Google Books 3.0?

James Grimmelmann, the guru of all things Google Books, reported in a blog post that yesterday’s status conference in the case was relatively uneventful save for two developments. For one, it sounds like Judge Chin is irritated with the parties. He noted that the case is six years old and threatened to set a “relatively [...]

Easterbrook was wrong

There is such thing as Law of the Horse. Lessig 1, Easterbrook 0!

Palin v. Gawker: Governor Should Win, But We All Lose

I posted an article this morning in Capital New York unpacking the copyright dispute between Gawker and HarperCollins, publisher of Sarah Palin’s new book. Gawker posted digital images of 21 pages from the book last week, before its publication date (Tuesday). The publisher sued (complaint available from Marty Schwimmer here), and won a temporary restraining [...]

NYLS Launches Google Book Settlement Wiki

James Grimmelmann and a team of students at New York Law School have launched an elaborate web site called “The Public Index” to facilitate conversation about the proposed settlement of the Google Book litigation. As the site’s home page explains: Here, you can browse and annotate the proposed settlement, section-by-section. … In addition, you can: [...]

Zittrain Warns of the Cloud

Jonathan Zittrain expands on the themes in his must-read book this morning in a must-read New York Times op-ed about the shift toward cloud computing. A taste of the main point: [T]he most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The [...]

Bradford and Hautzinger on Digital Statutory Supplements for Legal Education

One of the many interesting presentations I attended at the just-concluded 2009 CALI Conference was a tag-team primer on creating digital statute books and casebooks.  Now, I see that one of the presenters, Professor Steve Bradford of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, has posted on SSRN the paper he discussed at CALI.  Here’s the pithy abstract: Law [...]

Kindle Owners of the World, Unite!

Roy Blount Jr., writer and president of the Author’s Guild, has a jeremiad in the New York Times about Amazon’s Kindle, and its ability to read books aloud. Blount thinks that is a violation of authors’ rights. After giving some thought to his argument, I can only conclude that Blount should stick to sports, because [...]

Like Voldemort, Potter-Lexicon Suit Rises Again

RDR Books, which lost in a copyright lawsuit filed by Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling against its planned Harry Potter Lexicon book, has filed a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Hat tip: Slashdot, Ray Beckerman; coverage: Stanford’s Copyright & Fair Use blog, P2PNet; list of documents [...]

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Several acquaintances have mentioned, or e-mailed, or (appropriately enough) posted on Facebook this New York Times Magazine article from Sunday about Facebook, Twitter, and “ambient awareness.” A lot of it will be fairly old news to many readers here, and ground that I am sure will be covered more completely by John Palfrey and Urs [...]

Rowling 1, Lexicon 0

J.K. Rowling has won her copyright lawsuit against RDR Books, the (now former) publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon book. The decision is 68 pages long and is available courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. I thought Rowling would, and should, win, but I’m not impressed by the court’s reasoning, especially on the key question [...]

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