Lex Ferenda

So, recently things have been quiet here. Perhaps it’s balancing the flurry of posts during the BILETA conference in March! I’ll try to keep things a bit more regular for the next few weeks anyway.

The teaching year has come to an end (although exams lie ahead, and they look an awful lot different from this side of the table - it’s still an unusual feeling), and the weather has started to improve (a little). I’ve been involved in two fascinating side projects (well, fascinating to me) this month, which I’ll not bore you the details of. The first was participating (as an advisor to one of the objectors) in the oral hearing held by the Environmental Protection Agency (the Irish one) regarding a “waste-to-energy facility”/”mass-burn incinerator” (depends on who you ask) proposed for the Poolbeg peninsula just a couple of miles east of where I’m sitting. And the second was serving (as a representative of ‘learner interests’) on a panel appointed by the Higher Education Authority to review the Irish Universities Quality Board. Neither hearing nor review panel will report for some time but I’ll be keeping my eyes open; information on the review is available here.

Regular readers and casual visitors alike might be interested in this - I’ll be hosting the wonderful Blawg Review next Monday (17th March - you can guess why!). The Blawg Review covers blogs about law, and all submissions are welcome, but blogs/posts with a specific connection with Ireland or topics that one would associate with this fair island (try not to have them all about alcohol, mmmkay?), would be particularly useful. My Blawg Review #128 of last October was great fun to put together, and I’m hoping for loads of interesting submission for the second attempt.

To submit a post of your own, or an interesting post that you’ve seen, please follow the submission guidelines here. Follow the link and use the online submission or email the specified address and I’ll receive it immediately.

In a very serious and dignified fashion, woohoo! This blog has been shortlisted for Best Specialist Blog at the Irish Blog Awards (see all the shortlists over here). The award is sponsored by iQContent and the shortlist is :

• The Voyage
• Green Ink
• The Usual Suspect
• Eoin Purcell’s Blog
• Piaras Kelly PR
• Wood Pellet Ireland
• Cearta
• Crime Always Pays
• Paddy Anglican
• Oliver Moore
• Lex Ferenda
• Public Enquiry
• Red Cardinal

A very interesting mix. As well as the law-types (myself and - this will be fun - my PhD supervisor), we have a publisher, a PR guru, a search engine optimiser, a crime novelist and an Anglican priest; not to mention advocates for sustainable energy, organic farming, the joys of climbing and the joys and sadnesses of family life (including education, autism and more) and a couple of political blogs, concerned with cartoons and with corruption. Delighted that I already subscribe to about half of them and I’m off to check out the rest…

Thanks to the anonymous nominators and judges.

The first Blawg Review (what’s a Blawg Review? See here) of 2008 has been posted, and it’s a good one. Charon QC (the legendary British law blogger) is at the plate for Number 141, and you can read the full, lengthy and amusing review over here. For what might have been a quiet time of year, he has pulled together a very wide range of posts and blogs (including an honourable mention for Cearta), and weaved them together in a very engaging way. Go read it - and add some new blogs to your favourites/feeds as a result!

It’s too late for the determined (self-awarded) QC to be considered for Blawg Review of the Year. The format for the award is that each of the reviewers that stepped up in 2007 nominate their favourite(s), and the results are brought to Iowa for people to jump around a room and then award random unrelated numbers of delegates to. Or something. Anyway, I’m chuffed that both Freedom to Differ and Nearly Legal nominated my review (number 128), and will get around to my own nominations this week (I hope).

SCRIPT-ed is the (newly re-subtitled) journal of law, technology and society edited at the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law in Edinburgh. The final issue of 2007 has just been published on the Web - contents here.

Of particular importance is Chris Marsden’s article (PDF. DOC, HTML) on net neutrality (Net Neutrality and Consumer Access to Content), which includes a particular focus on the UK and European elements of neutrality. Those following the topic will know that Marsden is one of the handful of people that understand both the US-centric debate as it is and the more global perspective as it should be; the article, an overview and also a critique, will be an important reference, citation and starting point for a lot of work in the coming months, including my own.

Of less particular importance but it’s my party and I’ll self-promote if I want to, this issue also contains my review (PDF, DOC, HTML) of the New Directions in Copyright Law books. Complete with a Stephen Leacock reference. Thumbs up to the editors for not taking it out…

Of artistic importance is the lovely cover inspired in part by grey Scottish skies (surely not?).

All this, of course, is in the context of a very interesting editorial by Shawn Harmon and Wiebke Abel, where they set out a manifesto for the future development of the journal, including a new publishing schedule and additional locations of publication, updated Creative Commons licensing, an expanded mandate, a shiny website, and more. They also flag the upcoming conference (coming up, that is, in 2009!)

GOVERNANCE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES: THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEDICINE, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

An International Interdisciplinary Conference
March 29-31, 2009
University of Edinburgh

More information here. Be there - whatever the colour of the skies!

Note to my dearest Lexferendans:

My host tells me that this site seems to have been the subject of two DDOS attacks over the last 24 hours. I’m travelling at the moment so don’t panic if you are (temporarily) locked out - we will get things up and running again. Funny, this never happened when I posted about coffee and cheap travel … the world is full of surprises, it seems.

