Monthly Archives: April 2009

Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer

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“Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer”


NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08/09-1

JAMES GRIMMELMANN, New York Law School

Recently, the state of Oregon has used copyright law to threaten people who were publishing its laws online. Can they really do that?

More to the point, why would they? This essay will put the Oregon fracas in historical context, and explain the public policies at stake. Ultimately, it’ll try to convince you that Oregon’s demands, while wrong, aren’t unprecedented. People have been claiming copyright in the law for a long time, and at times they’ve been able to make a halfway convincing case for it. While there are good answers to these arguments, they’re not always the first ones that come to hand. It’s really only the arrival of the Internet that genuinely puts the long-standing goal of free and unencumbered access to the law within our grasp.

This essay, written for nonlawyers and people interested in contemporary debates over access to the law, explains what’s at stake in the Oregon dispute, how people have tried such things before, the role of new technologies in improving legal publishing, what the law has to say about it, and where we ought to go from here.

 

Source:  LSN Legal Information & Technology Vol. 1 No. 8,  04/08/2009

Thinking about Think Tanks

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The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) has a valuable 2007 report identifying  top think tanks around the globe: The Global “Go-To Think Tanks:” The Leading Public Policy Research Organizations in the World.

Hat tip to DocuTicker.

Changes to Publishing Industry in China

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From Today’s Financial Times

Beijing in pledge to end publishing sector monopoly

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4d4bdd08-23d3-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html

China’s Communist government yesterday pledged to end the monopoly held by state publishing houses by allowing private companies to produce books legally for the first time in more than half a century.

The General Administration of Press and Publications, the industry regulator, said the government would “encourage and support non-public capital” and “make non-public publishers an important component” of the Chinese language book industry.

“This is a historic moment because, ever since the 1950s, China has insisted that all book publishing be state-run,” said Xue Ye, secretary-general of the China Private Book Industry Committee, set up in 2000 ahead of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation.

 

Summer University for Continental Law in Paris

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The Paris based Foundation for Continental Law (Fondation pour le droit continental) offers a three week course on foreign, comparative and international law. This year’s program includes courses on Asian legal systems, bioethics law, comparative constitutional law, international litigation, and introduction to Roman law.  Professors come from throughout Europe and classes are offered in French and English.

Foundation for Continental Law – Summer University for Continental Law. July 6 -July 25, 2009 http://www.fondation-droitcontinental.org/7.aspx?sr=0

The Summer University for Continental Law was established by the Foundation for Continental Law under the direction of its International Scientific Council.

The Summer University of the Foundation for Continental Law is the new and international, yearly meeting place for persons interested in continental legal culture, whether they are academic scholars, legal professionals, or students.

The Summer University offers a training course with a Certificate in Continental Law upon completion. It focuses on students having completed their legal studies’ cycle, on professors and professionals.

The Summer University, in addition, provides the opportunity for networking and establishing numerous international contacts. This will be a true international campus that is held in Paris each year

Monopolizing the Law

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From a fascinating, must-read brand new book by noted antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive.

Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive
By Gary L. Reback
Portfolio Books, 2009
*****
Chapters 14, “Storytelling for Lawyers.” and 15, “Monopolizing the Law,” clearly explain how LexisNexis and Westlaw became the market forces that they are today.
From chapter 15:
. . . The West-Thomson merger had precisely the effect that everyone, other than Thomson, the Justice Department, and the judge predicted it would.  Prices for print publications soared.  Thomson started putting fewer pages into each West volume of court cases and charging more for the books.  Price increases for West publications following the takeover exceeded both the rate of inflation and the rate of increases for prices in legal publishing more generally.  One study documented a price increase of over 70 percent for “value added” legal publications (books with supplements) in the four years following the merger.
Prices for online research also climbed astronomically.  Thomson raises rates to private firms each year.  In each of the recent years, Thomson’s charges for online legal research in the West databases have increased roughly 7 percent.  To search the comprehensive West database for state and federal decisions now costs more than $17 per minute.  The federal minimum wage, by constrast, is about $7 an hour.  In addition both Thomson and LexisNexis started charging law schools for online legal research, orginally provided free of charge.  Last year the annual rate increase to law school librarians was roughly 7%, breaking the budget of many university law libraries.

Techne Interviews Public Printer Candidate Carl Malamud

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Techne Interviews Public Printer Candidate Carl Malamud

“Long a proponent of open access to what he calls the ‘operating system’ of the US government — the laws, codes and court cases that regulate our lives in society — Carl Malamud has spent more than a decade working to make government documentation freely available online through his organization public.resource.org. He has recently turned his attention to the GPO and is “running” for the appointment of Public Printer, the head of the GPO and thus of the federal agency that produces a great deal of the same documentation he has previously fought for public access to. Malamud was kind enough to recently take the time to discuss with Techne his proposals for the GPO–such as an RSS feed of the Official Journals of Government–and how the internet and technology are changing, or could change, the relations between a citizenry, its government and the information that passes between the two.”
http://www.technemag.com/?p=400

Source: The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association

http://units.sla.org/chapter/csfo/csfo.html

Law Library session at IFLA Conference

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The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Conference in Turin, Italy is offering the following FCIL related session on Tuesday, August 25, 2009: Law Libraries inItaly: the Italian legal system, basics and new trends.

