Everyone says the first year of law school is hard, but I thought I was ready. I’d studied hard and done well on the LSAT; I’d just study hard and do well in class. I guess that formula is simple enough that it might yet hold true, but the experience couldn’t be less familiar. The LSAT just demanded that I lock myself in a room every Sunday for ten weeks and take a practice exam. It was a matter of discipline more than concentration, raw hours clocked rather then focused analysis. I’m learning that law school is actually much more than just a big logic game of shuffling seating arrangments and allocating people between vehicles; perhaps they should make wedding planners take the LSAT instead of law students. Law school seems to be instead a constant game of hide-and-go-seek between you and the professors, where you duck down and try not to get called on when you don’t know your shit and run around trying to tag them when you do. Once you get on call, by whichever side’s machinations, you get to go play on the Problematizing Seesaw, where you vacillate back and forth between clear rules and borderline cases as long as the professor stays amused. Afterwards you resolve to be a better seesawer next time, so you spend the evening going back and forth on your own imaginary seesaw, but it never feels quite like the real thing.

The end result is that after a month of school I feel a little dizzy. I think I’ve kept up alright, but my brain feels out of focus. I can’t get the two hemispheres to converge on any one idea. I have some faith that I’ll get my groove back soon enough, but I didn’t realize how out of practice I was. Three years without any significant intellectual challenges has built up a lot of cruft, and I’ve been getting by on a neat turn of phrase and a furrowed brow for too long. Big words don’t impress anyone in law school; neither do lazy analogies or unwarranted assumptions. It’s definitely going to take my focused and sustained attention over the rest of the year to get my domepiece back to fighting weight.

So I’m going on a diet. Not a food diet (though I’ve recently switched to Diet Coke after years of resistance, which should save me a few bajillion calories a year), but an information diet. I’ve decided that I really have to cut down on distractions, and right now I try to be knowledgable about too many things. I now have 99 feeds in my aggregator; there’s no way I can stay up on all of them and have a chance to be even a passably good law student. It’s nice to be well rounded, but I really feel like it’s time to stop sacrificing depth for breadth. If I need to get up to speed on something, I’ll do some research on it; no more trying to be preemptively informed.

That said, everyone needs to have a hobby. I’m not capable of banishing everything but Law from the life of my mind. The other thing I’m allowing myself is Music. It may be a cop out, since there was no way I was going to stop listening to music, but I’m going to try to actually devote more time to it. I think if I have a default thing to do when I’m not doing Law things, I’ll be more focused generally. My project is going to be an MP3 blog, similar to those under the Music heading in the sidebar on the left. The idea is no more complicated than me posting a track or two and some thoughts about them every week or so, but I think it will be get me (and hopefully you) more engaged with my collection and music in general. Ideally, I’ll be able to convince some others to join me in the endeavor, so I (we) can be up on what they’re up on.

So keep an eye out, and don’t forget to peep our brother publications, Beer Burgers and Dsquared, which have been publishing with renewed vigor as of late.

The Court basically expanded the standard set in Sony v. Universal, which says that a technology need only be “capable of substantial non-infringing uses” to avoid being liable for any copyright infringement by its users. Now one can also be liable if they “distribute a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe”, which seems to only say that one must very cautious about how one markets such a device. This standard seems to cover most of the ground of Orrin Hatch’s nasty INDUCE Act, but I think there’s a lot of wiggle room preserved in the distinction between “inducement” and “promotion”. Under the new Grokster standard, it would seem that a given technology could be stupendously awesome at enabling infringement, but as long as the creators don’t mention that awesomeness, they’ll be safe. On the other hand, I think many people could make a good case for the making available of such awesomeness qualifying as inducement to infringe. Some patronizing metaphor about letting kids loose in a candy store would likely be trotted out to great effect in that argument.

For anyone who’s interested in what actual lawyers think about the effects of Monday’s decision, Copyfight has an excellent round-up, at least for their side of the debate. The other side isn’t that happy with the decision either, with Douglas Lichtman, a U of C law professor who filed a brief in support of MGM et al., pointing out that “intent-based standards…are among the easiest to avoid.”

What’s most interesting to me about Justice Souter’s ‘majority’ opinion is that much of the evidence cited against Grokster and Streamcast doesn’t seem to meet the new standard of promoting the use of their programs to infringe. Maybe I’m way off base, because I’ve only heard this issue mentioned once amongst the deluge of analysis in the last 48 hours, on the latest IT Conversations ‘law’ podcast with Ernie Miller (cop it with the new hotness). The bulk of the evidence centers around references to Napster, mainly documenting Grokster’s attempts to market to ex-Napster users after it was shut down, up to and including the use of the “ster” suffix. While Napster was shut down because it would not / could not stop the infringement happening on its network, it seems wholly unwarranted to therefore mark all its users as tainted, such that any attempts to market to them are evidence of infringing behavior. Napster was without question capable of substantial non-infringing uses, even though the particulars of its business left it open to liability for infringement, and it would seem that the Court has disregarded the possibility of marketing to people interested in those uses. The only somewhat direct evidence of promoting the capabilities of their software to infringe comes from an out-of-context quote from Streamcast’s CTO: “The goal is to get in trouble with the law and get sued. It’s the best way to get in the news.” The remark could have been a flip response to a stupid question from the press, or any number of things, but here it stands as “promoting infringement”. It’s odd to think that one quote could bring companies such massive liabilities, and perhaps in the jury trial it won’t be sufficient, but I certainly wouldn’t hire that guy to work for me unless I could get a muzzle-wearing provision into his contract.

All in all, I think the decision isn’t as bad as it could have been, but I’m sorry it even had to be made. I think most of the pundits are right when they say that the only real winners here are the lawyers.

