interactive websites where people socialize - virtually. They include Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, Ning, and many many other websites. Social media have been growing, changing, and expanding like crazy - especially over mobile devices (like cellphones). The shorthand used for text messaging, Twitter, IMing has become so widespread that Hewlett Packard even provides a short list of the "top business texting shorthand and terms" on their website. AFAIC it's a good idea to keep up with this stuff.

Federal Judiciary Report

Chief Justice John Roberts has issued his 2008 Year-End Report(15 page pdf) on the Federal Judiciary. He points out that The Judiciary, including the Supreme Court, other federal courts, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and the Federal Judicial Center, received a total appropriation of $6.2 billion in fiscal year 2008 - representing two-tenths of 1% of the United States’ total $3 trillion budget. He states that despite the "miniscule" amount the Judiciary adds to the cost of government, the courts have undertaken rigorous cost containment efforts, a process begun four years ago, long before the current economic crisis. In September 2004, the Judicial Conference—the judges who set policy for the Judiciary—endorsed a cost-containment strategy that called for examining more than fifty discrete operations for potential cost savings.
Some 2008 Court statistics in the report:
Federal Courts of Appeals: The number of appeals filed in the regional courts of appeals in fiscal year 2008 rose by 5% to 61,104 filings; all categories of appeals increased except bankruptcy appeals.
- Administrative agency appeals grew by 12% to 11,583 filings, primarily because challenges to the Board of Immigration Appeals decisions climbed by 13% to 10,280 petitions for review.
- Criminal appeals rose by 4% to 13,667 filings; the increase stems from sentencing appeals in non-marijuana drug cases.
- Civil appeals increased by 4% to 31,454 filings. Prisoner petitions rose by 9% to 16,853 filings. Overall, non-prisoner civil appeals dropped by 1% to 14,601 filings.
- Bankruptcy appeals fell by 9% to 773 filings.
Federal District Courts:
Civil
- Civil filings in the U.S. district courts increased by 4%, rising from 257,507 cases to 267,257 cases. Diversity of citizenship filings grew by 22%, an increase of 15,838 cases. Excluding the diversity filings, the number of civil cases decreased by 3% during fiscal year 2008. The rise in diversity of citizenship filings resulted primarily from the near doubling of personal injury cases related to asbestos and diet drugs in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
- Labor law cases fell by 10%, down by more than 1,800 cases.
- Copyright cases declined by 27%, down by 1,166 cases nationally.
Criminal
- The number of criminal cases filed in 2008 rose by 4% to 70,896 cases, and the number of defendants in those cases increased by 3% to 92,355 defendants.
- Immigration criminal case filings jumped by 27% to 21,313 cases, and the number of defendants in those cases rose by 26% to 22,685 defendants. This resulted mostly from filings addressing improper reentry by aliens and filings involving fraud and misuse of visa or entry permits in the five southwestern border districts.
- Sex offense case filings grew by 9% to 2,674 cases, and the number of defendants in those cases climbed by 7% to 2,760 defendants.
- The number of drug cases dropped by 7% to 15,784 cases, and the number of defendants charged with drug crimes fell by 3% to 28,932 cases.
Bankruptcy Courts
- Filings in the United States bankruptcy courts rose by 30% from 801,269 cases in 2007 to 1,042,993 cases in 2008.
- Non-business filings, which accounted for 96% of all filings, rose by 30%.
- Business filings increased by 49%.
- Chapter 7 filings increased by 40%, Chapter 11 filings by 49%, and Chapter 13 filings by 14%, while Chapter 12 filings fell by 8% in 2008.

Rating the Web?

The UK Telegraph reports that Andy Burnham, the British Culture Secretary, hopes to work with the new Obama administration to draw up international rules for English-language websites. He would like ISP's to offer child-friendly services to parents, and is also considering a rating system for websites similar to film rating systems. He is quoted as saying "“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”

Customized news podcasts from NPR

The New York Times reports on a cool new feature from NPR that lets you custom-build podcasts of NPR content for your listening edification. You just pick the topics that interest you (keywords) and podcasts that you would find interesting are sent to your iPod.

Lobbying, government & law blogs

Lobbyists.info, a leading provider of reference information on the government relations and lobbying industry, has put together a list of blogs that may be of interest to lobbyists - or anyone interested in lobbying, government and law. It includes blogs about lobbying, ethics, healthcare policy, educational policy, campaign finance, environment, and telecom/internet policy.

