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Wex

Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute recently launched WEX, "a collaboratively built, freely available legal dictionary and encyclopedia." Sounds peachy. What is it? According to an email which has been circulating from the Tom Bruce, Director of the LII [who kindly gave me permission to quote]:

At the risk of sounding a little more diffident than perhaps I should, I'll say that we've just put something sorta new and very interesting on the LII site. It's called WEX, and we are hoping that it will grow into a very ambitious and interesting project indeed -- interesting and ambitious enough that we should be trumpeting it from the housetops, I suppose, but for the moment we're confining ourselves to low-key conversations with our friends and supporters. Hence this note.
WEX . . . will be the first collaboratively edited legal encyclopedia and dictionary on the web, aimed specifically at law novices.

I referred to it as "sorta new" because, as matters stand, most of its articles and definitions are things we developed for the Law about... pages that many of you know. WEX also incorporates some smaller lexicons and other reference material we've worked up over the years. So for the moment, it's mostly old wine in new bottles. It's the new form of the container that's exciting. We've noticed a lot of interesting synergies that come simply from putting all of this material in one densely-interlinked place. And the software that stores and presents the information also allows us to (easily) invite others to collaborate with us in creating new articles and definitions and other explanatory material. This will allow us to make WEX far wider and deeper than we would be able to if it were just the five of us working on it . . . .
Some of you will recognize this as an effort that is similar to Wikipedia (and indeed we use the same underlying software, with some modifications). For reasons I won't take time to explain in this note . . . we've opted not to follow Wikipedia's wide-open approach to collaboration. We believe it creates many quality-control issues, so instead we are opting to work with a vetted pool of volunteers. I hope that many of you will seek to join us -- we have a lot to teach each other. . . .

I explored the Wiki issue more with Tom, and he said that the hope is that Wex will avoid the problem of a completely invited pool of authors (small coverage) and the truly random selection of Wiki. He continued:

[This is part of a] deliberate decision to blur the lines between dictionary, glossary, encyclopedia, and fact-pattern-to-formal-concept-translator. We have always believed that at least a part of our job as aggregators of legal information on the Net is simply to provide opportunities for self-education. At the end of the day that probably makes us closer in spirit to those who launched the 19th-century public library movement than we are to formal encyclopedists. And part of the idea of Wex is that if you densely interconnect a series of intellectual entry points you create a kind of critical mass for learning. In that sense Wex is more of a teaching tool than it is a codification of legal knowledge, and frankly I'm hoping it will put on display a whole lot of definitional and introductory material that's kept in the desk drawers of law teachers and hauled out once a year in the first few days of a class.

A question I am still left with is why would people with "specialized expertise in law" use their time to publish (currently anonymous) entries? Such folks have significant time-constraints, and presumably Wex is competing with, say, blogging, writing editorials, writing paid encyclopedia entries, and (most of all) writing scholarship. Wex doesn't seem to allow for named authorship, and explicitly discourages authors who wish to "to advertise their expertise for commercial reasons, or who have some political or intellectual axe to grind." So, you can't brag about yourself, push your pet theory, make money, or get explicit credit. What economic theory would then explain posting on Wex? Or, as I sometimes ask my students, WWPS [What Would Posner Say?]
Regardless, a very interesting new project, that will only get better as they integrate more content. [My first suggestion: pull in Larry Solum's Legal Theory Lexicon.]
Go check it out.

Posted by hoffman at 08:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

What's worse than an Imaginary girlfriend?

How about a scam date who's creates the illusion that your subscribtion to paid dating sites is succeeding?

A lawsuit was filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by plaintiff Matthew Evans, who contends he went out with a woman he met through the site who turned out to be nothing more than "date bait" working for the company.

The relationship went nowhere, according to his suit. Evans says Match set up the date for him because it wanted to keep him from pulling the plug on his subscription and was hoping he'd tell other potential members about the attractive woman he met through the service.

On the one hand, this business practice seems clearly wrong. On the other hand, it raises the question of just what these paid subscribers are entitled to. There's no guarantee that they'll meet someone they like, fall in love, and live happily ever after, is there? Are they entitled to genuine "market reactions" to their datability -- whatever those reactions might be?

Follow up questions include: Would a single "real" bad date really be better than two or three pleasant enough "fake" dates? Is this really so much worse than "real" dating using a paid "wingman"? And is Match.com's sham date worse than going on a "real" date because one's parents or friends pester one to do so, rather than out of actual romantic interest in the person dated? The ethical boundaries here seem to be not so clearly defined.

