speaking truth to what-feels-like my 2347832764rd hour in the office:

Ben Johnson III, the managing partner of Alston & Bird, tells a story about being a young partner at the firm in the early 1970s.

He was sitting in on an interview between then-senior partner Philip Alston, Jr., and a second-year law student. The student said, “It must be really exciting to practice law here.” Alston would have none of it: “No, it’s not. Lawyers are paid to do things too tedious for anyone else to do.”

i’ve often argued that we are hired to take care of a specific kind of minutia that the rest of the business world can’t be bothered to figure out. when you feel good about it, it’s called ’specialization.’ when it is deadly boring, you call it tedium.

this is fantastic.  at least one company in the music business gets it (via boingboing): 

Nettwerk became involved in the battle against the RIAA after 15-year-old Elisa Greubel contacted MC Lars, also a Nettwerk management client, to say that she identified with “Download This Song,” a track from the artist’s latest release. In an e-mail to the artist’s web-site, she wrote, “My family is one of many seemingly randomly chosen families to be sued by the RIAA. No fun. You can’t fight them, trying could possibly cost us millions. The line ‘they sue little kids downloading hit songs,’ basically sums a lot of the whole thing up. I’m not saying it is right to download but the whole lawsuit business is a tad bit outrageous…”

Nettwerk Music Group has agreed to pay the total expense of all legal fees as well as any fines should the family lose the case against the RIAA.

“Litigation is not ‘artist development.’ Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love,” insists McBride. “The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists’ best interests.” (emphasis added)

of course, it truly goes to show that when RIAA speaks of working in the interests of the artists, that they are full of it.

piggy-backing on my past posting about phrases that I love that have entered into the popular vernacular, i noticed today a reference of note in an article entitled “Next Big Leap for Search Technology Could Raise Privacy Issues for Consumers” in BNA’s weekly Electronic Commerce & Law publication. specifically, when referring to potential privacy issues, the author in a *legal* journal referred to “the ‘My TiVo thinks I’m gay’ problem.”

awesome.

i would really like to post a great deal more on the following article, but given that I just got home from my seventh weekend travelling, I’m just going to post this article and say that Dr. Lessig is spot on concerning the grokster ruling:

When the Supreme Court handed me a defeat three years ago in a challenge to Congress’s practice of perpetually extending copyright terms (Eldred v. Ashcroft), it said it defers to Congress in judgments about intellectual property. With Grokster, the Court has now qualified that deference: We defer, except when we don’t like the defendants. Then we make up a common law rule to punish the bad guys.

This is absolutely true. Many pundits have read the ruling to say that it has something for everyone. As Lessig says, “[t]he pundits are idiots.” Here, we have yet another worthless standard that will hurt innovation.

Per Forbes, based on an AP wire story, and confirmed now by our friends in the thick of it, Mike, Black Hat, Cisco and ISS have reached a settlement. We haven’t got any details and may well never get any, as the conditions of settlements aren’t always made public. Suffice it to say that the contents of the presentation are barred, and Mike can’t ever talk about them again. Furthermore, he’ll have to return any Cisco source code he may have. Black Hat agreed to sequester the video of the talk as well, apparently, which is understandable, though disappointing to me, personally, since I’d have liked to see it.

Of course we’ll keep posting further developments, if there are any, but at the moment, things look like they’ve settled without bloodshed, though I doubt there’s much love lost between them.

On a personal note, we (Mike’s friends) have gotten more than one or two calls or emails offering support, both moral and financial, for Mike, based on the potential for a long legal battle. I’ve been extremely careful not to speak for Mike in any way thus far, and will continue to do so on actual details, but I’m sure he’ll have no objection to my expressing gratitude to all of you who stood in his corner.

Mainpage Update, Friday 12:26 PM
Looks like we may’ve been premature. We had some unpleasant rumors filter back last night, and this Wired story appears to confirm them. I don’t think anyone here in Atlanta has talked directly to Mike in some time, so we’re getting everything third hand or via the news, just like everyone else. Here’s hoping Ms. Granick is correct, and the investigation will wind down shortly… whatever else he is, I don’t think Mike’s a crook.

Mainpage Update, Friday 5:02 PM
Yeah, we were premature. I’m aware that a legal defense fund is being set up, but in the meantime, Mike’s paypal account can be used to send your support.

