Just for fun, how many people caught this ad featuring Hugh Jackman being moved to dance by the natural taste of Lipton iced tea (unfortunately no relation to me).  Wonder how much they paid him?

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The Economist piece I just mentioned here reminded me to post a link to my comment in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding. In the comment, I make two basic points:
First, I argue that the FCC must resist falling into the rhetorical trap set by many participants in the debate who attempt to frame the [...]

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Check out this piece in the Economist.
It refers to Jim Speta’s excellent article, which sets forth:
three broad historical justifications for applying common carriage to regulate prices and access. First, many transporters enjoy a natural or state-granted monopoly and need to be restrained from exercising it with too much abandon. A medieval innkeeper, for example, often [...]

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I just returned from a week-long stay in London, where I was blissfully immune to news of US politics, television, and most important, sport.  As most Americans know, the English have other passions.  On our taxi ride to Victoria Station yesterday morning, the driver carried on a great length about the latest scandal involving Sarah [...]

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(Part 2 of 2) I fully expect that we will get some resolution to several important plot threads in Lost’s finale tonight, particularly matters that have been developed over the last season and Season 5’s finale: what “sideways world” is, what Desmond is up to, how MIB is going to be defeated, what happens to [...]

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(Part 1 of 2) Back when I was a teenager, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of friends. D&D, for those who have never played it, is essentially a pen-and-paper version of World of Warcraft. Instead of a computer running the game, that role in D&D was served by a person—the [...]

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I am working on a paper on the history of razors and blades (yes, I know that sounds obscure, even for an ivory tower sort; I’ll leave it to another day to try to persuade you that you should be fascinated, too). I have been reading turn of the century—that is the 19th century—catalogues. The [...]

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From Law.com:
… when the folks at Williams-Sonoma Inc. started to market a brownie pan in the shape of a chocolate bar, Hershey’s lawyers went to court seeking an injunction to block any further sales.
In a Lanham Act suit filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., Hershey claims that the Williams-Sonoma brownie pan “unlawfully trades [...]

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Over on Concurring Opinions, Dave Hoffman has an interesting post concerning a fantasy author, George Martin, who has somewhat peculiar notions concerning copyright and fair use. In the course of explaining why, in his view, science fiction and fantasy authors must sue to shut down fan fiction wherever they find it, Martin cites as anecdotal [...]

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It’s out:  “Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment,” co-authored by me, Brett Frischmann, and Kathy Strandburg, is now available in its final version via the Cornell Law Review website.  (H/T:  CoOp.)   The final version  is also up at SSRN.   A long-ish abstract will be published very soon at the Legal Workshop.
Issue 4 is [...]

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From Freakonomics:
GameStation, a British computer game retailer, added an “immortal soul” clause to the contract signed by online shoppers on April 1, 2010. Thousands of customers agreed to the following stipulation: “By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you [...]

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New to the 3-D craze – playboy centerfolds!  This year’s June edition of Playboy hits the news-stands with 3-D glasses so readers can enjoy the centerfold in 3-D.

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CNN reports today on a class action lawsuit against Second Life filed on April 15 apparently debating contract and property rights in the virtual world.  Law profs James Grimmelman and Andrea Matwyshyn comment on the case and I’d love to have some more of their thoughts on this blog if they’re reading this …

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Between teaching, travelling, research dean-ing, and getting myself elected the incoming chair of the board of the Association of Yale Alumni (that last part is strange, but true), I have managed to post two new papers to SSRN:
Creativity and Craft, and
Beyond Creativity:  Copyright as Knowledge Law
The first is a book chapter; the second is a [...]

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