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 […]
Archive | Internet
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 — […]
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 […]
Outrageous Treaty Nonsense, or The Copyright Tail Wagging the Internet Dog
I’ve been remiss, as the VC’s (sort-of) copyright/Internet law guy, in not commenting previously about a truly outrageous bit of executive branch over-reaching on Hollywood’s behalf. I am referring to the ongoing negotiations about ACTA, the multilateral “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.” [See Jonathan Adler’s posting earlier today about ACTA here] The US Trade Representative’s office has […]
Is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Unconstitutional?
By Jonathan H. Adler on March 26, 2010 2:39 pm in Copyright, Executive Branch, International Law, Internet
Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig have an interesting op-ed in today’s Washington Post arguing that it woudl be constitutionally dubious for President Obama to adopt the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as an executive agreement. Here’s a taste: The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no […]
On Corporate Personhood:
Daniel Henninger, over on WSJ.com, has some interesting observations on “the scrum inside the [Citizens United] decision between Justices Stevens and Scalia, over the status of corporations in America.” I think he’s on target in suggesting that the decision, and the debate swirling around the issues raised (both in the warring opinions and in the […]
Normblog’s Interviews with Prominent Political Bloggers
Some of our readers are probably already aware of it, but I only recently found out about Norman Geras’ interesting archive of interviews with prominent political bloggers. Among many others, there is a recent interview with the VC’s own David Bernstein, and earlier ones with Jonathan Adler and Eugene Volokh. In reading the interviews with […]
The Death of Copyright, con’t
As part of my continuing efforts to explain — both to myself, and to others — why it is that copyright law as we know it is so grotesquely unsuited to the global network, I gave a talk recently at a joint meeting of the NYC chapters of the Copyright Society of the US and […]
Reading Kindle Books on the Ipod Touch
I got tired of hauling so many books around on plane flights, and decided to try downloading some Kindle books to my Ipod Touch. I don’t yet have a Kindle, although apparently if I am very, very good … I know that Glenn Reynolds prefers the Ipod to read Kindle over the Kindle, but then […]
Poll on political bloggers and the media:
This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers started off by asking them to rank the importance of various media that the political blogger himself uses to stay informed. On both the Right and the Left, “websites/blogs” came in first. However, on the Left, daily print newspapers were second, while on the Right, they were […]
Legal Scholarship in the Internet Age
That was the subject of a recent symposium at Denver University’s law school. The DU Law Review’s online publication, DUProcess, published several short articles on the topic. I wrote on Connecting Laypeople with the Law Through Blogs, and began: “Blogging is creating a Golden Age of legal scholarship. For the first time in the memory of […]
Domain Bullying
A posting over on the Big Government blog details recent attempts by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to shut down the website at AFTExposed.com (which, as you might guess from the name, doesn’t have very nice things to say about the AFT). The AFT’s General Counsel has sent the operators of the offending website […]
And Speaking of Copyright
VC readers in New York City might be interested in this talk I’m going to be giving at lunchtime this coming Thursday, Oct. 22. It’s co-sponsored by the Copyright Society of the US and the Internet Society’s NYC chapter, and is my (latest) attempt to get people to think about how we might fashion a […]
Rethinking the Supreme Court’s Website
One of the odd things about the website for the U.S. Supreme Court is that it’s not the place to go to get briefs, new opinions, and oral argument audio of the Court’s own cases. [See update velow.] If you’re one of the many Supreme Court geeks that needs to read the opinions as soon […]