1) Reporter’s Privilege:Miller v. U.S.; Cooper and Time Magazine v. U.S. The Court today deined certiorari to these two cases, dealing with the reporter’s privilege and the Valerie Plame affair. By denying cert, the lower court’s contempt rulings against reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper stand and both will now face eighteen months in prison for refusing to testify in front of the grand jury investigating the Plame Affair.

Now, in a former life, I worked on media libel defense, so I have strong sympathies for the reporter’s privilege and the MLRC. However, in these circumstances, where the law that has been broken is unlawful disclosure of an intelligence officer, there is no way to prosecute unless the person to whom the disclosure was made is compelled to testify about their source. As a result, in order to protect our brave intelligence officers, the privilege really should be void here.

On a more political note, I hope Bob Novak is happy– two other reporters (not that I have much sympathy for Chalabi-megaphone Miller) are going to jail on his behalf.

2. Ten Commandments: McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry. Split rulings from the Court today, allowing the display of the Ten Commandments in a Texas courthouse public building (6-3), but prohibiting a second display in a Kentucky courthouse (5-4). The point on which these decisions hinged is apparently the extent to which the displays endorse religion. If portrayed neutrally (such as is the case in the Supreme Court’s own chambers), the display is okay.

At this point, I am really ‘meh’ about this issue. As you might imagine, I am a big supporter of the separation. Sure, there is some validity that the TC have played a role in the development of the Rule of Law. Of course, the TC wouldn’t exist without the Hammurabi code, but who’s counting 7/10 commandments. Oh yeah, and there is the little problem of which TC to use. Or whatever. But as far as the seperation issues go, I would think Federal government funding of faith-based initiatives would be a little higher on the priority list on both sides of the issue. Anyway, I think the Court did okay here– as expected.

3. No retirement announcement! Guess the fight for nominations will hold for another day…

4. Cable 0wnz0r Phone: National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X and FCC v. Brand X. Wow, the phone companies got hosed yet again today. The Court held 6-3 that the rules requiring telecom companies to open their lines to competitors do not apply to the cable companies, thus allowing that sector to continue its continued assault on the telecom industry. Cable companies can compete in the same services as the telecoms, but without all the restrictions imposed by the FCC. Score one more for TWC and Comcast. Telecom better get the Telecommunications Act re-written pronto.

5. Restraining Orders: Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales. If you are protected by a restraining order, you have no enforceable interest in your protection. I.E., if you get hurt while covered by the restraining order, you can’t sue the city for damages. Duh. I’ll be interested in what the dissent had to say in this 7-2 decision. UPDATE: Okay, after reading this over at the talent show, I understand the downsides of this ruling, namely that, in this case, the local government did not enforce the restraining order and the to-be-restrained murdered everyone. Clearly a problem when law enforcement doesn’t enforce the laws. However, I suspect that this case was decided on sovereign immunity grounds. UPDATE 2: First rule of Supreme Court rulings: You shouldn’t talk about them until you read them. Second rule of Supreme Court rulings: The Justices will rule on ANY procedural/technical point they can before dealing with anything substantive. This ruling simply stated that there were no federal bases on which the plaintiff could sue the state government.

6. The Main Event: MGM v. Grokster. Wow. We lost this one big. Even bigger than the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act aka SBCTEA (sorry Prof. Lessig). Holding 9-0 against Grokster and Streamcast, the court held that: “We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”

Ugh. Where to start on this one. Well, if you think the software you are currently developing could be used for infringing copyrights, you may want to read this opinion over first. While it appears that the Court is attempting to create some standard based on an affirmative action here (as would be required for inducement to commit copyright infringement, the legal theory involved in this case), it is yet to be seen what will be necessary to show such a standard. Could just be that you are distributing it to others knowing that it could be an infringing tool. This would be the worse case evisceration of the Betamax standard. UPDATE: Many discussions throughout the blogosphere today. Most point out that so long as no affirmative evidence of intent exist (such as emails/marketing discussing the potential uses for infringing purposes), the services should be in the clear. In addition, the losing parties have stated that they still believe they can prevail in the lower court at this standard. As always, however, it appears that the Court has simply muddied the standards and potentially added a new theory of liability…

For further, better, and probably more reasoned coverage of todays rulings, head over to SCOTUSblog. Opinions can be found (for now) here.

* Updates will continuein this post as I haven’t yet been able to read the actual text of the decisions… stupid actual job.