I really like that this event is being hosted by NYPL, because libraries are the primary examples of how keeping copyright limited in both scope and duration has been enormously good for our society as a whole. I think the talk will probably focus on what rights we as a society have to make sure our collective creative output, our culture, is preserved for future generations. In Kembrew McLeod’s new book Freedom of Expression®, Rick Prelinger notes that copyrights on films now last longer than the physical medium of film. This means that if the rights to a film cannot be easily established and cleared, it is most likely the film will rot in its can before anyone will be allowed to archive it. Even when the media is not at risk, there is the very real danger of works just being forgotten. Copyright now extends for so long, and the period of commercial viability for most works is so short, that most works will slip out of the public consciousness entirely before anyone is allowed to distribute them freely and widely. Sure, many of those works might be better off forgotten, but I don’t think we should be making that decision for everyone who comes after us. We can archive it all, easily. We should let the kids in 3723 decide for themselves if they like Better Than Ezra or not.

“But hold on,” you say, “I’m just a mindless follower, and IE still has over 90% of the browser market. Shouldn’t I just use what everyone else does?”

Yes, you might think that, but you’d be wrong. Over 90% of people don’t drive a new BMW, but if I offered you one in exchange for your ‘99 Taurus, would you turn me down? That’s the deal here. You can continue to use an outdated browser so beholden to commercial interests that it can’t even be bothered to block unrequested pop-up windows, or you can use a free, fast, open source browser that you can customize with any combination of thousands of extensions that seamlessly improve your browsing experience. If you’ve ever valued any computer advice I’ve given you, go install Firefox now. Then go install some of these extensions. I’ve found all of them useful, I bet you’ll at least like a couple:

Adblock
Almost as bad as pop-up ads are the enormous Flash banners that take up half the page. Adblock lets you block specific banner ads or entire ad servers, however you like. You can import my block list if you like, it blocks many of the most annoying servers.

Webmail Compose
Will reroute all those “mailto:” email links to the webmail client of your choice: Gmail, Yahoo, etc. If you’re using GMail, though, that can be accomplished with the official Gmail Notifier on Windows, or with the Gmail Notfier extension for any other situation.

fireFTP
You’ve all probably had cause to use FTP at some point, and found it a little difficult to find a good free client. Here’s one that’s integrated into the browser, easy as you please.

Bloglines Toolkit
If you’re not using Bloglines, give it a shot. It’s changed the way I approach the internet for the better. If you are, the Bloglines Toolkit lets you know when the new hotness has arrived. The LiveLines extension could be great, too, but I’m happy with my “Sub with Bloglines” bookmarklet.

Furl Tools
Furl is my other favorite internet tool. For anyone who uses more than one machine, or even more than one browser, it’s the best way to have all your bookmarks available to you, wherever you are and whatever you’re using. It’s even better than just bookmarks, though. Don’t take my word for it, ask Luke.

A9 Toolbar
Does some of the same things as Furl, and also other stuff. I’m still a little new to it, haven’t quite figured out how comfortable I am with Amazon tracking my every move, but if I tweak it properly, I bet it could be really useful.

User Agent Switcher
It’s not exactly fun, but every once in a while you’ll find a website which thinks you have to use IE for Windows and only IE for Windows to access their site. They’ll sniff the User Agent string from your browser and use that to make a decision about whether you should get in. Now, 9 times out of 10 they’re wrong, and the site will work just fine in Firefox, but the sniffing script is way too stupid to know that. For times like that, when you absolutely have to use their site (yeah, I’m glaring at you, LSACD On The Web), User Agent Switcher comes to the rescue. A simple submenu selection lets you front like Windows IE for as long as you need.

Aquarius
XYZ

RIP John. You’ll be missed around the world.

(917) 328-8233

But, you say, you have been talking all this shit at us about number portability, and how it is a Good Thing and no one need ever change their number again. Why do you not port your old number to the new phone? I hear this, but I just do not want the old 347 number. The fact of the matter is that my bourgeois conceits have led me to believe that a 347 area code is beneath me. I am a child of 212 and I will not be beholden to an area code that is too young to be potty-trained. The damn thing didn’t exist until I was in college, and it’s the third overlay on the New York area. If area codes are going to have little to with geography (and soon nothing at all to do with it), then I at least want one with some history, FFS.

917 makes me feel much better than 347 ever could; this number of mine has been through plenty of devices, I’m sure. From pagers to car phones, 917 was the currency of the wireless realm for many moons, and my nifty number, only needing three keys, could have been used by kings and princes (or him).

This is not intended as a diatribe against those with 347 numbers. I only wish to lead by example; to show the huddled masses that there is an escape from the ‘freedom’ of number portability. It is merely a choice each man must make: to knuckle under to the system which keeps the good numbers in blocks for fat cats and corporate exchanges, or to cast off the shackles of 347 and say you deserve better. You have nothing to lose but a wack-ass phone number.

While this is not entirely unexpected, I feel I have to apologize to the poor souls who Felt Lucky in their quest for a recording of “Air for G String” performed by a chorus of Lipizzaner Stallions. If it exists anywhere, that where is not here. Also, Beethoven’s rare “Sonata for Ponies” must be found elsewhere. In fact, if you have come here as a horse enthusiast, a hippolate if you will, then I suggest you leave. I offer nothing but derision and mockery of the very name of the beast you worship, so please, go get comfortable elsewhere.

It is subtle, and yet it rings with the sonorous tones of Truth Almighty, rekindling my faith that there is Good in the world.

Let’s give credit where credit is due: art direction by Bill Whitney; writing by Scott Jorgensen; illustration by George Peters; done for Fuji Ya by Kruskopf Olson Advertising in Minneapolis. This scan was from The One Show awards book, where this ad won a Silver Award for Collateral: Point of Purchase and In-Store.