IP Norms in Stand-Up Comedy

The other day I had the pleasure of attending a faculty workshop here at the University of Minnesota Law School where Chris Sprigman from the University of Virginia Law School presented a paper he coauthored with his colleague Dotan Oliar entitled “The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy.” The paper and talk [...]

5 Favorite Non-Law Blogs

I often find these chain-letter memes annoying, but this one is on such a valuable topic I am happy to participate: Mike Madison tags me to name five favorite non-legal blogs. It’s hard to pick just five, and some of my favorites are so obscure that I won’t subject you to them. But [...]

N.J. Constitution Requires Subpoena for ISP Data

The New Jersey Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision on Monday ruling that the state’s constitution goes further than the United States Constitution by requiring a warrant before the government can obtain subscriber information from an information service provider (such as linking a name to an IP address). Under controlling Fourth Amendment precedent, individuals [...]

Hannah Montana Bill Advances

The Minnesota State House has passed the “Hannah Montana bill”, 119-12. The proposed legislation, which I discussed last month, bans software that jumps the queue at Ticketmaster and other sites that sell event tickets. The state Senate passed a slightly different version of the bill easrlier this month, and now must consider the [...]

Hannah Montana Fights the Tix Bots

The Minnesota Legislature is considering a proposed bill aimed at an important and very large constituency: fans of tween-pop sensation Hannah Montana who couldn’t get tickets to her, like, totally sold-out show here a few months ago (and their frustrated parents). The same phenomenon occurred nationwide as ticket brokers swooped in to buy up [...]

How Drunk Can You Be and Still Drive a Supertanker?

Pretty drunk, apparently. The key issue is whether you’ll drive it well, or instead plow into a reef and spill millions of gallons of oil into a fragile ecosystem.
My friend and colleague Colette Routel has written an amicus brief on the Exxon case (that’s the Exxon Valdez case). She’s also explained the case to the [...]

Proudly, the Icebox of the Nation

In a development that got a lot of press around here, the town of International Falls, Minnesota, way up on the Canadian border, secured registration of the trademark for the slogan “Icebox of the Nation.” The town had allowed the registration to lapse, and their old archenemies in Fraser, Colorado, near Denver, tried to [...]

Study of Edit Impacts and Vandalism in Wikipedia

Computer science researchers here at the University of Minnesota recently published this paper using some new metrics to analyze Wikipedia. From the abstract:
Wikipedia’s brilliance and curse is that any user can edit any of the encyclopedia entries. We introduce the notion of the impact of an edit, measured by the number of times the [...]

All Eyes on Duluth

[UPDATE: As expected, the jury found liability for copyright infringement and awarded the recording industry $222,000. That is considerably less than the $3.6 million in damages theoretically available, but still represents a win for the RIAA. It will be interesting to see if this discourages other defendants from fighting through to trial.]
The [...]

Maintaining Our Personal Bridges

I live in the Twin Cities, and the Law School where I teach is just a few blocks from the I-35W bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River last week. (It’s so nearby, in fact, that some of the investigators are using the school building as a temporary headquarters). I am fine and [...]

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