Electronic Frontier Foundation's accomplishments

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was founded in 1990 to work for the public interest in critical legal issues involving new technologies - and continues to defend free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. For its holiday greeting this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) produced the Twelve Days of EFF, a music video highlighting some of its accomplishments during the past year, from helping to ensure the integrity of electronic voting to busting bad software patents. Hat tip: Law Librarian Blog and Legal Watch Blog.

Stress relief: flashmob library raves

New ideas for dealing with final exam week stress: flashmob raves at the library. Flashmobs are large groups that quickly assemble, do something, and disperse - they're a phenomenon of the cellphone/textmessaging/tweeting/socialnetworking/chatting culture. First there was a flashmob rave at the undergraduate library at UNC Chapel Hill, immediately available on YouTube of course; then University of VA students responded with their own YouTube video of THEIR flashmob rave at the library. Actually, it looks like fun and like a great stress-reliever. At the library! Where else!
Here's the UNC flashmob rave, then the UVA response:

Print. Staple. Repeat.

Every semester during the last week of school there is a mad rush on the printers and staplers as all 750 students suddenly have to print up their 20 page papers and take-home exams. And every semester the law school schedule is a week+ longer than the University of Pittsburgh schedule. The result is that the campus computer labs - the ones where students have 900 free pages of printing per semester, and where they do 2-sided printing on superfast printers and have staffers carefully alphabetizing every print job - are either closed or open for a few hours in the middle of the day. Law students with frazzled nerves and time-stamped papers due flock to the law school computer labs to use the law school printers which aren't used to working very hard. Queues build up. Machines overheat. Paper jams. Toner cartridges run out. Paper runs out. Help! Once students manage to print up their papers it's a mad dash to the library staplers, which the circ staff keeps loaded and ready. Sometimes people just fall apart at the staplers. Which one to use? What if I don't staple it right and the staple is askew or raggedy, will the teacher mark me down? Which stapler has the red staples? Library staff offer to do the stapling so the staple will be straight and true. All our staplers have names because we know each one very well. We make signs for the staplers: PUSH DOWN HARD. Students are too rushed to read the signs and push down tentatively. The staples comes halfway out and gets stuck with one prong in the paper, one in the stapler. Oh no!

Stapling is a tiny little engineering feat. Every year at this time, when stapling is at its peak, I get obsessed with finding a really really good stapler, a sturdy and foolproof stapler that will staple even the longest, most footnote-ridden report. Not electric, those things are too scary especially for law students who have been up for 36 hours straight.

There are whole websites devoted to staplers. You can't believe how much a really good stapler can cost. Anyway, my current dream stapler for Barco is the Rapid DUAX® heavy-duty desktop stapler. The manufacturer calls it a Revolution in Stapling. It staples - no joke - from 2 to 170 sheets of 20-lb paper (though there are testimonials saying it has stapled 180 sheets with ease).
Here's what's really cool: "Only one size of DuaX® staple required• Automatically sizes staple to thickness of material stapled• Cuts the legs of the DUAX staple for an ultra-flat, clean staple". Wow. Wow. Wow. Apparently it cuts the little extra bits of staple off so that the staple fits the paper thickness perfectly. No more sharp ends sticking through the paper and drawing blood.
There's even a movie demo of the Duax on YouTube. I love it when he staples 170 pages, and he seems very pleased too. A little smug.

US News list a curse

I didn't say it - that's the title of a new article in the National Law Journal, subtitled "Law School Ranking generates more heat than light". The author, Peter Kalis, chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates, goes on to express his concern that the US News law school rankings creates "mindless competition" that can have negative ramifications all through the legal community. He spells out two problems with the rankings: first, that "nondesigner" law schools - and he uses Pitt Law as his example - have dedicated teachers and researchers, fine student bodies and produce sterling lawyers - but these facts just don't come through in the rankings. Secondly, he feels that the rankings have a negative impact on minority enrollment in law schools, which means a smaller pool of candidates for law firms like K&L Gates to hire.
Mr. Kalis pays some wonderful and well-deserved compliments to Pitt Law and especially our talented faculty and students. And he puts US News in its place: "a magazine develops a ranking using a questionable approach, lets loose with this year's version and then starts reporting on its own pseudo-news as if it's something to which we should pay attention. For the most part, it's not." Hearing the truth about the rankings spoken so boldly is very refreshing. I hope others will be brave enough to stand up and say that the Emperor has no clothes.