Posted by Kaimipono at 04:22 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Froomkin's U.S. Constitution Quiz

Over at Discourse.net, Michael Froomkin (law, Miami) has an interesting quiz about the U.S. Constitution. Sample questions:

Could Congress constitutionally abolish the entire armed forces and the Pentagon, leaving the nation defenseless?

May Congress pass secret laws? If so, may (must?) the courts enforce them?

Is there anything in the first seven articles of the Constitution that prevents the federal government from awarding you a $1 million personal bonus?

What is the minimum number of justices constitutionally required to form a Supreme Court?

If Congress sets out to minimize the President's powers, can it abolish his entire staff? Evict him from the White House?

Many more questions over at Discourse.net.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Does this insight apply to law professors as well?

Some years ago (I'm guessing sometime around 1997 from internal references, as historians would say), I saw in a newspaper a quote attributred to "Veteran horrormeister and Scream 2 director Wes Craven":

After you stop moaning about being stereotyped as a horror guy, you can say, "I'm employed doing interesting movies that can be called, in some sense, auteur work. Nobody's telling me what to do, I have final cut and there's virtually no limitation except my imagination, and I have to stay within a certain subject matter. But you can put as much comedy as you want in the movie, as much romance or philosophy; anything, as long as you scare the bejesus out of people six or 10 times."

Apparently Craven really means that stuff about philosophy, because his website describes his 2005 movie Cursed as a "postmodern approach to the werewolf genre." The description on his website continues,

One of the unique aspects of Cursed is that it is as much a showbiz satire as it is a horror film: Ellie works for a talk show, which allows for plenty of barbed jibes at television and cameos by the likes of Craig Kilborn and Scott Baio. It's also probably the only horror film that has ever depicted a werewolf giving someone 'the finger.' That said, Craven never forgets to deliver the scary goods: highlights include the opening attack sequence – in which a werewolf exploits the opportunity of a young woman being trapped in a car wreck – and a tense finale that takes place in a horror movie-themed nightclub.

Thus, you see Mr. Craven continues to deliver the scary stuff. There is something to this horror-movie as vehicle for serious social critique. Dawn of the Dead is a transparent criqiue of 1970s consumer culture. In fact, it's so transparent it sort of isn't effective (in my mind). I prefer the nineteenth-century gothic novel for horror-story as critique of society over contemporary movies. (My favorite in that genre is Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.)

Based on Craven's recent work, the collaborative Paris, Je T'aime, it appears that you sometimes can do real work and not even have to scare the bejesus out of people.

The question remains whether Mr. Craven's insight has any relation to what happens in a law school class? I discussed the quotation with my colleagues at the time, at least one of whom thought that there was a fairly direct connection between law faculty and the scaring the bejesus out of people. Another saw a more distant analogy--we as law faculty have a lot of discretion to teach what we're interested in (jurisprudence, socioeconomics, whatever) so long as we teach some of what the students came here for (practical skills). Along those lines, consider the person in the picture on the right. I think he was mostly interested in scaring the bejesus out of people.

Finally, perhaps this is the place to ask the question, which I've had for a while: is Wes Craven, horrormeister, any relation to Wesley Frank Craven, distinguished New York University historian? (By the way, readers of Dan Solove's post on courthouse architure may be interested in the beautiful pictures of courthouses from seventeenth-century Virginia in Craven's book.)

Posted by Alfred_Brophy at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

More New Courthouse Architecture

I previously blogged about new courthouse architecture and old courthouse architecture. I have a few more leftover pictures of new courthouse architecture, so here they are:

Related Posts:
1. Solove, New Courthouse Architecture
2. Solove, Old Courthouse Architecture

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:33 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

No bull

You may want to call your attorney all sorts of names. But whatever you do, don't call him a pit bull. That kind of characterization would "demean all lawyers and thereby harm both the legal profession and the public's trust and confidence in our system of justice." Thus writes the Florida Supreme Court.

Now had Harriet Miers been confirmed as a Justice, surely she would have intervened and set those Floridians straight. She is, after all, a "pit bull in size six shoes" herself. So said her hero and boss, George W. Bush.

Who, come to think of it, owes his job to the Florida Supreme Court.

Which just said that you can't refer to lawyers as pit bulls.

Posted by Kaimipono at 01:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Is Anonymous Blogging Possible?