…is an anagram, says Twenty Major (over here), of Ace Internet Marketing. I couldn’t possibly comment.

I’m sorry for the delay in approving some of your comments. See, some clever kid has decided to to flood Lex Ferenda (and in particular the thread about Ace) with spam. After some response to a post of mine, they proceeded to attack the post and the site as a whole. As I hold all first-time comments for moderation, marking them for deletion took some time, and I’m very sorry if I deleted any *real* comments in the meantime.

In the meantime, I’ve received another love letter from Ace. Now, as you recall, someone purporting to speak for them (although later claiming not to be a principal) has threatened to sue me about this post. The recent missive contains a bizarre and probably unenforceable beefed-up disclaimer. In particular, I am asked not to “peruse, use, disseminate, distribute or copy” the message. (How am I supposed to read it then???)

I do not have a contract with the sender, of course, and it is a virtually worthless disclaimer. I see no grounds for an expectation of confidentiality in its contents, and indeed this is an unsolicited message with someone I have no business or private relationship with. However, recognising that this mail (as distinct from previous ones) does contain a statement that “this email is private” I will simply summarise its contents here.

A further request is made for removal of the original post (I will not comply with this request and I have responded accordingly). It is suggested that it is time to “nip this in the bud” as I have not taken their warnings. (An unusual statement that Ace Internet Marketing is not a company is also included, which would seem to be confusing).

The email also includes a question as to my motives here. I have none. I write about Internet law. Damien’s blog highlighted an interesting question of apparent disregard for IP laws. While not agreeing with all IP law (of course), I wrote about the apparent violation of copyright law. Of course, the original post has now disappeared. Admission of wrongdoing perhaps?

The footer, containing the supposed disclaimer (it has changed in every mail!), says that if I receive the message in error, I should contact legal@techstore.ie. I wonder if techstore.ie are aware of the threats.

Thanks to all the people who added comments to the original post about the libel threat and in particular those who made fun of the unusually badly spelled and punctuated threat of legal action. You may also enjoy an exchange in the comments on Damien’s blog - an anonymous person of dubious origin is criticising Damien’s reaction to the unauthorised copying of his content. I wonder who it is….

I’m hosting the Blawg Review this week, and a roundup of the week in legal blogging will hit the Web (which is now available in book form!) next Monday.

To submit a post of your own, or an interesting post that you’ve seen, please follow the submission guidelines here.

Inspired by Peter Black post (itself inspired by this news), here’s a quick look at the browser stats for Lex Ferenda:

Unknown 32.3 %
MS Internet Explorer 32.2 %
Safari 12.4 %
Firefox 9.8 %
Opera 4.1 %
NewsGator (RSS Reader) 2.5 %
Mozilla 2.3 %
AppleSyndication (RSS Reader) 1.1 %
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader) 0.7 %
RssReader (RSS Reader) 0.5 %
Others 1.4 %

Last month it was:

Unknown 14946 33 %
MS Internet Explorer 14733 32.5 %
Firefox 6014 13.2 %
Safari 3736 8.2 %
Opera 1437 3.1 %
Mozilla 1058 2.3 %
NewsGator (RSS Reader) 981 2.1 %
AppleSyndication (RSS Reader) 698 1.5 %
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader) 539 1.1 %
RssReader (RSS Reader) 247 0.5 %
Others 901 1.9 %

and a year ago it was

Unknown 3294 46.6 %
MS Internet Explorer 1973 27.9 %
Safari 838 11.8 %
Firefox 705 9.9 %
Mozilla 107 1.5 %
Netscape 88 1.2 %
Opera 22 0.3 %
Camino 15 0.2 %
Links 13 0.1 %
Konqueror 8 0.1 %
Others 0 %

Is this thing on?

My stats show an interesting pattern - on the day I closed the shutters, I got more hits than ever before. This wasn’t due to a celebration of my absence, but a nice mention on the Berkman Buzz newsletter. I’ve also received some incoming traffic via Doc Searls and (weirdly) a comment to a Guardian blog piece on low-cost travel.

Anyway, if you’re here through any of the above, or came for the Summer Doctoral Programme traffic in general, you’re very welcome. I’m back in Dublin and will be here for what’s left of the wet summer, with a couple of occasional excursions for conferences etc.

Speaking of conferences…Ethan Zuckerman published a comprehensive post on live blogging on his blog last month, and highlighted a lot of good ideas about conference blogging. My efforts at the SDP (from the now-immortalised square metre (or meter), were somewhat more amateur, but very useful from my point of view, in terms of keeping focused, taking notes, sharing information and more . Indeed, I did test Ethan’s theory about the links between live blogging and baseball scorekeeping by giving the latter a shot at the weekend - I can see how the obsessive mind can be put to good use in both ‘arts’, and it’s a good comparison to make as in both cases, there is often an ‘official’ record, but there is still a difference between it and the self-blogged/self-scored version! (If you’ve never seen a scorecard, by the way, here’s an example (taken from the useful baseballscorecard.com site)).

It will be a little quieter now, though, with a couple of posts a day. You can subscribe to the feed or if you want to avoid tangents (like this post), you can take a look at the cyberlaw-only feed.