Ernest Svenson: Law + Technology

ABA Law Practice Management Section Gets Stunning Message from Incoming Chair

John Tredennick, the incoming chair of the ABA's LPM Section sent a stunning letter to the Section's active members (which number about 180; the membership of the entire section is about 18,000 attorneys). The letter warned that certain travel and lodging expenses for meetings would no longer be reimbursed, and they should look to their employers (and not the ABA) to support their ABA activities.

The LPM's annual budget is about $3 million, and apparently things are getting tight. Tredennick told an editor of Law Technology News that he wants to "re-focus the section on the core themes of technology, marketing, management and finance." Reading between the lines, it looks like the LPM Section is getting heat from the main body of the ABA.

I don't know what's up at the LPM, but I hope they work it out. I enjoy their magazine, which is filled with lots of practical information about technology and marketing, and incidentally is where "rick" writes a column on the impact of the Internet on the law.

Grab some lawyers boys, there's (intellectual property) gold in them there hills...

Wired News revisits the issue of deep linking. Via [Scripting News]

The Wired article says that "legal experts" conclude that deep linking may violate Copyright laws. I don't pretend to be a legal expert in the area of intellectual property, but I have read a lot and informed myself to the point where I can sniff out something that doesn't make sense.

Copyright laws protect (1) creative expression (2) fixed in a tangible medium. And a hyperlink (even one that bypasses a home page) is simply a pointer to a source of information or creative expression. Now we all know that what fuels the contention that it is wrong to deep-link: the person who enters a site through the back door avoids the trail of advertising that has been so carefully laid out for site visitors by the site operator. They come in the back door, sure. But where's the copyright violation?

If all I do is point someone to a location on the web, then what have I done that triggers the copyright laws? I haven't made a "copy" of anything. I have simply directed traffic to a particular place at that site. I suppose one could argue in certain cases (but that facts would have to be egregious) that there is an unfair trade practice or some other legal issue. But not a copyright violation. And by the way, doesn't Google often point people into sites in a way that bypasses the front door? To me, if some form of deep linking serves a common good (and clearly it does) then all deep linking should be allowed. We don't have time to parse this issue just so that we can zero in on some microbial examples of wrongdoing.

This is just one more example of how we are running amok with intellectual property claim-staking. It's like the California gold rush of 1849 all over again. Does common sense even matter any more?

The promise of e-signatures has fizzled in the face of security concerns, competing e-signature standards and the fact that, when it comes to big deals, people still like to handle paper. [C/net News.com] [via "denise"].

Yeah, Denise I thought it was going to be a bigger deal too. I may actually be the first person in America to have signed a document digitally (in Louisiana for sure). A vendor sent us a contract that they wanted to have signed and turned around quickly. Since they sent it to me as a PDF, I just popped it into Acrobat, digitally signed it, and returned it to them with a note that I would give them the paper version if they wanted it. What they really wanted was to send me the stuff they were selling us and have the firm have to pay for it, so they accepted the contract and never asked for the paper. I'm waiting to see if they ever remember. I doubt it. They figure the deal is done because they sent the goods and now we have to pay for them.

My guess is that e-signatures will catch on sometime after the next ice-age....

Adobe PDF On The Fly

"The folks at FinePrint have taken this concept one step further in developing pdfFactory, their newest offering. This product also uses a print driver to intercept the print command, this time to permit on-the-fly creation of PDF files. The user can modify the output in several different ways and then save the resulting PDF to the hard disk....

Beyond the cost considerations, however, there are several innovations. The most important is that output may be concatenated into one single PDF file from a series of separate print jobs, from the same or different sources. The usefulness of this feature is best described by real-life examples. The following scenarios illustrate a point that I have long made, and that is that one of the most significant contributions that Acrobat makes to a lawyer's productivity is its ability to create the bundled document: a single file containing output from a number of different programs, collected together for ease of reference and, to be sure, for printing it out when nothing but paper will do.