New: Magazines on Google

Google has announced a new initiative to bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles. The blogpost mentions several publications by name: New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, New York Magazine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Ebony - but it doesn't provide a full list. These publications will be searched along with books when you perform a Google Book Search.

Faculty requests for the Commons Collection

The Barco Law Library recently sent out a request to the law school faculty for books that they would suggest we purchase for our Commons Collection. We ask them to suggest good books that they've enjoyed reading and would recommend to others. The replies are coming in, and we've been buying the books. I've created a new web page on the library's website that lists all the books we've added to the Commons Collection through this program. Keep an eye on it - there are more books to come!

Bankruptcies up 30% compared to last year

According to statistics released today by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts , bankruptcy filings were up more than 30% compared to last year. Bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts totaled 1,042,993 for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2008, compared to the 801,269 filings in Fiscal Year 2007. The US Courts website also has statistics for Business and Non-Business filings, and statistics for Chapter 7, Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings.

2008 patents

Today's New York Times sunday magazine is the 8th annual "The Year in Ideas" issue. The Endpaper is "Some of this year's patents - along with how we imagine they might look. " They include an implantable pedometer, a combined watch and telephone, and a rodent euthanasia machine.

End-run around PACER?

Wired has a story that "online rebel" Carl Malamud, who runs open-government group Public.Resource.Org, says that "the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system is the most broken part of our federal legal mechanism. They have a mainframe mentality." And he's doing something about it. He's asking lawyers to donate their PACER documents one by one, which he then classifies and bundles into ZIP files published for free at his organization's website. The one-year-old effort has garnered him 20 percent of all the files on PACER, including all decisions from federal appeals courts over the last 50 years. As many of us know, PACER will charge you 8 cents a page to read documents that are in the public domain — a fee that earned the federal judiciary $50 million in profits in 2006.

Hat tip: Nate "the Great" Traurig

All the legal news all the time?

Alltop is a calls itself an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. You pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and they will gather all the news on that topic deliver it to you 24 x 7 (they update hourly). The law topic has a good selection of legal news sites.

The weirdest cases of 2008

Gary Slapper who is law professor in England and writes a "Weird Cases" column in the Times of London, has compiled his list of the year's 10 weirdest legal cases.

Google Zeitgeist 2008

Google has released its 2008 Zeitgeist list of the most popular search terms for the year. You can view them by country, by topic, and various other iterations. They also list the most popular search terms used in Google Images, Google Books, Google News, and Google Translate. And the top products searched in their Product Search, should you need inspiration for holiday gifts.
The top five terms translated in Google Translate are:

1. you
2. what
3. thank you
4. please
5. love.

Genocide Prevention Task Force report released

The Genocide Prevention Task Force of the United States Institute of Peace has released a report entitled "Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers". The report asserts that genocide is preventable, and that making progress toward doing so begins with leadership and political will. The report provides 34 recommendations, starting with the need for high-level attention, standing institutional mechanisms, and strong international partnerships to respond to potential genocidal situations when they arise; it lays out a comprehensive approach, recommending improved early warning mechanisms, early action to prevent crises, timely diplomatic responses to emerging crises, greater preparedness to employ military options, and action to strengthen global norms and institutions.

Draft of the auto industry bailout bill

Here's the draft bill - Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, December 8, 2008: "The purposes of this Act are
1) to immediately provide authority and facilitate ties to restore liquidity and stability to the domestic automobile industry in the United States; and
2) to ensure that such authority and such facilities are used in a manner that -
(A) stimulates manufacturing and sales of automobiles produced by automobile manufacturers in the United States;
(B) enhances the ability and the capacity of the domestic automobile industry to pursue the timely and aggressive production of energy efficient advanced technology vehicles;
(C) preserves and promotes the jobs of 355,000 workers in the United States directly employed by the automobile industry and an additional 4,500,000 workers in the United States employed in related industries;
(D) safeguards the ability of the domestic automobile industry to provide retirement and health care benefits for 1,000,000 retirees and their dependents; and
(E) results in a viable and competitive domestic automobile industry that minimizes adverse effects on the environment.

hat tip: beSpacific

Harvard Business Review content on EBSCO

There's been an interesting discussion on the digital copyright listserv. It started when a librarian from Samford University posted a question: one of her faculty wanted to make permanent links for his course website to a number of articles, some of which were in the Harvard Business Review. The library has a ($$$) subscription to EBSCO's Business Source Premier, which includes the HBR in its content. However, there's a note on the HBR content that limits the ability to link to it; it says that the content can be used by individuals for research, but if you want to use the content for "course reserves" you have to contact them for pricing. The librarian says "This is my first encounter with a restriction on linking. Does this licensing agreement just side-step copyright law and guidelines? Canpublishers really stop educational fair use in this way?" The listserv responses go back and forth, from "contract law trumps" to "You've stumbled upon the famous Harvard Business Review exception to everything." to Harvard's explanation to "The courts are all over the board on this issue. It comes down to the interpretation of Section 301 of the Copyright Act."

