MetaFilter posts tagged with legal

No, it won't have the pirate comic...

Artw — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:00:58 -0800

Who watches The Watchmen? Kevin Smith has, Dave Gibbons has, Alan Moore won't (Gibbons hopes he'll watch the DVD), and if Fox has its way maybe YOU won't either.

The Open-Source Train Moves Forward

Artful Codger — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:04:42 -0800

What could be less important to the blue than a news item involving model railroading and Java? Yet in an important decision, a U.S. Appeals court has ruled that that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions. "For non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important but this is huge," said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig. The Java Model Railroad Interface is an open-source project of software in Java for use in controlling model railroads. For the past few years, according to the JMRI website, the project and its leader have been under legal attack by a commercial competitor, who has allegedly used project code in a commercial product in violation of the license terms, has received a patent without proper disclosure of prior art, and has engaged in litigation against the JMRI project and its chief maintainer. Is this an important victory? Lawrence Lessig seems to think so.

WhoTubes?

The Bellman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:59:35 -0800

Google has been ordered to turn over all of its electronic records of the videos watched by users on YouTube to Viacom. The 12 terabytes of data include records of every video watched by every user, including the user's login name (if any) and IP address. Google had complained that the disclosure would invade user's privacy, but this argument was blunted somewhat by Google's earlier statement that IP Addresses are not, in and of themselves, personally identifying information. Google was also ordered to turn over certain other information, including its video classification database schema, but was not ordered to turn over information regarding videos marked as private, its source code, or its advertising database schema.

"Of course, neither Simon nor Garfunkle has been identified as a Nautical Expert"

Navelgazer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:57:15 -0800

Chief Justice Roberts (mis)quotes Bob Dylan* in his dissent on Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., making this the first known time that a Supreme Court Opinion has used a "rock song to buttress legal opinion," according to Alex B. Long of the University of Tennessee. Mr. Long knows a thing or two about this**, having authored [Insert Song Lyrics Here]***, a Washington & Lee Law review Article on the subject of Pop Music in legal writing. The article is funny†, insightful, comprehensive in its musical background††, and surprisingly knowledgeable about good taste in writing.††† *To be fair, Alex Long misquotes the line as well. For a full performance, see here. ** The Top Ten Most Cited Musicians (according to Long's admittedly flawed study) are: 1. Bob Dylan 2. The Beatles 3. Bruce Springsteen 4. Paul Simon 5. Woody Guthrie 6. The Rolling Stones 7. The Grateful Dead 8. Simon & Garfunkle 9. Joni Mitchell 10. R.E.M. *** This is a link to a site where you may download the pdf. Also, I should mention that this is the priority link, See † Pro Tip: In legal writing, the footnotes are used not only to exhaustively cite one's sources, but also to provide humor, irreverence, and "off-the-record" personal opinions where they would otherwise not be appropriate. This article is full of both. †† A fun "mix tape" of a small few of the cited songs: Cracker, Teen Angst The New Pornographers, The Laws Have Changed Ludacris, You's a Ho Violent Femmes, Add It Up Elvis Costello, Less Than Zero Tupac Shakur, Holla if You Hear Me Elvis Presley, Mystery Train Chuck Berry, Nadine The Beatles, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey The Kinks, Lola The Undertones, Teenage Kicks R.E.M., It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) ††† If anyone knows how to do proper footnotes on MeFi, please let me know. Bonus: The "Hum a Few Bar Exam," from Prof. Eugene Volokh of Volokh Conspiracy

Do no harm?

Paid In Full — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:51:28 -0800

To treat, or not to treat? Samuel Golubchuk is 84 years old, in a coma on life support in a Winnipeg hospital, and the subject of ethical, religious, and legal debates. Three doctors have refused to continue providing care, while one has stepped in, potentially keeping the intensive care unit in operation.

Canada, the final frontier of file-sharing?

tybeet — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:52:21 -0800

FileSharingFilter: With the possible exception of Sweden, Canada is today's frontier upon which the war of file-sharing legality is waged, with the greatest number of file-sharers per capita, and a steady increase in the number of persons who partake (according to the OECD). Historically, the CRIA's own piracy campaign (2004) was given birth only one year after the RIAA began suing individuals (2003) for participating in peer-to-peer file distribution. Unlike the RIAA, the CRIA was shot down by the courts, establishing a sort of precedent in favour of the end-user which has been upheld ever since, and indeed even reinforced. However, we may be seeing the beginning of the end as QuebecTorrent now fights the good fight to prevent a legal precedent outlawing Canadian BitTorrent trackers.

Girl fight

Artw — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:55:29 -0800

Barbie vs Bratz: Mattel sues MGA, claiming the Bratz designs were created by a Mattel employee and smuggled to its rival.

Free, legal music downloads

The Deej — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:21:39 -0800

Is the music industry embracing free, legal music downloads? Qtrax is now in beta.

The Decline in African-American Land Ownership

miss tea — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:03:08 -0800

In 1910 African-Americans owned 16-19 million acres of land in the United States, much of it rural farmland. Today, that figure has dropped to less than 8 million acres overall, and less than 2 million farm acres. What happened? In some cases, violence— whites would forcibly take farmland, a homestead, or a home from the black residents, who were often powerless to fight back in the face of systemic racism, threats of retaliation, and the 'enforcement' of the thefts by the Ku Klux Klan. More perniciously, many of these losses were the result of forced partition land sales. Many legal scholars and activists today are working to reverse the trend. [some pdfs]

Landlord tenant law in every US state

dersins — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:40:11 -0800

Links to the landlord-tenant law of every state in the US from Consumerist. Pretty useful for a lot of mefites, I would think.