Daily Archives: May 7, 2009

Nuts and Bolts of Scholarship – Get it all in a Binder!

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As I was skimming through the latest blog postings on Google Reader, I ran across this entry on “Revisiting the Nuts and Bolts of Scholarship” on Empirical Legal Studies.

The post calls attention to the article THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF SCHOLARSHIP or The “NEW” Rules for Legal Scholars, by Cheryl Hanna (Vermont Law School).  For anyone new to legal academia, this is a handy article offering very useful advice for the new scholar embarking on a writing career.

But, what really, really caught my eye was the advice that Hanna offers, not once, but twice in the article.  She explains:

“One of the most frustrating parts of writing a law review article is doing the footnotes. I suggest that for every article you get a binder. Have your research assistant photocopy everything that you cite. You can then send this binder to the law review editors, saving yourself the problem of remembering where you read something and them the task of pulling sources.”

And, later in the work:

“send the editors your binder of citations. They will instantly love you and work harder on your behalf.”

All I have to say: The Librarians will LOVE you, too!

If all authors supplied a binder to the journals with all of their works cited, what a wonderful world this would be.  Imagine how much more time journal editors would have to really work on the articles and find new content to publish if they weren’t so bogged down in cite-pulls.

And, the fiction of citing to the official version of a code or to the hard copy of a journal would be exposed.  Students regularly come to the reference desk looking for a paper copy of a source that is on-line — the source that the author probably used on-line, too.  If the binder were supplied with all accepted articles, this would be simple and transparent.

Now if only the law journals were to require that all authors submit such a binder…..we can dream.

Islamic Finance Report from the Financial Times

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The Financial Times has posted its May 5th special report on Islamic finance. The article on Sharia boards lists the leading scholars on the Sharia boards from Bahrain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. Registration may be required.

http://www.ft.com/reports/islamic-finance-2009

Articles available in the report:
Credit crunch may test industry beliefs
The industry has held up well so far in the crisis but is unlikely to remain insulated, reports Robin Wigglesworth

Regulation: Further development needs a common rule-book
More standardised products would let the industry go global, writes Simeon Kerr

Islamic Banks: Real estate exposure may be largest threat
And in theory depositors must share any losses, notes Robin Wigglesworth

Sukuk market: Credit freeze victim shows signs of a thaw
An increase in conventional bond deals could help restart transactions, reports David Oakley

Innovation: Downturn temporarily blunts inventiveness
Scholars are taking stock of products, reports Robin Wigglesworth

Asia: Malaysia aims to be hub for its region
However, it is facing increasing local competition, writes Andrew Wood

Sharia boards: Scholars hold sway over the success of products
A small coterie wields power, explains Robin Wigglesworth

Western markets: France and the US vie for the UK’s crown
Shyamantha Asokan says London’s lead in the race to win clients is shrinking

Guest column: New world or false dawn?
Islamic finance faces challenges centred around the increased needs for standardisation and innovation in the industry, writes Mukhtar Hussain

The Google Book Search Settlement: A New Orphan-Works Monopoly?

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“The Google Book Search Settlement: A New Orphan-Works Monopoly?”

U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 462

RANDAL C. PICKER, University of Chicago – Law School

This paper considers the proposed settlement agreement between Google and the Authors Guild relating to Google Book Search. Google boldly launched Google Book Search in pursuing its goal of organizing the world’s information. Even though Google was sensitive to copyright values, the service relied on mass copying and thus Google undertook a substantial legal risk in setting up the service. That risk was realized with the lawsuits by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The October, 2008 settlement agreement for those suits will create an important new copyright collective and will legitimate broad-scale online access to United States books registered before early January, 2009.

The settlement agreement is exceeding complex but I have focused on three issues that raise antitrust and competition policy concerns. First, the agreement calls for Google to act as agent for rights holders in setting the price of online access to consumers. Google is tasked with developing a pricing algorithm that will maximize revenues for each of those works. Direct competition among rights holders would push prices towards some measure of costs and would not be designed to maximize revenues. As I think that that level of direct coordination of prices is unlikely to mimic what would result in competition, I have real doubts about whether the consumer access pricing provision would survive a challenge under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Second, and much more centrally to the settlement agreement, the opt out class action will make it possible for Google to include orphan works in its book search service. Orphan works are works as to which the rightsholder can?t be identified or found. That means that a firm like Google can?t contract with an orphan holder directly to include his or her work in the service and that would result in large numbers of missing works. The opt out mechanism – which shifts the default from copyright?s usual out to the class action?s in – brings these works into the settlement.

But the settlement agreement also creates market power through this mechanism. Absent the lawsuit and the settlement, active rights holders could contract directly with Google, but it is hard to get large-scale contracting to take place and there is, again, no way to contract with orphan holders. The opt out class action then is the vehicle for large-scale collective action by active rights holders. Active rights holders have little incentive to compete with themselves by granting multiple licenses of their works or of the orphan works. Plus under the terms of the settlement agreement, active rights holders benefit directly from the revenues attributable to orphan works used in GBS.

We can mitigate the market power that will otherwise arise through the settlement by expanding the number of rights licenses available under the settlement agreement. Qualified firms should have the power to embrace the going-forward provisions of the settlement agreement. We typically find it hard to control prices directly and instead look to foster competition to control prices. Non-profits are unlikely to match up well with the overall terms of the settlement agreement, which is a share-the-revenues deal. But we should take the additional step of unbundling the orphan works deal from the overall settlement agreement and create a separate license to use those works. All of that will undoubtedly add more complexity to what is already a large piece of work, and it may make sense to push out the new licenses to the future. That would mean ensuring now that the court retains jurisdiction to do that and/or giving the new Registry created in the settlement the power to do this sort of licensing.

Third, there is a risk that approval by the court of the settlement could cause antitrust immunities to attach to the arrangements created by the settlement agreement. As it is highly unlikely that the fairness hearing will undertake a meaningful antitrust analysis of those arrangements, if the district court approves the settlement, the court should include a clause – call this a no Noerr clause – in the order approving the settlement providing that no antitrust immunities attach from the court’s approval.

 

Source:  LSN Intellectual Property Law Vol. 2 No. 51,  05/07/2009