Howard Bashman at How Appealing muses whether anonymous blogging is really possible:

These days, however, most users of the internet understand that every bit of information communicated electronically leaves electronic fingerprints that can be used to trace the source of the information, even if the source hoped to remain anonymous. To be sure, there are ways to anonymize emails and other forms of communication, but they tend to be complicated to use and difficult to figure out. . . .

I doubt whether anonymous blogging is possible. It surely isn't possible if the blogger conducts email correspondence with others and fails to mask his or her internet protocol address. Plus, even the act of logging on to a blogging service provider, such as TypePad or blogger, leaves electronic fingerprints, and I'd have to assume that "UTR" had a TypePad subscription, enabling someone to subpoena the blog owner's identity and/or payment information. So, to you anonymous bloggers out there, have fun, but don't fool yourselves into thinking that simply by not providing your identity you are doing an effective job of remaining hidden.

I generally agree that it is very difficult to blog anonymously, but it is certainly possible if a person is careful.

First, the term "anonymous" is often used as a catch-all term that refers to many things, such as psedonymous blogging. To be more precise, there's (1) anonymous blogging (no name or identifier attached); and (2) pseudonymous blogging (using a pen name, such as A3G). It is hard to have an anonymous blog since it depends upon having a stable existence -- and hence the blog itself becomes the pseudonymn -- so perhaps the only real anonymity is when people post anonymous comments. Beyond anonymity and pseudonymity, there's the issue of linkability. To what extent can a person's anonymous or pseudonymous postings be linked to their true identity? This is what Bashman is referring to in his post.

Of course, there are some limited legal protections for the anonymous blogger from being unmasked in a lawsuit or by the government, but these protections are limited. What Bashman is referring to, however, is whether it is possible to blog in a way so as to never be linked to one's blog.

Here's one possible relatively easy way to blog anonymously (in the sense of not having one's true identity linkable to one's blog): A person can sign up for a free account on Google's Blogger, having only to provide an email address as a contact point.

For the contact email, a person could establish a Yahoo email account which anybody can readily establish from anywhere. If a person is careful to not use any computer that she can be linked to, she might be able to pull off anonymous blogging. A person could just move around to various coffee shops, schools, apartment buildings, and other places with unsecure WiFi connections and connect wirelessly to their networks. Of course, this would probably mean not being able to blog while at work . . . which I'm sure absolutely nobody does . . .

I am by no means an expert on the technical issues involved here, so I would welcome the comments of those with greater expertise. Would the above way of blogging (if done carefully) prevent a person from being linked to her blog?

For more on blogging anonymously, see the EFF manual, How to Blog Safely.

Related Posts:
1. Solove, Article III Groupie Groupie
2. Solove, The Mysterious Disappearance of Article III Groupie
3. Solove, Article III Groupie Disrobed: Thoughts on Blogging and Anonymity
4. Solove, The Blog Impersonators
5. Solove, A Victory for Anonymous Blogging

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:07 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Is this right?

A refrain I sometimes hear is that "there are no conservative organizations for law students, except for the Federalist Society." For one recent example of this, see this comment at Confirm Them:

Most law schools (I went to a top 25 school) have a large, strong liberal activist groups which include the ACLU groups, Gay-Transgender groups, Environmental Groups, American Constitution Society (the anti-Federalist Society), and various "Human Rights" groups. The ONLY conservative group on most law campuses is maybe the Federalist Society and a Republican group here or there.

I don't think this is correct, based on my own observation. At Columbia when I attended, there was a number of conservative or conservative-leaning student organizations: Christian law student society, Catholic law student society, LDS (Mormon) law student society, pro-life organization (Coalition for Life), plus the Republican student organization and the FedSoc. And I may be forgetting one or two. In any case, there's at least six conservative organizations at that bastion of conservative thought Columbia University.

My current employer is Thomas Jefferson law school. It's a school that an observer would almost certainly characterize as leaning left. Again, there is more than the FedSoc. TJSL has a Republican group, a Christian law student society, and the FedSoc; it also has an LDS law student society in the process of organization. (I know, because I'm their faculty advisor).

Over the tiny sample size that I'm particularly familiar with, the accusation that the FedSoc is the only conservative organization on campus is quite clearly not true. But perhaps my own lack of data is hindering me here. Are there any schools where the FedSoc is truly the only conservative voice on campus?