Tweeting on Twitter, pro and con

A couple of interesting blogposts about Twitter, the currently hot social networking tool. Municipalist (a blog abouut government blogging)has an entertaining post about the potential of Twitter as a presidential platform. He says that Twitter is the next logical step for a president-elect who has already embraced video, and Twitter would let the public get to know Barack Obama in a way that his videos will never allow. “Could Obama do this? Is it even possible? Certainly it is. We have to make it possible. What kind of democracy is this if the president is literally afraid to…tweet?”
On the negative side, the Technometria blog (authored by Phil Windley, former chief information officer of Utah) points out one of the inherent shortcomings of Twitter as a news source: its lack of context. Because tweets are limited to 140 characters, writers cannot do much more than convey facts or reactions. That was a problem during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, he says. Reading a stream of comments is “like being in the middle of a crowd that you can't see over and you know something’s happening on the edge, but you can't tell what and you’re trying to figure it out from what people around you are saying. In many cases, they can’t see either — it's mostly hearsay.”
Hat tip: Federal Computer Week

Obama team teaches lesson on Government 2.0 etiquette

After receiving thousands of comments through the Change.gov Web site, Obama's transition team has provided users with tips on participating in the online forums. The tips are intended "to help make our discussions clearer and more valuable," according to the blog entry .
The tips encourage users to read the comment policy, set up an account, stay on topic and to rate other comments. However, in explaining each tip, the Obama team clearly is trying to impress upon readers some rudimentary net etiquette and letting people know that social networking can be an effective governance tool -- but only if the participants are willing to play a constructive part. If not, and Change.gov devolves into a free-for-all, the potential will be lost.

Law firm billing survey results

The National Law Journal reports on their annual survey of large law firm billing in an article entitled "Law firm fees defy gravity". Interesting factoids: The average of this year's average firmwide billing rates, which include partner and associate rates, climbed by 4.3% to $363 per hour. Partner billing rates broke record highs this year, with one firm exceeding the $1,200 mark and another rising above $1,100 per hour. Pittsburgh-based Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney was one of a few firms to break into 4-figure partner billing, at $1,020 per hour.

Congressional secrecy

The Dec. 1 edition of CQ Weekly (Pitt subscription) has several excellent articles about secrecy in Congress. The cover story is "A Dome Under Lock and Key" which details how much information about Congress is unavailable: "...the secret side of Capitol Hill is not at all limited to military or intelligence policy. For all its apparent openness, its televised debates and public hearings, Congress is more secretive than its reputation suggests. Closed or restricted access to legislative meetings and records may not be the rule, but such behavior is hardly viewed as an exception."
"Sunshine's Irregular Presence at the Capitol" presents a timeline of important dates in attempts to open - and close - Congressional information. "Obama on Openness" reports several steps that the President-elect has promised to take. Finally, "Congress' Tools of Last Resort" discusses ways in which members of Congress can force secret documents to go public.

Amazon public data sets

Earthtimes reports that Amazon just launched its Public Data Sets service (home). The project encourages developers, researchers, universities, and businesses to upload large (non-confidential) data sets to Amazon — things like census data, genomes, etc. — and then let others integrate that data into their own Amazon Web Services (AWS) applications. AWS is hosting the public data sets at no charge for the community, and like all of AWS services, users pay only for the compute and storage they consume with their own applications. Data sets already available include various US Census databases, Labor Statistics, and an annotated form of the Human Genome from Ensembl. Sounds like it could grow into something very useful.

