Over at the New Yorker, Tim Parks has an eloquent — and quite sad — piece (“Booted: What really ails Italy?”) about the current state of Italy and the Italians. I just returned from having spent several days in Torino, a lovely city in the far North of Italy, and much of what Parks writes […]
Author Archive | David Post
Virgil in the NY Times
We will no longer be accepting nominations for Snarkiest NY Times Op-Ed piece for 2011; we have our winner. Caroline Alexander, in yesterday’s Times, for “Out of Context.” Alexander sharply criticizes the choice of a line from Virgil’s Aeneid as the memorial inscription at the planned 9/11 memorial in New York. “No day shall erase […]
TV Law, The Good Wife, and Barry Bonds
I’ve heard it said that lawyers are among the most avid watchers of law-related TV shows – from LA Law to Law and Order to The Good Wife” — but I must say I find that pretty hard to believe. Personally, I can’t watch them, and I’m a little surprised that other lawyers can; the […]
And Should You Find Yourself in Philadelphia on Tuesday . . .
. . . my book on Jefferson and cyberspace was awarded Temple’s “Friel Scanlan” scholarly writing award, which means I give the F-S lecture this year — Tuesday @ 4 PM, up in scenic North Philly at Temple Law School. Any VC’ers in the vicinity are welcome to stop by –
Copyright Matters, Of Possible Interest:
For those of you interested in this sort of thing or this issue, I’ve written (along with Annemarie Bridy at U Idaho) a “Law Professors’ Amicus Brief” in the appeal (before the 2d Circuit in NYC) in the Viacom et al. v. Youtube case. You can download it here: http://tinyurl.com/Youtube-Amicus-Brief. I’ve blogged about this case […]
Google Books, Dead for Now
As you probably all know already, on Tuesday Judge Chin (SDNY) rejected the Google Books settlement agreement. [The order and opinion are here] To be honest, I’m not sure I know how I feel about this development. I’ve followed the wrangling over the settlement during the past couple of years, though only out of the […]
The Copyright Tail Wags the Internet Dog: Episode 39
I haven’t had time to examine this in detail, but the Administration’s just-released “White Paper on Intellectual Property Enforcement” looks like a real horror show of major proportions. It contains the Administration’s legislative recommendations regarding a series of Intellectual Property matters, including recommendations to: “Increase the U.S. Sentencing Guideline range for repeat intellectual property offenders” […]
Copyright and Free Expression:
By David Post on March 13, 2011 9:50 pm in Copyright, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Supreme Court
Last week brought the news that the Supreme Court has granted cert in a pretty interesting copyright case case from the 10th Circuit, Golan v. Holder, that promises to raise some important questions at the ever-elusive copyright/first amendment boundary. The background is this: the US signed on to the Berne Convention on Literary Property, the […]
Straordinario!!!
I’m here in Torino, Italy, getting ready for my talk tomorrow at the Nexa Center of the Torino Politecnico on “Thomas Jefferson, The Internet, and Egypt” — the talk will be livestreamed Friday at 0830 EST here, if you’re interested. I’ve been thinking a lot about the events in the Middle East, and what they […]
Unions, Union-Bashing, and All That:
Gov. Daniels (R-Indiana) is surely not the only politician who would have liked to have seen the fights over public sector unions, their pensions and their bargaining rights and all the rest, put off until another day. It puts President Obama and the other leaders of the Democratic Party in a tough bind. The arguments […]
There Should Be A Name for This One, Too:
Over at the New York Times, yesterday, Scott Turow and James Shapiro, both of the Authors’ Guild, penned a short piece in defense of stronger copyright law under the title “Would the Bard have Survived the Web?” “Copyright, . . . linking authors, the printing press (and later technologies) and the market, would prove to […]
Some Interesting Tidbits from The Legal Intelligencer:
Alert readers (of whom we have so many) may recall that several weeks ago I was involved in a minor flap with the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer, the local trade publication for attorneys in the Philly area. I had posted a rather scathing critique of an article in the Intelligencer (and I reproduced the article, in […]
A Tasty Treat for VC’s Soccerphiles:
Inasmuch as I feel it has become my duty to inform VC readers of extraordinary happenings in the world of international soccer, I’m writing to announce what those of you who follow these matters already know: today, at 245 PM (EST) (televised on Fox Soccer Channel) Barcelona travel to the Emirates Stadium in London to […]
Egypt and the Internet:
Remember those scenes at the last Republican Convention, when entire roomfuls of people were on their feet shouting “Drill, Baby, Drill!!!”? Funny, but when the BP oil well blew out a few months later, destroying a significant chunk of the economy of the Gulf states in one fell swoop (and coming perilously close to destroying […]
More Outrageous Domain Name Seizures By Our Vigilant Dep’t of Homeland Security
Our ever-vigilant Homeland Security agents, having apparently decided that they have too much time on their hands and have taken care of the Really Bad Guys, are helping to make sure that we are all safe from unauthorized transmissions of the Super Bowl broadcast, and have “seized” a number of domain names belonging to Internet […]