(Note -- The broader argument -- that left-leaning student organizations outnumber right-leaning organizations -- is true at both of the schools with which I'm familiar, and I see no reason to believe it's not true in many other schools. I'm speaking to the particular statement, which to me seems hyperbole, that the FedSoc is the only conservative organization at law schools.)

Posted by Kaimipono at 10:19 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Journalist Privilege and Law Enforcement Leaks

In a very interesting case, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer recently held a Washington Post reporter in contempt of court for not revealing the source of a leak in the investigation of Wen Ho Lee. [Click here for the court's opinion.] The case involves a civil suit by Lee against a number of federal agencies for violating the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. Lee was a scientist employed by the Department of Energy and was being investigated by the FBI for espionage for China. Ultimately, the espionage case collapsed and Lee pled guilty to one count of mishandling computer files.

During the investigation, Washington Post journalist Walter Pincus published a few articles about the Lee investigation, identifying him by name and discussing extensive details of the investigation, including "his and his wife’s employment histories, their financial transactions, details about their trips to Hong Kong and China, details concerning the Government investigation and interrogation, and purported results from polygraph tests." Pincus indicated that anonymous government sources supplied him with the information.

Lee has sued the government for violating the Privacy Act, which prohibits government agencies (including the FBI) from disclosing records about an individual. Lee sought from Pincus who his sources were. Pincus raised the journalist privilege, claiming he should be sheilded from being forced to disclose.

In Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment did not “grant newsmen a testimonial privilege that other citizens do not enjoy.” Lower courts, however, nevertheless adopted a qualified journalist privilege. In the D.C. Circuit, where the Lee case is being litigated, the privilege applies except if (1) the reporter’s information is central to the plaintiff’s case; and (2) the plaintiff has exercised all reasonable alternatives to obtain the information elsewhere. The court in the Lee case found that both these elements were satisfied, and that therefore, Pincus did not have the privilege and had to disclose.

I blogged about this issue with regard to the Judith Miller and Valerie Plame case at Balkinization, and I’ve reproduced the post here. Basically, I argued that there should be a journalist privilege and it should apply whenever the leak is in the public interest. I used this test to separate cases of government whistleblowing (such as the Pentagon Papers), where the leaks serve the greater public interest, and cases like the leak of Plame being a CIA agent, which do not serve the public interest.

The public interest test would alter the analysis in the Lee case. The court's test in the Lee case turns on the plaintiff's need for the information; the public interest test looks at society's interest in protecting journalists and promoting or discouraging certain kinds of leaks.

Of course, the criticism of a public interest for the privilege is that it leaves a lot to the discretion of the court. However, an absolute rule one way or the other (an absolute privilege or no privilege at all) would run into several problems. One could deny the journalist privilege entirely, but that could make it hard for people to whistleblow on government corruption to the media without being identified. And it places journalists in a very difficult position and could chill the reporting of important news stories.

On the other hand, an absolute privilege also runs into problems. First of all, who is a journalist? Should journalists only be individuals associated with a mainstream media publication? Why can’t bloggers be journalists? Why can’t anybody who writes for a public audience? I believe that there is no reasonable basis to distinguish mainstream media journalists from bloggers for the purpose of privilege. But this, however, creates a problem -- the privilege might grow too large and might cover too many people, thus preventing a lot of important evidence gathering in both civil and criminal cases.

Second, there are instances where we want to ferret out and stop leaks. The Valerie Plame leak was a criminal act done in petty vindictiveness. Do we really want to create a rule that protects government officials who wrongfully leak to the media from being brought to justice?

In my post about the Plame case, I applied my public interest test to conclude that the Plame leak should not be protected by the privilege since the leak wasn't in the public interest.

If we were to adopt my public interest test, however, the Wen Ho Lee case remains very difficult. As the court in the Wen Ho Lee case stated:

To accept Mr. Pincus’s argument that he is protected by privilege from revealing whether Government officials illegally leaked information about Dr. Lee would undermine the fundamental purpose of the Privacy Act. Congress has provided a private right of action for individuals who are harmed by a Government agency’s improper disclosure of confidential records. Accordingly, the law expressly discourages the kind of leaks that are at issue in this action.

Government investigations frequently have leaks, and these leaks can be extremely harmful to the subject of an investigation, who is not formally accused of any crime. The result of leaks is that subjects of investigations get tried in the media and often harassed -- long before investigators can determine whether there’s really any case against them. Leaks such as this should be stamped out, but they can’t be unless there’s a way to investigate them.

