Singularity Law

The Federal Communications Commission’s loss in recent Comcast decision has cast doubt on whether the FCC has the authority to implement net neutrality regulations applicable to ISPs. While Congress certainly has the ability to broaden the FCC’s charter to include regulating the Internet, Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they are not willing to do so. Read more

In the mid-1990s, I spoke on a panel at the “Digital World” conference in Hollywood, California. It was one of the first conferences to bring together the entertainment industry and the nascent Internet industry. I remember clearly that the keynote speaker, one of the major studio heads at the time, starting off his speech with the words “Content is king. It always has been and it always will be.” No one disagreed. Indeed, at that time content was king. And there was nothing to indicate otherwise.

But that was several lifetimes ago (in Internet years), and the content industry is having a difficult time grasping the current reality. Content is no longer king. Instead, distribution is king. Read more

Several people have asked how I generate the tweets that I regularly post on Twitter (under @LawProf, @CopyrightLaw, @InternetLaw and @PrivacyLaw). There is actually no magic to it.

I use Google Reader to help me locate interesting blog entries, news articles, law review articles, etc. I subscribe to slightly more than 500 different blogs, so I receive hundreds of items per day from Google Reader. I spend on average about two hours per day reviewing all of these entries.

I review each entry to determine whether it is on topic, timely, etc. If I think it is, I then highlight the title of the article and use bit.ly (a URL shortener) to generate a tweet. The tweet consists of the title of the linked article (in quotes), plus the shortened bit.ly URL. I then post the finished tweet to the appropriate Twitter account.

You may see other tweets that contain the identical title (in quotes). That means that the other Twitter user used a process similar to what I have just described. It is a fairly standard process used by Twitter users who post the same types of tweets that I do. But usually the URL will vary, depending on what URL shortener they used.

Hope that explains the process. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me directly at mdscott@swlaw.edu.

Many legal pundits start each year with an excellent series of predictions on where IT law will go during that year. I don’t want to provide a list of issues that may (or may not) be resolved in the next 12 months. Instead, I want to note an issue that II believe will be THE major IT law issue for 2010 (and for many years thereafter) — network neutrality. Read more

The newspaper industry is suffering. At least one newspaper is closing down each week in the United States, and this trend is likely to continue unless the industry makes some radical changes in their way of thinking. Unfortunately, those who control most of the newspapers in the United States just don’t get it. These publishers seem to think that all of their problems are due to the Internet, and in particular to Google.
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A few days from now I will be co-chairing a conference on “clean tech law.” Many people who have known me for years have been curious as to why I would be organizing a conference in a “new” area of law. The fact is that while clean technology (solar, wind, biofuels) is a new area of technology, much of the law that applies to this area is not new at all. Read more

I will be co-chairing an exciting, one-day conference at Southwestern Law School (Los Angeles) on Friday, September 18th on Cleantech Law and Policy.

The program will be divided into four panel discussions addressing a variety of topics, including:

1. The New Government Energy Policies and CleanTech’s Opportunities: Incentives and Market Drivers

2. Learning from the World’s Renewable Energy Leaders

3. Clean Technology Innovation and Protection (focusing on cleantech patents, licensing and tech transfer)

4. Financing Clean Technologies

The keynote speech will be given by Ted Flanigan, President, EcoMotion, Irvine, CA

More detailed information on the event, as well as a copy of the conference brochure, is available here.

The cost for the entire event is only $195 (early bird discount) and 5 CLE credit hours are available. (Space is limited to 95 attendees, so early registration is advised.) Online registration is available here.

I look forward to seeing you and your colleagues at the Summit. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at mdscott@swlaw.edu.

Just slightly less than two years ago, a number of volunteers launched the IT Law Wiki. Their intent was to develop a comprehensive encyclopedia of materials relating to the burgeoning field of information technology law.

The IT Law Wiki has reached an important milestone with the posting of its 5000th article. We are grateful to all of the lawyers, law students and law professors who have contributed to the wiki.

While the work done thus far has been impressive, there is much more to be done. Read more

When I began practicing in the field of computer law (a quaint term today), a good computer lawyer had to know contract law, and some tax law — and that was pretty much all. Patents were available for hardware, but not software; the Copyright Office still had its doubts about the copyrightability of computer programs; and privacy issues were pretty much limited to federally-owned computer systems under the Privacy Act of 1974.

The first ten years of my practice saw a need to learn copyright law, while the second ten years required a working knowledge of patent and trademark law, and some privacy law, with a little international trade law thrown in for good measure (including U.S. export control laws and regulations). It was also the time when state and federal legislators were beginning to craft a specialized field of computer crime laws.
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