After many years of thinking about the problem, I’ve finally tried to distill what I know about the kinds of mistakes law students are particularly prone to make here: Exam-Taking Mistakes. It’s a handout for my Intro to IP students this semester, and it might be a little IP-specific to be terribly useful to others […]
Author Archive | David Post
Happy (?) American Censorship Day!
So in response to my call for action — OK, OK, it probably would’ve happened anyway … — a large coalition of free speech and civil groups (Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, and others) have declared today to be “American Censorship Day” to protest the spate of […]
How About Occupy Hollywood?
One of the obvious dangers of the Internet Age is that we’ll be so distracted by everything going on around us – lots of it interesting, complicated, and even important (not to mention all the stuff that’s idiotic and unimportant and fundamentally uninteresting) — that we will fail to recognize the truly important stuff when […]
Hey, 2d Circuit!
As some of you may know, the 2d Circuit heard argument yesterday in the Viacom v. YouTube case, a very important copyright case about which I’ve blogged a number of times before (and in which I co-authored an amicus brief submitted on behalf of some 45 law professors). Last week, I circulated an Op-Ed I […]
Why Should We Care What Jefferson Thought About Copyright?
Terry Hart, over on Copyhype, asks (and tries to answer) the question. According to Hart, nobody should; referring to his famous 1813 letter to Isaac MacPherson – a letter I (and many others) have called a “foundational document” for US intellectual property law — Hart writes: [Jefferson’s] points have little relevance to copyright. . . […]
Talk on Jefferson, Copyright Law, and the Net:
If any of you happen to find yourself in the neighborhood, I’m giving a talk this evening at The David Library of the American Revolution, in Washington Crossing, PA, entitled “The Continuing Saga of Thomas Jefferson and the Internet” – my favorite subject, as you know. It’s a little off-the-beaten-path, I realize, so here’s a […]
The Question Is Whether “Kafkaesque” or “Orwellian” is the Appropriate Adjective:
I’ve blogged about this a couple of times before [here and here, for starters], but this is, alas, an issue that is not going away. The federal government appears to have decided that the best way to control unlawful conduct on the Net is to use the technique of “domain name seizure” – using some […]
“Aging in the US” Conference:
Just putting in a plug for an upcoming one-day conference here at Temple Law School on October 22, organized by my colleague Nancy Knauer, on “Aging in the US: The Next Civil Rights Movement?” The goal of the Symposium, in the words of its organizers, “is to move the national conversation surrounding aging beyond the […]
Sex, Lies, and Videogames:
Over the summer, I wrote a piece about the Supreme Court’s decision in the “violent videogames” case (Brown vs Entertainment Merchants Assn) for the forthcoming Cato 2011 Supreme Court Review. The Center for Constitutional Studies at Cato is having a kickoff event for the publication this coming Thursday (starting at 1030 AM), and I’ll be […]
Don’t Screw Around with that State Whose Capital is Austin:
So here’s a steamy little trademark dispute: The Texas Dep’t of Transportation is suing Hachette Books to enjoin publication of Christie Craig’s “Don’t Mess with Texas,” on the ground that it dilutes TxDOT’s trademark. Though I confess that I probably wouldn’t be wasting my time or yours on this if the book didn’t contain phrases […]
Hurricane Irene:
As many of you know, I spend my summers (and as much time as possible in other seasons) up at our place in southern Vermont (Marlboro, to be precise). And as everyone knows by now, we got creamed by the storm on Sunday. It was an astonishing and awe-inspiring experience to go through — I’ve […]
My Annual Rant (Tinkerbell Returns!) – Now in Dialogue Form
Here’s something from yesterday’s NY Times: “Stocks Rise as Investors Await Signals” By Julia Werdigier and Bettina Wassener Stocks rose Tuesday, many for a second straight day, even after a report showed new-home sales in the United States fell in July more than expected. On Wall Street, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 11.07 […]
More on the “Internet”:
I know, I know, . . . I’m obsessing a bit – if you’ve had enough already about the Crusade to Keep the Initial Capital in “Internet,” read no further . . . Referring to the global TCP/IP network as “the internet” is, I assert, a real barrier to intelligent discussion and analysis of phenomena […]
It’s “the Internet.” Please.
I’m losing my battle to keep the initial capital “I” in “the Internet.” I’m starting see references to “the internet” everywhere; the latest to fall seems to be The Economist (see headline from July 30: “An internet with Chinese characteristics” – I’m quite certain that it was “the Internet” up until quite recently). It actually […]
Summer Reading Recommendation:
I’m just finishing an extraordinary novel, “Independent People” by Halldor Laxness. Laxness (1902 – 1998), whom you’ve surely never heard of (I certainly hadn’t till I began this book), was Icelandic, and won the Nobel Prize in 1955. [That’s not, mind you, why I picked the book up; a lot of second-rate and even third-rate […]