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In 2001 the World Intellectual Property Organization (aka "WIPO") thought to declare the 26th of April as World Intellectual Property Day. Oh sure they claim it was ostensibly:
"to further promote the awareness of intellectual property protection, expand the influence of intellectual property protection across the world, urge countries to publicize and popularize intellectual property protection laws and regulations, enhance the public legal awareness of intellectual property rights, encourage invention-innovation activities in various countries and strengthen international exchange in the intellectual property field."
But all that was really a cover for WIPO's true intention to make the world celebrate one of the finest intellectual property lawyers ever to walk the Earth: me. Really, why else would they have chosen my birthday as the perfect occasion for their so-called "IP celebration"?
Of course, as long as WIPO continues to be coy about its true intentions, we might as well celebrate some intellectual property today. Thus a perfect host for this week's Blawg Review was Jeremy Phillips at his IP-focused IPKat blog. Not all the posts he reviews this week are necessarily IP-related ones, but he did kindly include a link to my Blawg Review covering the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne.
Clearly WIPO's not the only one who recognizes my awesome IP skillz…
I was asked to write a Blawg Review celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Statute of Anne. It may instead be more appropriate to mourn its death.
Obviously the Statute of Anne, having been put in force 300 years ago, almost to this day, is no longer good law in any jurisdiction. In fact, almost immediately after it was enacted it began to be transformed. But it stands as a turning point in the history of English law-based systems by being the first true instance of copyright law as we've come to know it. Prior to the Statute of Anne, the privilege to publish was invested by the monarch in just a handful of companies who had an exclusive monopoly on all publication. Nothing could be printed that the Stationers’ Company and its select few brethren did not deign to print, and they were endowed with police powers to enforce their total control of the market for printed works.
Clearly such total power over the creation and dissemination of written works would cause a politically restless populace to bristle, and Parliament eventually acted to wrest the Royal Privilege to publish from this cabal and restore it to the population at large. It is thus bitterly ironic that today, almost exactly 300 years later, the English Parliament stands ready to do the exact opposite and restore total control over the creation and dissemination of work to a new generation of monopolists.
What makes it so ironic is, of course, what has long been forgotten: that the Statute of Anne was passed as “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning.” The intent of the copy right it created was always to stimulate the dissemination of knowledge. Now, three hundred years later, we have the ultimate disseminator of knowledge: the Internet, yet in England -- as well as countless other countries -- copyright law is evolving to stop the spread of information -- the exact opposite effect.
But its project has not yet succeeded, and the Internet is so far still able to provide a wealth of information, a small portion of which this Blawg Review will highlight as I explore the premise, promise and problems of the Statute of Anne and its legacy.
The following is an example of why we need a free and open Internet.
Hearing a Seal song the other day reminded me of my visit to Russia way back in 1992. It was part of a high school exchange, and my host student and I got along great. So well, in fact, that it was incomprehensible that our worlds had been so closed off from each other. Now that they were open it was so nice to be free to connect with someone so much like me.
One of the ways we connected was through music. As I wrote a few years ago:
Although [my friend's] English was good enough that we were able to converse, she wasn't able to pick up the lyrics to songs she liked. One of them was [Seal's] "Kissed by a Rose." She had a sense that it was deeply poetic and asked me to transcribe the lyrics for her. The exercise forced me to listen to it closely and I realized she was right.
So I shared with her that music. She, for her part, gave me Yuri Shevchuk, whose lyrics were much the same.
Cyberlawyer Kevin Thompson reprises his Blawg Review hosting duties this week in #256, an edition devoted to the science fiction novel (not so much the movie) Dune. He included my recent post, "Runaway Secrets," whose contemplation of technology dovetailed nicely with his overall futuristic theme. (He also paid a very nice compliment to my Huey Lewis and the News-themed Blawg Review from last year.)
I have always thought it good form to acknowledge the hosts who have acknowledged me. Unfortunately, I have often failed to live up to that ideal. Checking my records I see I've missed recognizing some hosts and would therefore like to use this opportunity to make amends.
As I write this, "health care reform" is working its way through the halls of Capitol Hill. At this point it seems assured that it will survive the parliamentary posturing to become law.
