Friday, 27 September, 2002

Search Engine Showdown is now available as an RSS feed - Well, the good news from Search Engine Showdown .... - Well, the good news from Search Engine Showdown is that it now is more bloggish, providing news on a more current basis than it did before. Well, more good news today as Greg has made available an RSS feed. Now, I would love to see an article by Greg on RSS feeds. I'm sure he will give them the praise that they deserve, while discussing they issues/problems (and there are some) with them as well. [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen] This is something I added to my list of subscriptions in my news aggregator. 2:33:25 PM    comment []

NewzCrawler update Speaking of software.... NewzCrawler has released an update to its news aggregator software. Among its new features is an automatic notification if you visit a website that has an RSS feed. Pretty cool. [Inter Alia] 2:25:21 PM    comment []

some hope for the GPO after all? Good News on Efforts to Protect the GPO. A follow-up to my earlier post on the OMB's plans to de-centralize the GPO's printing of federal agency publications. The House's continuing resolution, H. J. Res. 111, was introduced yesterday and contains the following language: SEC. 117. None of the funds made available under this Act, or any other Act, shall be used by an Executive agency to implement any activity in violation of section 501 of title 44, United States Code. This is a bit cryptic, but 44 U.S.C. 501 is the statute requiring that government printing be done through the GPO. OMB's plan violates the statute. [Leah's Law Library Weblog] 2:21:31 PM    comment []

another collection of blog articles A Fall Cornucopia Of Blawg Articles. Rick Klau has a fun and informative article -- and I'm not just saying that because he plugs yours truly and some of her faves ;-) -- in the October edition of Law Technology News (registration required to access all the following links), entitled How I Learned to Love the Blog, in which he continues to explore the importance of weblogs for law firms. Rick also provides a handy Blogs Sidebar. In fact, the issue is a big legal weblogging fest, with Guy Alvarez offering To Blog or Not..., and -- hi there! -- something I originally posted to The Technolawyer Community, called What You Need to Know about Blogs. [Bag and Baggage] 1:32:39 PM    comment []

changing values and copyright law I'm currently taking advantage of the tuition waiver benefit at Hamline University to take a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, studying part-time. It's a very interesting class. I've started thinking about what I'll do for my first assignment. The general topic is anything to do with changing values in civilization. I think that I might write about changing values and copyright law. I would like to explore how copyright law has not kept up with changes in society's values - of course copyright law is not the only area of law to do this. Here a few things I might explore: how international copyright regimes are an colonialist anachronism in this so-called post-colonialist age; how there seems to be a disconnect between the public's definitions of stealing/piracy and the content business' (interestingly, 19th century American readers of English novels were in an analogous situation to today's music downloaders); how creator-focused movements such as open source and moral rights might supplement or undermine today's publisher-focused copyright law. I'm definitely going to have to narrow my topic to something more specific, but these are the general ideas that I'm mulling over. I've just started reading Copyrights and Copywrongs by Siva Vaidhyanathan (NY University Press, 2001). It's a very interesting read. On page 29, the author mentions the idea/expression dichotomy and that Kirsch's Handbook of Publishing Law for Authors, Publishers, Editors, and Agents recommends copyright owners use contract law for the protection of ideas. On page 17, the author quotes the standard warning announced in Major League Baseball games: "No pictures, descriptions, or accounts of this game may be rebroadcast without the expressed written consent of the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball [dear old Bud, whom I hope is embarrassed by the success of the cash-strapped & contraction-targetted Minnesota Twins in winning their division]." (my comments!) Vaidhyanathan then comments on this: "there is no legal authority which could or would stop the first fan from writing a detailed description or account of the game and sending it via e-mail to the other [fan]. ... Whenever Americans encounter legal language, there is the distinct possibility that they will believe whatever it commands. Major League Baseball is taking liberties, and therefore we are losing them." 12:45:37 PM    comment []