And by the Chinese, no less! How do I know this? Because the Chinese government has released its first “White Paper” on the Internet, and it says so. Entitled “The Internet in China” and released by the Information Office of the State Council — the full text is available here; a story in the China […]
Author Archive | David Post
Your Lawyer’s Wrong:
Over at The Chronicle, there’s a report on a new study, published in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, that purports to show that lawyers consistently over-estimate their chances of succeeding in litigation. [The original paper can be viewed and dowloaded here]. From the abstract: Lawyers’ litigation forecasts play an integral role in the […]
World Cup 2010:
Bowing to incessant popular demand, here’s the latest in my quadrennial guide to everything you need to know about the upcoming World Cup tournament. (OK, not really everything, but at least a bunch of interesting stuff). Even those of you who are, shall we say, less than captivated by the game itself should take the […]
The Internet and Stupidity:
I have hesitated to jump into the “Is the Internet making us stupid?” debate, because it seems, well, stupid – the debate, that is. (Indeed, the attention being paid to the debate is itself evidence that maybe the Internet is making us stupid . . .). It seems stupid because the underlying premises are so […]
How Jonathan Adler Gets It Wrong, and Soccer Gets It Right:
[As VC’s resident soccerphile, I am of course busily preparing myself for the World’s Greatest (By Far) Sporting Event beginning next week in South Africa. I’ll be posting regular reports on the games, all of which (along with this post) come with the following request: Those of you who seem unable to elevate your discourse […]
Libertarianism:
Our friends over at Reason.com have published a nice piece by Terry Michael entitled “In Defense of Libertarianisms — An open letter to left-liberals.” I suspect that most readers here don’t exactly fall into the left-liberal camp, but probably have many friends who do; this might be a nice link to forward on to them. […]
Floyd Landis: An American Hero
That’s the banner at FloydLandis.com. Really [at least when I checked a few minutes ago — I assume they’ll be changing that pretty soon]. Under the “Athlete’s Rights” tab, it says: Floyd Landis brought the same competitive drive and focus he used to win the Tour de France to his anti-doping trial. Landis became the […]
Interesting Free Speech Question:
Ari David, who’s running for Congress against long-time incumbent Henry Waxman, raises an interesting and troubling free speech issue on his blog here. Apparently (taking everything he says to be factually correct) he hired some folks to create an iPhone app with text (not surprisingly) highly critical of Waxman — e.g., “HENRY WAXMAN… SUPPORTED Cap […]
State of the Net:
If you’re interested, Jerry Brito over at SurprisinglyFree.com, has been doing a series of interviews with legal thinkers and entrepreneurs focusing on a variety of tech issues, and he’s posted a podcast of an interview he did with me a couple of weeks ago on Net governance issues – it turned out pretty well, I […]
The Battle for the Internet:
Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister of France and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, has an interesting but somewhat unsettling op-ed in today’s New York Times. Entitled “The Battle for the Internet,” it’s a call to arms in the battle of ideas . . . between the advocates of a universal and open Internet — […]
AZ Boycott and the Constitution:
Given that we’re deep into law school exam periods, here’s today’s question (“snatched,” as they say, “from today’s headlines”): The State of Arizona, you may assume, has passed controversial legislation regarding the legal status of immigrants in the State. The City Council of Los Angeles, protesting the impact of the Arizona law, declares that it […]
Events of Possible Interest:
If any of you happen to find yourself in New Haven CT on Friday, I’ll be giving a talk on “How Can we Defend Free Speech on the Internet?” at the Yale Law School at 12:15 PM — details here. And in what will surely be a more interesting and aesthetically pleasing event, my son […]
The FCC and the Internet:
Yesterday, as you are probably aware, the DC Circuit, in a unanimous opinion, held that the FCC’s action in 2008 — ordering an Internet Service Provider (Comcast) to stop interfering with its customers’ use of peer-to-peer networking applications — was ultra vires and unsupported by any statutory grant of authority to the agency. The decision […]
Soccerphiles & Soccerphobes, Lay Down Your Arms!
I know that the world (at least the VC world) is sharply divided into opposing camps on all matters soccer-related, but we should put aside our differences and gather together at our favorite watering-holes tomorrow (Wednesday — 230 PM EDT, rebroadcast at 8 PM EDT on Fox Soccer Channel) for a match that should be […]
Gene Patent(s?) Invalidated:
When I teach the patent law material in my Introductory Intellectual Property class, we discuss the (very fundamental) principle that “naturally-occurring” things are not patentable subject matter – that patents only cover creations springing from the human mind. “But wait a second,” someone often asks, “what about all those ‘gene patents’ I read about in […]