Monday, 26 August, 2002

legal reference and the unlicensed practice of law - again... When you give legal reference assistance, is it lawyering? The issue that doesn't go away... [librarian.net] This link goes to a posting in the LAW-LIB listserv. That posting and the following thread is very interesting. Here are some excerpts: "The very act of directing a prospective debtor to review a particular section or a legal book in and of itself constitutes legal advice." In re Doser, 2002 Bankr. D. Idaho LEXIS 803 (July 3, 2002) quoted by Andrew Tschinkel. The case concerned a Bankruptcy Petitioner Preparer. "In any case, it's a long step from directing a patron to a form and filling  it out for him. Law librarians aren't as involved as a forms service would  be. We may give the patron the ability to teach himself how to prepare the  necessary documents, but we don't make the decision about what forms are  needed, how many copies and what content the patron puts into the forms." Elisabeth McKechnie. "The point is, everyone seems to believe they are an expert in law, and are  willing to dispense their "advice" quite freely. Even clients who are  paying an attorney for advice will reject that advice if they can find someone (anyone)else who will tell them what they want to hear." Charles Gaunce. "This Idaho situation smacks of the action against NOLO in Texas." Mary Ann Archer. I don't know what else I can add to this other than providing a link for information about the investigation of NOLO in Texas. 5:27:52 PM    comment []

demonizing the DMCA DMCA Myths. I usually agree with Declan McCullagh, but I think he is wrong in his views on debunking DMCA myths. It is not what the DMCA was intended to do, but the net effect of what it actually does that we have to worry about. Be it suppressing Edward Felten or common household items. [LibraryPlanet.com] Thank you for comments and the very helpful links. When I first read Declan's article, I tended to agree that it doesn't help DMCA opponents to demonize the DMCA. I'm all for exposing the DMCA's flaws in all their greedy glory but we should be prepared to listen to and respond genuinely to the other side. This is a debate and you can't win debates by anathematizing the opposition. 4:52:01 PM    comment []

Bloglet - WOW!! What a concept. For those who subscribe .... - WOW!! What a concept. For those who subscribe to my mailing list, you know about Bloglet. Now, you can receive the content from any site with RSS capabilities via Bloglet even if the site is not a member. Here is how it works: Log into Bloglet and go to your subscriptions. Now, just throw all of your feeds in there (Don't know about RSS? Read my intro article) and you will get the content from all of the posts via e-mail every morning. Cool eh? While this is a great idea, I still think that it could be better. Bloglet parses the content only once a day. It may be better if Bloglet could join forces with a site like Blogtracker. This way, Bloglet will know when the info has been updated on a particular blog and send out a new e-mail. Infominder does this as well, but only up to 10 sites. I still advocate using an aggregator (ie Newzcrawler) to save on e-mail cluttering and more current updates (aggregators can update every 30 minutes if necessary), but for those who like get e-mails only, this is the perfect tool. [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen] 4:36:47 PM    comment []

H.R. 5211 Howard Coble: Digital piracy bill is sound "Many intellectual property companies are already using some of these defensive measures now and believe it is legal under current law." [Scripting News] Please tell me, Rep. Coble, why is this hardline bill even necessary if this vigilante practice is already going on and is believed to be legal? 4:34:38 PM    comment []

auto-responders & listservs Dealing With Email Overload. A little planning can save you the stress of dealing with email overload upon returning from vacation. [TVC Alert] This Boston Globe article has some very practical & helpful tips. One of my little gripes is about auto-responders. They're an indispensable tool, but the way they work with listservs can be quite infuriating at times. It's a hassle to unsubscribe from all of your lists before an absence and then resubscribe when you get back, but if you don't do this the consequences can be most unpleasant. It would be so nice if auto-responder or listserv technology could be improved to remedy this problem. 12:59:56 PM    comment []

resubscribing to RSS feeds I've been spending most of this morning finding and resubscribing to my favourite blogs. I think that I have most of you now. I'll take a little break from this before I post anything - too much information overload right now... I can imagine it's going to take a few days for the exploded library to get back up to speed, but it will be better for this change. 10:45:56 AM    comment []