I am both glad and horrified by the news. Glad that it's at least something, including some very necessary restraints on the private health insurance business. But horrified that (a) it really ONLY amounts to some regulation of private health insurance, (b) those reforms, without a public option or any concerted overhaul of how health care is provided in the United States, are likely to make healthcare even more expensive for many (including myself), and (c) the political posturing, even from both sides of the aisle, was so dysfunctionally entrenched, and just as frequently paranoid and obtuse, as to prevent a better solution from emerging.
I will be quite candid: I am no fan of Nancy Pelosi. Yes, the political values she represents are my values as well. But I thought both she and Rahm Emanuel were both so politically aggressive and obnoxious as to prevent good policy from emerging. On the other hand, maybe the heavy-handed strategy was necessary to get at least *something* done. The pushback by so many conservatives, and even some Democrats, against the notion of a public solution to health care provision was frightening, bewildering, and counter-productive to any of their stated agendas, and that's what I write about here.
I saw on BoingBoing recently a harrowing blurb:
Phone texts in Nigeria urged mass murder"War, war, war. Stand up and defend yourselves. Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you." — One of many mass-text-messages sent last week in Nigeria, inciting people to murder. And they did: some 350 were killed in Christian/Muslim violence.
What was so particularly disturbing about this news was watching history repeat itself (albeit this time in Nigeria). In the 1994 Rwanda genocide cell phones weren't widely available, but there was the radio, and xenophobic Hutus used this media to convince ordinary Hutus to do their murderous bidding.
So what is the antidote for this sort of thing? To clamp down on free speech so no one may ever seek to inflame violent ethnic tensions? Hardly.
Mike Semple Piggot, aka "CharonQC" has a post on his blog critical of the legal logic employed by Scotland in releasing and repatriating convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi far earlier than his sentence otherwise would have allowed for. Having invited comments, I posted the following (with a few edits), suggesting that the role of retribution in justice has been seriously overlooked in this matter, and thus explains why America and Americans are so upset:
From time to time the legal blogosphere erupts into discussion about contract lawyering, or, more specifically, contract document review. And this week seems one of those times.
In American litigation there's always a stage known as "discovery," where parties request documents from each other. In commercial litigation these requests often result in voluminous productions of documents, which require review at least twice: once before it's produced, to ensure that the documents being disclosed are responsive to those requests and also not privileged, and once when it is received by the requesting party to see if it is helpful to its case. Both reviews (though particularly the former) can be extremely labor intensive. While they used to be done in vast warehouses of bankers' boxes, thanks to advancements in technology the reviews can now be done electronically, by clicking through documents on a computer screen. (On the flip side, however, this same technological innovation has also increased the workload, as the ease of emailing and electronic document creation has vastly expanded the universe of documents that need to be reviewed.)
So to handle the workload, many law firms turn to contract lawyers to help them. As I've written before, I think contingency work should be a perfectly legitimate way for licensed attorneys to make a living. In fact, I think contingency work should be a legitimate way for nearly everyone to make a living. Instead of employers having to guess at their workloads and permanently staff up in order to cover the busier periods, bearing all that overhead for salaries and benefits, they can bring on people as needed, who get paid more cash for their time in lieu of the stability and benefits of a permanent position. As long as the contractor prefers this arrangement -- and many, for many reasons, do -- everyone wins.
Or can win. But clearly not everyone does, and a few blogs have sprouted to lament the plight of the contract doc reviewer.
As someone who has done contract document review I sometimes follow these blogs in order to keep abreast on the industry, but at the same time I'm often put off by the overwhelming bitterness they espouse. At the same time, underneath the anger I think they reveal some valid, and unfortunate, points about this aspect of the legal profession. So I was moved to answer some of the recent criticism of these blogs I saw on another.
This past week we celebrated an important anniversary. That's right: July 5 was Huey Lewis's birthday.
Though other 80s rock stars have been in the headlines of late, I've been plotting planning this Huey Lewis and the News-themed Blawg Review for quite some time now. People who know me know I'm a big fan of Huey Lewis and the News (hereinafter "HLN"). People who know me know their music has been a big part of my life, particularly in recent years as I've pursued my legal career.