The first example is that of the legal secretary who is attempting to schedule an attorney's trip for an out-of-town deposition. She can visit the airline's web site and print to Factory a page showing the times of departure from Chicago and the alternatives for return flights, as well as a diagram of the aircraft's layout, then go to MapQuest and print out a map and driving directions, then print from WordPerfect a copy of the confirming letter to the client and a copy of a deposition notice, all in one PDF file which can then be transferred to the attorney's laptop or PDA or sent by e-mail for later use." [LLRX] via [The Shifted Librarian]

This is cool. I use Acrobat all the time and I can't rhapsodize enough about the utility of being able to "capture" a print job and create a PDF file. One day Rick Talcott and I will actually write that book that will show lawyers how to use Acrobat. Meanwhile, I'm going to check out pdfFactory and see if that adds to the functionalilty of Acrobat.

National Cybercrime Conference

May 9-11, 2002 at The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois

"In our current state of heightened national security, the law affecting information and computers is changing rapidly. Hear the experts who are involved discuss where we have been, where we are, and what the future may hold. Speakers include practicing experts from government and industry who are making and enforcing the law today."

Boy, I wish I lived in Chicago so I could go to this conference. (Thanks to Rich for pointing this out).

Lawyer who will argue in favor of Copyright Extension speaks his mind

When the Supreme Court hears argument in the Eldred case next term Morton Goldberg will defend the constitutionality of the so-called "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act," which extended the terms of copyright by 20 years. Critics complain that it harms the public by ignoring the importance of the public domain, and that it is unconstitutional because the Constitution says that copyrights shall be for "limited times," and the term cannot keep on being extended indefinitely. Morton disagrees. He is a Past-Chair of the ABA Section on Intellectual Property, and recently urged the ABA to support a "friend of the court" brief, which apparently the ABA refused to do. According to the interview in Salon article he and his firm represent members of the record industry, publishing houses and Hollywood studios. I'm pretty sure that Larry Lessig is going to argue against him.

ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law will argue for copyright term extension in Eldred case.

The April 2002 newsletter from Chairman Charles Baker explains the Section's decision to seek permission from the ABA to file a "friend of the court" brief (i.e. amicus brief) in favor of the constitutionality of the copyright term extension. In Mr. Baker's words:

"The case could present a field day for those who have anti-IP sentiment --those who say information wants to be free, less protection is necessarily better, the public domain promotes the useful arts better than IP, and when technology advances, IP rights must be cut back."

I don't agree with what he says, and I think he grossly mistates the position of his opponents. But one error is particularly glaring. The people who are looking for a "field day" aren't trying to cut back IP rights; rather, in the Eldred case, they oppose extending the rights. But he is preaching to his own choir, and I suppose that distinction will be lost....

Rory Perry's - another legal blogger....with a Radio site.

Denise Howell turned me on to this guy: "Rory L. Perry II, the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals in West Virgina (the state's high court).... He has his own blog, and also maintains one for the Court where new opinions and other information are available."

Reading his essay on The Law is Free I feel like Neo when he tapped into The Matrix. This guy gets it:

"So now that courts have the power to deliver content themselves, why aren't they doing it? Well many are at least posting decision on their respective Web sites. And there are movements afoot to create common markup standards for court decisions. But why not take the next step? My guess is that the right technological answer hasn't been available yet. But with the advent of XML-RPC, SOAP, and DIY Web Services, I think the landscape is changing radically."

Of course, Jenny was one of his early mentors....as she was for me. If Dave Winer reads this post please put him on the Weblog Categories list under the rubric "Court Administrators."

Rick Klau's article about blogging in the ABA Law Practice Mgt magazine

Rick is a lawyer, who found gainful employment after law school (which is to say he didn't practice law, but devoted himself to helping lawyers use technology). I'll be interested to see what sort of feedback he gets from his article, and whether it will steer more attorneys into the Radio Userland community. Oh, God, run for cover everybody.....the lawyers are coming, the lawyers are coming...