ICANN has recently opened a public comment period on the issue of “closed generic” applications under its new gTLD process. The original application process for new gTLDs was silent on the issue of whether a trademark holder should be granted rights to run a closed registry for a generic character string that may be very significant in the marketplace e.g “.shop”, “.free”. “.store”. Several markholders (notably Google and Amazon) have spent a lot of money applying for these kinds of gTLDs to run as closed registries, meaning that they would not allow anyone else to register second level domains within those domain spaces. They argue that they have innovative marketing plans for those domain spaces that would be compromised if they were obliged to allow competitors and others to operate within the domain spaces. Their competitors and others argue that the Internet should be open and free and that while there are good arguments for “.trademark” names to be run as closed registries, the same should not apply for more generic terms as gTLDs. If anyone is interested in commenting on this issue, the public comment period runs until March 7 and the instructions are here.
Category Archives: Law School
ReInvent Law! How Technology and New Business Models Are Affecting Legal Practice
Anyone interested in where legal practice may beheaded should check out ReInvent Law Silicon Valley 2013 on March 8 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (disclosure I am a speaker). The conference is devoted to law, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the legal services industry. Dan Katz gave and excellent talk at the mid-year AALS conference. He talked about how automated system, machine learning, and more are defeating outsourcing and changing the face of legal practice. I nodded as what he said mapped to what I learned while I was at Google. In 2008 I started writing about problems with the structure of legal education. Those issues are now with us in full force. I think Dan and this project get to issues within the legal industry that may make the what about firm jobs question obsolete (which it may already be for a host of reasons) but present opportunities going forward.
Here is how he sums up the idea:
At all price points, the legal services market is rapidly changing and this disruption represents peril & possibility. This meeting is about the possibility … about the game changers who are already building the future of this industry. This is a 1 day event featuring 40 speakers in a high energy format with specific emphasis on technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. It will inspire you to consider all of the possibilities.
In that Silicon Valley way, it will be a blitz of 40 speakers covering LegalTechStartUp, Lawyer Regulation, Business of Law, Quantitative Legal Prediction, Design, 3D Printing, Driverless Cars, Legal Education, Legal Information Engineering, New Business Models, Lean Lawyering, Legal Supply Chain, Project Management, Technology Aided Access to Justice, Augmented Reality, Legal Process Outsourcing, Big Data, New Markets for Law, Virtual Law Practice, Information Visualization, E-Discovery, Legal Entrepreneurship, Legal Automation … and much more.
Tickets are Free but registration is required.
Please feel free to sign up today.
Dave Brubeck – A great has died
Dave Brubeck has died at age 91. I grew up on jazz from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to the Marsalis family and more. I was fortunate to have seen Brubeck in concert. In the odd coincidence world, yesterday I was listening to one of my favorite albums, We’re All Together Again for the First Time, as I got into a groove for an article I am writing. I thought I should post one the great tracks to encourage students and professors to dive into the song and their work. Perhaps I felt a tremor in the force. Anyway enjoy.
(Not So) Newish Law School Teaching
How do we teach? How should we teach?
Lots of different ways. One of the ongoing curses of legal education is the expectation – sometimes explicit, often implicit – that there is one right or best universal way to teach a law school class. “You are a SON OF A BITCH, Kingsfield.“ I think that Hart used that line to say something slightly different, but it works for me, too.
Earlier this Summer, a portfolio of my Copyright Law course — syllabi, assignments, comments from me, some video with me as a talking head — went online at a project called “Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers” (ETL) which is part of the “Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System” (IAALS), which is housed at the law school (the Sturm College of Law) at the University of Denver. Continue reading
How do you read books?
This may be a bit of an odd question; on a blog that often focuses on law and technology, you might reasonably think that when I ask “how do you read books?” I’m asking about whether you read in electronic from — on a tablet or e-ink reader — or on paper. But that’s not what I’m asking.
Instead, I’m interested in knowing from a practical standpoint how scholars tackle the voluminous amount of worthwhile material that is being published these days (especially books). I am currently reading Julie Cohen’s excellent “Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice.” It’s wonderful, with lots to think about, but I have many more books on my list to read just for one project I’m working on (on Cyborgs and Internet regulation; more on that later this year). Other books in my queue are Brett Frischmann’s “Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources,” Robert Merges’s “Justifying Intellectual Property,” Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires,” N. Katherine Hayles’s “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,” and Elias Aboujaoude’s “Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality.” And I’m wondering: How do I get through them all? Not because I’m time pressured (in some ways I am, but in other ways I’m not), but because I want to. There is certain to be great stuff in all of these books. I want to read them.
That leads to the question: How do you read books? Do you sit down and read them, putting aside other work, class preparation, writing, etc., and just try to get through them one at a time? Do you read late at night, when the “work” of the day is done? Do you grab a minute to read when you can, picking them back up whenever you can grab an in-between moment? Do you take notes, highlight, write in the margins, or otherwise “mark up” as you read? Are you a naturally quick reader (I’m trying to avoid the “speed reading” moniker here)? Did you teach yourself to read quickly? Do you read with depth (ie, slowly, pondering points as they come up), or skim read, pulling the major arguments from each section and moving on?
As I try to improve the efficiency with which I read, while not losing any of the joy and value, I would really appreciate any thoughts on how you read books.