A petition at whitehouse.gov went live this morning, asking that the fruits of taxpayer-funded research be made publicly accessible — in effect broadening the existing NIH policy.  
Go to access2research.org for more information about this campaign, and a link to the petition page.  The organizers are hoping to get 25,000 signatures, and to get to that level [...]

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James Grimmelmann has a great post at The Laboratorium summarizing and critiquing the recent fair use opinion in the so-called Georgia State case, Cambridge University Press v. Becker.

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Following my contrarian post about how to read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, I thought I would write about the Communication’s Decency Act. I’ve written about the CDA before (hard to believe it has been almost 3 years!), but I’ll give a brief summary here.
The CDA provides immunity from the acts of users of [...]

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Salman Rushdie’s PEN lecture, posted in part at The New Yorker:
Great art, or, let’s just say, more modestly, original art is never created in the safe middle ground, but always at the edge. Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. It can be shocking, [...]

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The economics of the legal profession are so bad …. (How bad are they?)  They’re so bad that bright students are advised to ram their heads into solid objects at high speed, repeatedly, for a chance to earn a living for a few years, rather than enroll in law school.  Here’s the take of Above [...]

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Yochai Benkler has launched a blog, and in his first post he addresses the Carr-Benkler Wager, the long-standing bet that he made with Nicholas Carr about whether the most influential sites on the Internet will be peer-produced or price-incentivized.

Benkler’s post
Carr’s response (also posted as a comment to Benkler)

They disagree about the most basic terms of [...]

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Copyright questions pop up in the most unexpected yet ordinary places.  I got in a cab late last night at the Pittsburgh airport.  As I sat down, the driver, an African-American man who looked to be younger than I am by maybe 10 years, turned down a hip hop track that he was playing very [...]

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In this post, I want to revisit the CFAA and the Nosal case. I wrote about this case back in April 2011 (when the initial panel decision was issued), and again in December (when en banc review was granted). It’s hard to believe that it has been more than a year!
I discuss the case in [...]

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Back in March, Concurring Opinions convened a wonderful virtual symposium on Julie Cohen’s new book, Configuring the Networked Self. 
Here, collected in one place, are all of the posts.  (At least, I believe that this is everything!)

Danielle Citron sets the stage.
Danielle Citron welcomes the guests.
Deven Desai on why now?
Julie herself offers some questions.
Hector Postigo on the [...]

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The days of stopping someone from watching show X on a large T.V. but through and Internet device should be numbered. Google TV crashed. Fine, things fail. But the general blocking of content based on medium is a dying strategy. We are in stage 2 of the death of T.V., as we know it. [...]

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From the Guardian:  ”Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls. … A memo from Harvard Library to the university’s 2,100 teaching and research staff called for [...]

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The Concurring Opinions online symposium on Brett Frischmann’s wonderful new Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources has just gotten started.

Here is Brett’s framing post.
Here is a post on education as infrastructure, from Deven Desai.
Marvin Ammori on the breadth of the book.
Adam Thierer on what the book does not address.
Barbara Cherry on infrastructure and governance.
Frank Pasquale on [...]

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Next week, Concurring Opinions will host a symposium on my book, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources.  Needless to say, I am excited and anxious, and I hope you’ll join in the conversation.
The book is described here (OUP site) and here (Amazon). The Introduction and Table of Contents are available here.

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Those interested in trademark disputes may enjoy  this story (at least in the telling). David Thorne published his 2011 book “The Internet is a Playground” with Penguin Press, and it included the Penguin Press logo on its spine.
His latest book, not published by Penguin, is entitled, “I’ll go Home Then; It’s Warm and Has Chairs” [...]

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As I mentioned below, the long-awaited Second Circuit decision in Viacom v. YouTube and its companion case, Football Association Premier League v. YouTube, was handed down today, with the Second Circuit reversing the district court opinion in part, affirming in part, and remanding for another round of summary judgement motions (yeehaw!) consistent with the opinion. [...]

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I just noticed this and haven’t had time to read it, but here it is. Here’s the first paragraph:
Appeal from the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Louis L. Stanton, Judge), granting summary judgment to the defendants-appellees on all claims of direct and secondary copyright infringement based [...]

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I am excited to announce that Oxford University Press has published my book, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources. I owe a huge debt to my Madisonian colleagues for their support along the way. I will post more about the book in the next few weeks, but here are some links and a short [...]

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Hot off the presses and ready for use in your classes this fall, it’s Oliphant and Lloyd’s The Law of Horses, Including the Law of Innkeepers, Veterinary Surgeons, etc., and of Hunting, Racing, Wagers & Gaming, 5th ed.
Chapters include:

Contracts Concerning Horses
Horsedealers, Repositories and Auctions
Horse Stealing, and the Recovery of Stolen Horses
What Diseases or Bad Habits [...]

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Unlike Michael Risch (who richly deserved the multiple shout-outs from the Supreme Court), I did not get a citation (even to my brief) in the Mayo v. Prometheus case, having argued for the major points that the Court adopted (with some important differences that I’ll discuss below). Nevertheless, I’m celebrating, and all the more [...]

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@reaperthekeeper :  The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce apparently is trying to enforce its trademark in the “Hollywood” sign against LA Kings (ice hockey) goalie Jonathan Bernier, who wears a mask emblazoned with an image of the sign and other Southern California iconography.  So reports Yahoo! Sports.
On behalf of sensible trademark lawyers everywhere, let me say [...]

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