But while I had the prescience to become a fan some 20+ years ago, obviously not everyone has been so fortunate. It would therefore be very wrong of me to waste this opportunity to share all the great things I know about this band and their music.
So join me in this week's Blawg Review as I share the latest in legal blogging along with this crash course in HLN appreciation.
On June 1, quite a few years ago, President Monroe asked Congress to declare war on England. "CharonQC" reminds us of this fact in this week's Blawg Review, along with many other facts surrounding this date in history.
In all seriousness, I find the history of US-UK relations to be a source of tremendous optimism about the world, showing how two enemies can eventually come to be close friends -- as governments, and as peoples. And people. This week's Blawg Review collects posts from lawyers on both shores (including my "Sticks and Stones" one).
Of course, given the state of UK politics -- with the predilection of its governing officials to underwrite, with the public fisc, their extensions of their homes to house their servants, the constructions of islands in their lakes to house their ducks, and the maintenance of their houses' moats -- it's probably just as well that the US went its separate way all those years ago...
Brian Cuban has been in the news a lot lately for spearheading a campaign to get FaceBook to ban groups of Holocaust deniers. I fear I may have inadvertently picked a fight with him on Twitter however when I recently tweeted:
"Can't support (@bcuban's efforts to force FBook to purge Holocaust deniers. Suppressing those who were X in '30s enabled what happened in 40s."
Of course, as I also tweeted later, "Nothing like tweeting about the Holocaust 140 characters at a time..." While I know what I meant by my tweet, so compressed my meaning might not be clear to others. So I'll elaborate here.
One of the most interesting courses I took in law school was on comparative constitutional law, which I took during my semester in Germany. I think as Americans we tend to take for granted our federal constitution: that it exists, and how it exists. No matter what the school of thought behind how it should be interpreted, there's a reverence towards it that percolates through all of them. We therefore tend to expect that other modern democracies have their own constitutional equivalents -- an expectation that in reality is rarely met. Many democracies have no constitutions at all, or when they do, they don't necessarily map to our own.
Of course, we needn't look abroad to see these other examples of constitutions. Within our own borders each state bears its own constitution, which may greatly differ in form and substance from the one tying our nation together. Case in point: California.
It's Blawg Review, and once again I've been organized enough to contribute to it. Kevin Thompson at Cyberlaw Central is hosting and has composed his Blawg Review in honor of Towel Day, a day of tribute to Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That guide is known for its helpful travel tips, including that one must always be sure to have their towel.
Speaking of travel, my post about going to INTA is linked to this Blawg Review, but without the picture my friend took of me there holding a Travelodge towel due to some concern on my part that given the angle, lighting, and wardrobe choices (or lack thereof) I ended up looking too much like an artichoke in said picture. So instead I sent in a different one, one where there's no danger of me being confused for being a vegetable of any kind. (At least none known in this part of the galaxy.)
I suppose I have Jeremy Phillips, aka @ipkat, to blame. One of the legal folks I met in England earlier this year, it was he who first suggested I attend the annual INTA conference this year. INTA is an international trademark organization, and thus I might not have thought to attend given that I've typically focused more on copyright than trademark in my cyberlaw work. But cyberlaw is rife with trademark issues, and, like, copyright, trademark law deals with regulating expression -- which is what fascinates me about these areas of law generally. So perhaps it would be worth attending?
Of course, once I realized how many people from around the world I knew who would be there, there was no question.
Toymaker Ty has apparently started marketing dolls named "Sasha" and "Melia." I saw a quote by Ty saying that it was a complete coincidence that those happen to also be the names of President Obama's daughters, but I don't think anyone's buying that story.
On the other hand, I can't get behind the analyses laying out the causes of actions the Obama's could raise in suing to stop the dolls. Even if the dolls portrayed more of a likeness of the girls, the free speech angle still seems too blithely dismissed. As I commented on the PatentlyO site's post, while Ty's marketing of the dolls may be unseemly, we are much better off being a country where this kind of thing is allowed to happen than a country where it is not.