National Security Reform report

The Project on National Security Reform and the Center for the Study of the Presidency has announced the release of their review of the national security interagency system. The report, "Forging a New Shield" (830 page pdf) is the result of Section 1049 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 (PL 110-181) which required a study of the national security interagency system by an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization. A 33-page Executive Summary (pdf) is also available. The members of the committee are unanimous in their sense that the national security of the US is fundamentally at risk, and the report analyzes the problems, causes, and consequences and proposes a set of reforms.
Among the PNSR’s key recommendations are:

• Establishing a President’s Security Council to replace the National Security Council and Homeland Security.
• Creating an empowered Director for National Security in the Executive Office of the
  President.
• Initiating the process of shifting highly collaborative, mission-focused interagency teams for priority issues.
• Mandating annual National Security Planning Guidance and an integrated national security budget.
• Building an interagency personnel system, including a National Security Professional Corps.
• Establishing a Chief Knowledge Officer in the PSC Executive Secretariat to ensure that the national security system as a whole can develop, store,retrieve and share knowledge.
• Forming Select Committees on National Security in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Reading Period, Exam, and Holiday hours

The Reading & Exam hours for the Barco Law Library start today. Faculty and students, please note that we are open for 10+ extra hours during the next couple of weeks, with the same number of staffers; be kind to Katie, Nate, Sarah and Brian as they stretch to cover the library desk for the extra time. The library is fortunate to have such excellent, dedicated workers.
Also note that the library is CLOSED from Weds. Dec. 24, 2008 through Thurs. Jan. 1, 2009.
Reading & Exam Period Friday, Dec. 5 - Monday, Dec. 22
Monday - Friday 7:30 A.M. - 11:45 P.M.
Saturday 10:00 A.M. - 10:00 P.M.
Sunday 10:00 A.M. - 11:45 P.M.
Monday December 22 7:30 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Winter Holiday Hours Weds. 12/24/08 - Sun. 1/11/09
Tues. Dec. 23 8:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Weds. Dec. 24, 2008 - Thurs. Jan. 1, 2009 CLOSED
Friday, Jan. 2, 2009 8:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Saturday, Jan. 3 10:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Sunday, January 4 12:00 noon - 5:00 P.M.
Mon. Jan.5-Fri. Jan. 9 8:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Saturday, Jan. 10 10:00 A.M. -5:00 P.M.
Sunday, Jan. 11 12:00 noon -5:00 P.M.

Technology and the Obama administration

Technology Review has an article that discusses how the Obama transition team is already testing new Web-centric communications strategies.

Top Ten things not to say in an e-mail

The Death by Email blog lists ten phrases that you should never use in an email - because they will catch the attention of legal searchers and e-discovery practitioners. Of course there are plenty of other things you should never say in an email. According to Ron Sylvester, blogging from Wichita at What The Judge Ate For Breakfast, you should never put anything in a work e-mail that you don’t want to be shown to 12 strangers on a big movie screen. An excellent tip. His wife practices employment law, including sexual harassment lawsuits, and she said you wouldn’t believe what people put in e-mails that end up being shown to juries in public courtrooms.


Hat tip: the ABA Journal

Emoticons on trial

The Wall Street Journal law blog picked up a story from Nebraska, where the Nebraska Supreme Court is mulling whether emoticons can amount to illegal entrapment. The full story is in the Lincoln, NE Journal Star. The case is an appeal from a James Pischel, a 31-year-old man sent to prison for using his computer to entice a 15-year-old girl who turned out to be a police investigator. Pischel's attorney says the state investigator entrapped Pischel by using emoticons to play with his emotions after he had said no thanks — she was too young — two months earlier. When Pischel said he wouldn’t meet, the investigator sent an angry face >:( emoticon. When Pischel tried to end the chat without contacting the “girl” again, the investigator blew him a “kiss” :-{} . Chief Justice Michael Heavican asked how specifically someone can “blow a kiss” online and got a lesson in emoticons when he was told it was done by typing certain keys that create a picture, similar to a smiley face made by a colon and a parenthesis. Pischel's lawyer argues that this adds up to government inducement.

Law firm blawgs

Also in blawg news, "Three Geeks and a Law Blog" have compiled a list of "officially sanctioned" blogs at large law firms. Out of the National Law Journal top 250 law firms, they found 136 blogs from 53 firms. From a cursory glance, some of these blogs are being maintained by several lawyers at different office locations.

Jurist's Paper Chase highlighted as a top blawg by ABA Journal

The ABA Journal has a story about the top 100 legal blogs, or blawgs, on the internet - and once again, Jurist's Paper Chase is on the list. There is also a special related story highlighting the Paper Chase blog, and praising Prof. Bernard Hibbitts and his staff.
You can also vote for your favorite law blog on the ABA journal website. - votes must be in by Jan. 2.