ZiefBrief

New Internet Meme Would Make Great Law School Final Exam Question

What would you do if you came home one day and found a mob of 30 people looting your home? Robert Salisbury, a Jacksonville, Oregon contractor, faced such a crowd and it appears that the Internet is to blame. Someone placed an announcement on Craigslist stating that Salisbury was moving and that everything was up for grabs -- and grab they did. The distraught  homeowner said "I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back, they showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did." Eventually, the local constabulary arrived, but not before several cars and trucks filled with Salisbury's possession had fled the scene. Read the full Seattle Times article here.

This incident is eerily similar to one that took place about a year ago in Tacoma, Washington. In that case the police were successful in tracking down the author of the bogus ad and she was later charged with second-degree burglary, malicious mischief and criminal impersonation. Read the full Seattle Times article here.

Original link in the decidedly non-legal blog, BoingBoing

One in 100 Americans Behind Bars -- Pew Report Released

The Chronicle of Higher Education points out in this article that a new report on the US prison population and spending has just been released. The report is the work of the Pew Center of the States and is titled One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (click here to link directly to a 37 page .pdf file.)  Why the interest by the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may ask? Well, it turns out that there are now 5 states (Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware) that spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. California, with an $8.8 Billion budget for corrections is very close to this mark spending 83 cents on correction for every dollar spent on higher education. This report is a treasure trove of statistics and bibliographical information for anyone interested in prisons, policy, or the general population.  

The US Government Has a Blog

It seems like everybody, but everybody has a blog these days (including Geoffery Chaucer at the ZiefBrief favorite Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.) Not wanting to be left out of the fun, the US Government is blogging up a storm at Govgab. This new effort is the product of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications out of the U.S. General Services Administration. This rather breezy look at the Federal Government has been around since September of '07 so it looks like it is here to stay. The bloggers state:

In our daily jobs, we encounter a staggering amount of U.S. government information and services that can benefit your life. From saving money and visiting National Parks to finding out about government auctions and the latest recalls, we want to bring these resources to you in a new way—through our blog.

This is not the site to go to conduct a legislative history or to track current regulations but it might be fun to add to your collection of blog feeds -- who knows when you might need to know about the Fed's take on Preparing for a Baby on a Budget or Buying a New Car.

Kudos to USF IP Publication for Net Neutrality Symposium

As the Internet becomes the major commercial thoroughfare for the American economy and Web 2.0 applications place greater demands on bandwidth, the issue of Net Neutrality is going to become more and more important. For those readers who have been living under a virtual rock, Net Neutrality refers to the struggle between proponents of a “free” Internet who favor unlimited access versus those who for reasons of maximizing profit or efficiency want to limit (or charge for) access to the Information Superhighway.

With this conflict in mind, the University of San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Bulletin recently presented  The Toll Roads? The Legal and Political Debate Over Net Neutrality.
The event generated positive publicity prior to the event in the pages of the SF Chronicle.

Though the shouting is over and the dust has settled there is still useful information to be found on the web site created to promote the event. Check out a useful collection of statements and papers from the seminar participants are available on the web site.

As a follow-up, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Senate Commerce Committee will be hearing from consumer advocates, Internet Service Providers and other concerned parties in a series of hearing beginning today.

Guantanamo Bay Detainees Cases Heard by the Supreme Court

Intense interest in the Guantanamo detainees' cases of Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) has led the United States Supreme Court to take the rare step of releasing the audio file of today’s oral argument immediately after the argument.

You’ll find the Boumediene/al-Odah oral argument audio  [RealPlayer required] on C-SPAN's Supreme Court page. Look for the link "Supreme Court Oral Arguments: Boumediene v. Bush & Al Odah v. United States." You can also follow along in the written transcript of the argument [PDF; 92 pages].

For more background on these cases, take a look at the SCOTUSWiki page on Boumediene and al-Odah. This page analyzes the case in detail, and links to key documents, selected news reports, and posts from SCOTUSblog. It will include a recap of the oral argument as soon as the authors pull one together - probably sometime later today.

[Update] SCOTUSblog has posted a round-up of news reports on the Boumediene/al-Odah argument, and Oyez.org now has an MP3 file of the oral argument.

Lexpionage

Want to know what "precrimination" means?  Or how about "glamping" or "stoozing"?  The Word Spy site tracks usage of new words and phrases in popular media, supplying definitions and examples of how the new word has been used in recent media sources.   It's clearly modeled after the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, and it's a fun site to browse when you need a break from studying your outline for the umpteenth time.   Thanks to beSpacific for highlighting this site!

The Law -- It Just Wants To Be Free

Public.Resource.Org issued a press release today announcing that they will "release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose." They are able to do this thanks to an agreement they reached with Fastcase, Inc.
Carl Malamud, the founder of Public.Resource.Org is famous for his efforts making the SEC's EDGAR materials available to the general public for free. There is a great story about Malamud and his effort to convince West Publishing Company to allow his organization to digitize West materials at Tim O'Reilly's (of O'Reily computer books) blog.

Law Library of Congress Gets a New Look, Maintains Useful Research Tools.

In honor of the 175th anniversary of their creation, the Law Library of Congress unveiled a newly redesigned web page. ZiefBrief would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the LLOC on their anniversary and to remind our readers about what a useful research destination they can be. Two useful resources of special note are:

Guide to Law Online:
This is a very useful list of links maintained by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division designed to provide a portal of Internet sources of interest to legal researchers. In addition to providing links to the full text of cases, codes, regulations the pages of the Guide provide useful links for lay people interested in the law.

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN)
GLIN is a searchable online database containing laws, judicial decision, legislative records and legal literature for jurisdictions spanning the globe. Contributors are governmental agencies and international organizations that add original-language, officially published, full text documents in electronic format. Unofficial summaries (generally in English) accompany each document. Full texts of materials in the GLIN are available as PDF files.

For a change of pace...

We at ZiefBrief enjoy browsing a wide range of non-legal blogs in our copious free time. One favorite is Indexed, which the author Jessica Hagy calls "a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math." Using charts, graphs, venn diagrams and other devices she makes trenchant social commentary on the back of 3 X 5 index cards. We especially enjoy todays entry, click on the small image to see it in a full size, pop-up window.

Prof. Freiwald Helps Court of Appeals See Its Way Clear to Protect E-Mail Privacy.

In what is being heralded as an important expansion of privacy protection for e-mail, the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit recently released a decision on the case of Warshak v. US

The court ruled that a citizen does have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email stored on the computers of their Internet Service Provider or other intermediary (such as HotMail or GMail.) As a result, the warrant seizure provisions of the Stored Communications Act need to be applied when prosecutors are seeking such electronic communications and to the extent the SCA permits access without a warrant, the court found those provisions to be unconstitutional.

The local angle in this decision is that University of San Francisco School of Law Professor Susan Freiwald filed an Amicus brief in support of plaintiff Warshak's privacy rights. Check out Prof. Freiwald's publications at her faculty bibliography page for list of more of her work on Cyberlaw and privacy issues.