Occasional madisonian Randy Picker has some thoughts on Judge Chin’s rejection of the Google Book Search Settlement over at the University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog.   
James Grimmelmann, who has been posting and curating careful analysis of the case since it began, and particularly since the Settlement (v. 1.0) was announced, has detailed comments here [...]

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I was charmed by this op-ed in today’s NYTimes about how a teacher changed a person’s life.  There is almost always an edge to the tale of inspiration, however.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.
In the same vein, at my other blog yesterday I wrote a bit about a Pittsburgh feel-good [...]

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Via BoingBoing:
“Citation Advantage of Open Access Legal Scholarship”
James M. Donovan
University of Kentucky College of Law Library
Carol A. Watson
University of Georgia Law School
UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-07
Abstract:
To date, there have been no studies focusing exclusively on the impact of open access on legal scholarship. We examine open access articles from three [...]

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I wanted to address and post a couple of links about the future of books and news reporting. How are they related? I think they are both about the transition from print to online format, and they both make me wonder what to do about it.
The first is the court’s rejection of the Google books [...]

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Note the deposition transcript excerpted here, in which the witness appears unable to understand the question, “Do you have a photocopier in your office?”  Many questions, answers, and objections later, a clearer picture emerges.
The exchange also reminds me of a new favorite blog of mine, Letters of Note.  Someday, its contents are likely to elicit [...]

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VentureBeat reports that Microsoft techs, working with US Marshalls, have taken down the Rustock spam botnet:
Rustock was one of the biggest botnets in the world, producing more e-mail spam than any other network. But early yesterday, it ceased sending spam.
One more step in the technological arms race that is the Internet.

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There has been a lot of discussion lately about the “Internet Kill Switch” proposal in the US (yes, I know Lieberman doesn’t want us to call it that). Lots of information, counter-information, and discussion. One thing that is missing, at least in what I’ve seen, is the question of why some of the “infrastructure” that [...]

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I’m a bit slow in posting this, but last Friday I heard this interesting interview with John McCrea of the band “Cake” on NPR’s All Things Considered. This part caught my attention: the host, Melissa Block, noted that Cake’s album “Showroom of Compassion” debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1—the catch being that [...]

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Press release here.
Congratulations, Mary!  It’s very well deserved.

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I’ve recently been reading Robin Barnes’ book, Outrageous Invasions, about rights of celebrities and public figures to protect their privacy and their reputations in the face of a free press.  The book again makes me think about the relationship between celebrities and the press and that old question about whether celebrities should be expected to [...]

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I’ve recently signed up for — rather hesitantly, I might add — a twitter account (@robheverly). In adding people to follow (ie, read), I’ve taken the time to read some pretty interesting stuff I probably would not have seen otherwise, and I’m starting to get the point of twitter. I’ve found a lot that I’d [...]

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Madisonian Bruce Boyden posted a three-part series at Prawfsblawg about what’s new and what’s old about the aggressiveness on the part of copyright owners that is a disconcerting feature of modern copyright law.
Part 1:  Ballooning Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: Part 1 of 3
Part 2:  Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright? Part 2 of 3
Part 3:  Aggressive C&D [...]

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Hilarious!

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Larry Ribstein has a provocative post and paper up about the future of law practice and legal education and intersections with innovation.  Post here; paper here.
From the post:
“The article’s central and most surprising claim is that theory is quite relevant to what legally trained people will be doing and therefore how they should be trained.  That is [...]

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Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, gave a presentation last week on the future of copyright law at a conference at Queensland University of Technology.  The full text of his address is here.  A key excerpt:

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