Leaks in the course of government investigations that violate the Privacy Act are not in the public interest, and would not justify the privilege. I come to this conclusion reluctantly, however, as there are no easy answers to the issue of when journalist privilege should apply.

Related Posts:
1. Solove, Journalist Privilege and the Valerie Plame Case

Hat tip: Bashman

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A frightening idea

From a message to a conservative e-mail listserv:

I just received a suggestion from [name redacted] that Judge Roy Moore be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. What a great idea. Let's all call President Bush and our congressmen, representatives and senators, supporting this suggestion.

It's hard to think of a worse candidate. Whatever one thinks of Alito, Roberts, Souter, Scalia, Thomas, Ginsberg, Breyer, whoever -- and I disagree with much about the politics Alito, and with various decisions and statements of each of the Justices -- at least it's clear that they all share a basic understanding of how the rule of law operates.

The same cannot be said for Moore.

Posted by Kaimipono at 12:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Weird Searches for Our Blog

I recently blogged about where hits to our blog come from, and one of the major sources of hits to a blog are searches via Google and other search engines. In our site meter stats, you can see what search terms people use to visit our blog. I’ve looked at these on occasion, curious about what brings people to our blog.

Most of the very common search terms are obvious –- “opinions,” “concurring,” “law,” “legislating,” and “paparazzi.” But then there’s also “naked” and “celebrity” –- we have Kaimi to thank for that, as he posted a post entitled “Naked celebrities make the best magazine covers” about a ranking of the best magazine covers of the past 40 years, with the nude John Lennon and nude Demi Moore covers as #1 and #2 respectively.

Here are some of the more interesting searches I discovered:

SEARCH: Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket

            I have no idea what this is possibly about or how it led a reader to our blog.

SEARCH: aals meat  

            This one’s my fault – I posted on the AALS meat market.

SEARCH: chemical changes that of apple without a peep  

            Huh?

SEARCH: peep shows  

My fault – I named a post Airline X-Ray Peep Shows.

SEARCH: FREE NAKED PEEP SHOWS 

I’m certain that this person was very disappointed upon learning my post was about airline screening X-rays.

SEARCH: Unbeknown to you the sun has jumped the gun  

            Totally baffling!

SEARCH: humorous curses  

            I have no idea what post this linked to, but perhaps I don’t want to know . . .

SEARCH: rev. david hoffman  

            I learn new things about my co-bloggers every day.

SEARCH: genetic diseases for idiots  

            Speechless.

SEARCH: nozick rawls organ donors  

I don’t think that getting organs from either Nozick or Rawls at this point would be a good idea.

SEARCH: Society shuffle of paperwork Nietzsche  

            Not a clue what this is about.

SEARCH: STUPID QUOTES FROM LIBERALS

            There’s no such thing.

SEARCH: naked celebrities

This is a popular search, and it has yielded around 40 hits.  Kaimi’s post on magazine covers sure is popular.  But I bet that there are many disappointed web surfers out there who are cursing you, Kaimi.

SEARCH: celebriti nude 

We keep getting searches with this misspelling of celebrity.  It’s nice to know we pull up on this search too!  Way to go Kaimi!  

SEARCH: 30 second movie parodies with bunnies star wars

            Star Wars meets Hugh Hefner?    

SEARCH: how the constitution be best interpreted 

            Yes – our blog is the authoritative source on this question.     

SEARCH: Paparazzi sometimes go to far. They invade total privacy and tell things that should only be kept to the famous.  

I find this search strangely amusing. 

SEARCH: wacky words and wacky facts  

Wacky search. 

SEARCH: play demented and twisted games 

            This search pulls up our blog?  Yikes!

SEARCH: life of a junkie  

            Time to quit . . . looking for weird searches, that is. . .

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:26 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Is Anybody Out There? Assessing a Blog's Audience

Hello? Is anybody out there? Who are you? These are the questions that often go through a blogger’s mind. Hardly anybody wants to blog to nobody. As one blogger once wrote: “Maintaining a blog with no one visiting or commenting would be [as] sad as a clown doing a show with no one watching.”

I’ve often wondered who our readers are. That’s right – you. I’m writing this blog post to you . . . and I might not even know who you are. Some of you comment a lot, and we’re very grateful, since the comments on this blog have been absolutely wonderful. But we have many readers who don’t add comments. Who are the readers who lurk in the shadows? Is anybody reading? How does one find out?