More information available at the  IFLA Conference Programme Webiste:

http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla75/Summary_Programme_v.1.pdf

Wikipedia’s Old-Fashioned Revolution

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As one who eagerly waited for each new year book for our World Book set, and then set about diligently pasting in all of the update stickers, while eveyone else I knew was raving about Encarta, I was a bit slow to the online encyclopedia.  But as today’s Information Age column in the Wall Street Journal makes clear, Wikipedia’s underpinnings are based on traditional concepts of authority:

As Andrew Lih points out in his new book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Greatest Encyclopedia,” Wikipedia’s research principles are as traditional as its operating model is revolutionary. Founder Jimmy Wales says the only nonnegotiable policy is a “neutral point of view,” with entries edited to eliminate ideological bias. The other key principles are verifiability by authoritative sources and a related prohibition on original content.

The guidelines for adding entries to this open-to-all encyclopedia reject open-to-all sources: “Gather references both to use as source(s) of your information and also to demonstrate notability of your article’s subject matter. References to blogs, personal websites and MySpace don’t count — we need reliable sources.”

The guide credits old media and old-fashioned definitions to establish legitimacy. “These sources should be reliable; that is, they should be sources that exercise some form of editorial control.” These include “books published by major publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed scholarly journals . . .

 

The Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 6, 2009, p. A13

Information Age

By L. Gordon Crovitz

Wikipedia’s Old-Fashioned Revolution

The Good Guys

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Paul blogged recently about CILP, the “Schooner Tuna of Legal Information Providers.”  In tough financial times, CILP took the bold step of rolling back prices.  And, they invited other publishers to follow suit.

Well, we think we should commend publishers who are following this great example.  So, we plan to share with you the names of publishers and vendors who are listening — publishers and vendors who aren’t raising their prices, or offering new flexibility and services in this trying time.  Publishers who are law librarian partners in pain.

Recently, we received the following from Gale:

An open letter to our friends in the library community

Dear Librarian,

Since joining Gale, I’ve been struck by the company-wide commitment to and partnership with libraries. Not only is it the kind of relationship any company should have with its customers, it’s also a sound business strategy. If you’re not successful, we can’t be successful.

A true partnership also means that we must work together in both good times and bad. We’ve listened carefully to suggestions from librarians and library groups about how to best support you in this economic crisis.

Our objective is simple: how can we continue to provide the greatest value that helps you serve your users with quality information? The bottom line is: we will work with you to find a way for you to maintain the same level of service at a price you can afford.

Here are some ways we will support your mission of providing uninterrupted access to valuable information.

  • We will work with you to lower your overall spend for reference information. By working individually with libraries and consortia, we’re confident we can develop custom, creative solutions to meet your unique budget challenges and provide options to reduce spending on information resources. We are prepared to be flexible and to spend time to prepare a solution that works for you. Learn more.
  • Additionally, on request, we are removing authentication on resources that support local economic development. This allows resources to be shared freely with local government, chambers of commerce and small business associations via widgets with unfettered access – increasing library visibility to legislators, the business community, and others who may be able to provide additional support for your library.
  • We’ll continue to advocate for libraries – through user awareness, free access to valuable resources, helping you find grant sources, key sponsorships of library associations and causes, library marketing, and much more. We want to help your library continue to be a vital part of your community. And we want to help you double usage of your Gale resources – reaching more users with the right information. Visit our new Power to the user site at www.gale.com/power for more.

“Power to the user, value to the library” is a core value that we live and breathe every day. I invite you to e-mail us at valuetothelibrary@cengage.com or call your Gale representative (800-877-GALE) to talk about how these programs can help your library remain vital during tough times.

Cordially,

Pat Sommers

Patrick C. Sommers
President
248-699-8090
pat.sommers@cengage.com


I was really struck by the reference to “removing authentication on resources that support local economic development” — that shows real heart.  And, the willingness to work with libraries on prices and a commitment to service is what we need right now.

And, kudos to World Trade Online.  We recently heard that there would be no price increase for this service in the coming year.  Thank you!

Who’s next on the Good Guys Roster?

[By the way, you can now follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/legalresearchpl]


An Analysis of Ideological Effects in Published Versus Unpublished Judicial Opinions

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From Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 213-39

An Analysis of Ideological Effects in Published Versus Unpublished Judicial Opinions

Denise M. Keele, Robert W. Malmsheimer, Donald W. Floyd, Lianjun Zhang


Almost without exception, scholars have tested theories of judicial behavior by relying on published case decisions. Though understandable given the inaccessibility of unpublished cases, this focus means that scholars may be drawing conclusions regarding judicial behavior that do not accurately describe the motivational forces behind all judicial decisions. This study employed the attitudinal model of judicial behavior to empirically test whether published judicial opinions are representative of all opinions in litigation challenging the U.S. Forest Service. Results indicate that the effects of ideological preferences are different in published and unpublished opinions issued by appellate judges: judges’ decisions followed their ideological preferences in published opinions, but they did not in unpublished opinions. At the district court level, judges did not follow their ideological preferences in either published or unpublished opinions and there was no difference between judges’ decisions in published and unpublished opinions. This research supports the contention that the process of judicial decision making in the courts of appeals differs between published and unpublished opinions and that scholars should use caution in drawing conclusions from examinations of published opinions alone.