Archives for August 2007
AltLaw.org is getting some more attention: an article on Information Week and blog posts by Instapundit, Brett Frishmann and Justin Levine.
As Columbia Prof. Tim Wu writes on his own blog, “Obviously the program is beta and unfinished. We don’t think, in its present form, that Altlaw can serve as a full substitute for a commercial legal database. But the crucial word is YET.”
By the way, the first version of AltLaw’s advanced search is now available. We’re going to continue working to improve that, as well as expanding our case coverage. Suggestions and ideas are welcome!
More publicity on AltLaw.org and Carl Malamud’s scanning of the Federal Reporter: from Boing Boing and Denise Howell at ZDNet. There’s also an official press release from Columbia.
The New York Times has the first pre-launch mention of AltLaw.org, a joint project of the Program on Law & Technology and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the U. of Colorado Law School.
AltLaw is the first free, public-domain legal database and search engine. Currently it covers U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Appeals Court cases for the last 10 to 15 years. It is still in alpha status and under heavy development, but an official “beta” launch is coming soon.
The Times article describes a related project by Carl Malamud, of public.resource.org, to scan and put on-line the records of federal courts.
This story was also covered by Tim O’Reilly and the WSJ Law Blog.
Fox News reports on the FBI using spyware to trace a bomb threat.
They invited Columbia Lecturer-in-Law Joe DiMarco to speak about the legality of using spyware for surveillance.
This story was mentioned here on July 20.
Federal District Court judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell owns the copyrights in the Unix operating system.
Since 2003 the SCO Group has tried to assert its ownership of Unix in lawsuits against developers of the open-source Linux operating system, such as I.B.M. This ruling seriously weakens that case.
Columbia professor Eben Moglen is quoted, saying, “It was argued that this was supposed to suggest riskiness in open source, but it turns out that the open-source world was rock solid from the beginning.”
Google has joined the Open Invention Network, ZDNet reports. The Open Invention Network was created to share patents among companies involved in open-source software. The article quotes Columbia professor Eben Moglen on the “ethical and community responsibilities” of companies like Google.
This story was repeated at the New York Times.
Eric Goldman writes about Gordon v. Virtumundo, a CAN-SPAM lawsuit in which the plantiff was ordered to pay the defendant’s legal fees for bringing a frivolous lawsuit.
Computer security expert Dan Kaminsky created visualizations of structure in the U.S. Code, comparing it to literature and the binary code of the Windows kernel. He discovers that “Legalese is a massively structured dialect. Symbols appear in very distinct patterns that are more reminiscent of machine code than text.”
U.C. Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson has released Preliminary Thoughts on Copyrights Reform [PDF], a forthcoming paper in the Utah Law Review in which she argues that the 1976 Copyright Act is “way too long, ... far too complex, incomprehensible to a significant degree, and imbalanced in important ways.” Moreover, “Virtually every week a new technology issue
emerges, presenting questions that existing copyright rules cannot easily answer.”
(link via Boing Boing)
The House of Representatives is considering a bill to overturn state bans on municipal broadband (Ars Technica). A half-dozen or so states have enacted laws—often with the support of major telecom firms—forbidding cities and towns from building and maintaining their own Internet service infrastructure. The new federal law would change that.
Lawyers in a Colorado lawsuit missed a settlement meeting because the court email containing the date got caught by a spam filter. The district judge ordered them to pay the opposing side for their time anyway. Eugene Volokh comments.
FCC Commisioner Michael Copps gave his statement on the auction rules for the 700 MHz spectrum. The full statement (Word, PDF) is on the FCC Website. An excerpt, with links added:
“Now, within just the last month, Carterfone and wireless open access have been
on the front pages of USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. They
have been the subject of Congressional hearings and industry and academic policy
forums, as well thousands of emails and letters to the Commission from citizens across the country. What a striking reminder of just how powerful a good idea can be—especially when coupled with strong Congressional oversight and grass roots activism. I find it extremely heartening to see that an academic paper—in this case by Professor
Timothy Wu of Columbia Law School—can have such an immediate and forceful influence on policy. Credit is due to Professor Wu as well as many tireless advocates in the public interest and high-tech communities for bringing this idea to the fore. As Congressman Ed Markey, who has been a true trail-blazer here, put it: Carterfone ‘result[ed in] ... incredible innovation and [was] an unquestioned policy success. The FCC has a rare chance to foster similar innovation in the wireless marketplace in the upcoming auctions.’ Wireless Carterfone, in short, is an idea whose time has come.”