Category: Events
IP, IT, and Internet Law and Policy Conferences and Colloquia
Cyberlaw Without PowerPoint
Today, I participated in a terrific symposium at the Denver University School of Law based on Danielle Citron’s work on Cyber Civil Rights. Two aspects of this symposium are particularly noteworthy, outside of the extremely interesting substance and the great group of speakers collected together by Danielle and the editors of the Denver University Law Review.
The first point of note was the idea of organizing a symposium based around one particular scholar’s recent work. While this has obviously been done before, I’m not aware of it being done very often in the cyberlaw area and I really enjoyed it.
The other point – and I was not the only person to make this observation – was that this was an entire day long symposium about cyberlaw with only ONE PowerPoint presentation. The rest of the day was broken up into short papers interspersed with commentators and audience Q&A sessions. It goes to show that even cyberlawyers can interface in person when we have to.
Congratulations to Danielle and the Denver University Law Review for their terrific work today. More information about the symposium including a full list of speakers is available here.
Resources for Legal Scholars
As the academic year gears up, here’s a reminder that folks at Pitt Law offer the following resources to law professors:
The Legal Scholarship Blog, co-produced with the University of Washington School of Law, keeps up with law-related calls for papers, conferences, and workshops across all disciplines. You can find it at http://legalscholarshipblog.com/ To have an event or CFP added to the blog, email them at legalscholarshipblog|at|gmail.com.
The IP and IT Conferences blog offers the same kind of functionality but is limited, not surprisingly, to academic programs in intellectual property law and its sometimes distant relatives — cyberlaw, privacy law, art law, biotech law, sports and entertainment law, etc. Like the Legal Scholarship Blog, it concentrates on American law schools, but from time to time you will find information about programs at Canadian schools (more information about programs up north would be welcome) and even about programs in Europe, Central and South America, and Asia (especially if US law faculty are participating). You can find it at http://madisonian.net/conferences/. To have an event or CFP added to the blog, email — me.
Irony (Updated)
Wired editor Chris Anderson, in a book entitled Free, in passages defining “free lunch” and the “TANSTAAFL” acronym, decides to get his authorial words for free from Wikipedia and to include them in Free without attribution. Guess what? Turns out that when it comes to lifting other people’s writing, there’s no such thing as a free lunch! Not the first Web 2.0 pundit to fail to grok (or respect) the importance of attribution in a reputation economy.
HT: James G.
Update: Now Malcolm Gladwell lends his brand to Free in the pages of the New Yorker. He’s mostly skeptical of the premise that free is the future — no comment on the Wikipedia scandal. I’m skeptical of Anderson’s writing too, but not very impressed by Gladwell’s analysis, which feels five to ten years out of date. Lots of recycled anecdotes to be found: e.g., the tired distinction between the online models of the New York Times and the WSJ.
Update 2: Janet Maslin from The New York Times takes a look at Free and is not too impressed:
Here is what he means by “Free”: If you want to know what he really thinks, you’re going to have to pay for more than his book. He acknowledges that he is giving his book away online, as well as selling it at the not-free price of $26.99, so he can be hired for much more lucrative speaking and consulting jobs.
So “free” can be another word for self-promotion designed to obtain other desirable forms of profit. A.k.a. “it’s a reputation economy.” HT: Lisa Gold.
Works in Progress Conferences for IP Scholars
Two leading “works in progress” conferences for IP scholarship have posted calls for papers.
The Intellectual Property Scholars Conference (IPSC) moves back to Cardozo Law School this year. The conference is scheduled for August 6 and 7. Information on paper deadlines is posted at the IP Conferences blog.
The Works in Progress Intellectual Property (WIPIP) conference will be held at Seton Hall Law School on October 2 and 3. I posted a link to the CFP below; that information also can be found at the IP Conferences blog.