Singularity Law

When I meet people and tell them I specialize in technology law, they often assume that I must be an earlier adopter of every new geewhiz tech gadget that comes out. But I’m not. I believe in what I refer to as “appropriate technology,” that is, getting the technology you need and what is appropriate [...]

In my last post, I noted that the Internet is incredibly vulnerable to outages at various points where there is little or no redundancy. A recent event seems to indicate that global Internet vulnerability is more serious than I thought. According to news reports, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told Internet service providers within the country [...]

Two underwater telephone cables were apparently cut by a ship’s anchor near the port of Alexandria in Egypt on January 30th. According to published reports, Egypt has suffered disruption of 70% of its nationwide Internet network, while India has suffered a 60% disruption. The problem has had a significant impact on European and U.S. east [...]

I am pleased to announce that a new wiki dedicated to Information Technology Law has recently been launched. It is being hosted by the folks that operate Wikipedia and numerous other wikis, and that means that if you are familiar with Wikipedia, the ITLaw wiki will look familiar and operates in exactly the same way.
For [...]

A recent story on News.com indicates that record companies are investing in merchandising, artist management, touring and other companies to boost their slumping revenues from CD sales. Universal Music and Warner Music Group have announced investments in companies specializing in artist management and Web networking.
Whether they can successful do so is still an open [...]

Last fall I posted an entry about how a student film my son and a friend had made almost three years ago was posted by someone on YouTube and Google Video and had become somewhat of an overnight hit (despite the obvious copyright infringements by such anonymous and unconsented postings). Since May there have been [...]

Search engines are good and getting better every day. I was made aware of that fact while preparing the last blog entry on the Viacom Takedown Notices. After preparing and posting the entry I decided that I should add a couple of links to it and repost it. So I went to [...]

A controversy is currently swirling around whether a blog written by a lawyer should be subject to state rules on attorney advertising. The controversy arose in response to a proposal from a committee created by New York State’s Administrative Board of Courts, that would include “computer-accessed communications,” such as blogs, to New York’s [...]

In prior postings I have discussed the fact that law schools are beginning to respond to the needs of law firms and in-house legal departments that need law students trained in the intricacies of technology contract drafting. My law school (Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles) as well as a growing number of law schools [...]

Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self Reliance,” reprinted in Self-Reliance and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Eds. 1993). Consistency, whether foolish or not, is something that business people rely upon in making long-term decisions. Unfortunately, consistency has not been the order [...]