The best answers thus far are supplied by Site Meter, which tracks IP addresses visiting the blog. I’ve become obsessed with Site Meter, seeing who is coming in, whether they’re from government or academia or somewhere else. We have visitors from over 70 countries, with the most coming from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Israel. We also have visitors from Qatar, Belarus, Papua New Guinea, Togo, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malta, and Tanzania.

Site Meter doesn't do a great job of telling us much more about who is visiting, but it at least gives us a head count. The numbers, however, perplex me. Do blogs with thousands of visitors a day really have a readership of thousands? Site Meter doesn’t lie, right?

Repeat Visitors: Site Meter “defines a ‘visit’ as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views.” This means that if you visit Concurring Opinions and then visit again 10 minutes later, you only count as 1 visitor or “hit.” But if you visit again more than 30 minutes later, you count as a new visit. This gives us credit for drawing you back later on in the day to read us again, and it prevents gaming the system. But this means that many of our hits could be from repeat players who check our blog many times throughout the day . . . which you should do, by the way, as we’re constantly creating new content during the day and we love our readers who generate 10+ hits per day for us the most!

Bots: Then there are bots that regularly hit the website. Bots are software programs that explore the web gathering information. Search engine bots, for example, such as from Google, will register some hits.

Spammers: There are also hits from spammers who leave comment spam and trackback spam. Most of these hits are by bots too.

Google Search Hits: Then there are those who find the blog via Google searches (or those with other search engines). In our logs, for example, we can see the search terms people used to access our site.

These Google hits count as visitors, and we get a decent amount of Google search traffic. I think that these visitors to the site certainly count, but many are not the blog’s regular readership. Many are “one hit wonders” who visit once and never come back again.

Over at Conglomerate, they get a ton of hits from Europe for “Google’s Heart” because of one post with that title. Gordon Smith pointed this out in a post and expressed great puzzlement over it. But more importantly, does Google have a heart?

PrawfsBlawg got a visitor for the search term “self cannibalizing.” I’m not sure which is scarier: the visitor who would search for such a thing or the PrawfsBlawg bloggers who must have written something that pulled up the blog in the search results!

Should these count toward audience? After all, the people searching for these terms are visiting the blog. But many are not regular readers -- they're not part of the blog's community.

RSS Feed Readers: RSS feeds take away hits to the blog. Many of our readers use RSS feeds. This means that they can read the full content of our blog without registering a hit on our website unless they click to read the comments to a post. If these readers would ordinarily check our blog a few times a day without the convenience of the RSS feed, it means hundreds of visits that are not being counted. [So RSS readers -- if you like a post you read, click through to give us a hit -- think of it like giving us a high five.]

Weekly Readers: Not everybody visits several times a day. Some people will visit once a week or even less frequently. In contrast, some readers check the blog multiple times per day, seven days per week. [Yes, we love these readers!] A multiple-hit reader might register 20 to 40 hits per week; a weekly reader registers 1 hit. Yet each might be reading our content equally.

I’m no expert in all of this, so I’m curious what more knowledgeable readers might have to add.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:02 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Orin Kerr on the USA Patriot Act Compromise

My colleague Orin Kerr has gone through the nearly 100 pages of statutory text of the new USA Patriot Act renewal compromise bill. He offers his tentative conclusions here. The bill makes changes in Section 215 Orders, National Security Letters, and Sneak and Peek Warrants. Basically the changes are more recordkeeping and more judicial review -- both laudable improvements. There are, however, many other problems in the USA Patriot Act as well as in the underlying electronic surveillance laws that still remain. Check out Kerr's analysis, which is insightful and intelligent as usual. You could, of course, read the almost 100 pages of statutory code yourself, but I'm sure you've got a life. Thank goodness there are folks like Kerr to do it for us. That's why we keep him around.

Related Posts:
1. Solove, National Security Letters
2. Solove, More on National Security Letters
3. Solove, The USA Patriot Act: A Fraction of the Problem

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I wonder what Dan Markel thinks of this

Private use of shaming punishments:

Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

I suspect that many of the same arguments apply here that might be used against state shaming punishments. (For some of them, see Dan's paper).

On the other hand, it sounds awfully effective. Perhaps I should write up a proposal for the next faculty meeting suggesting that we implement this. A few students marching in front of the library wearing "I didn't do the reading" sandwich boards would go a long way towards improving class participation, no?

Posted by Kaimipono at 08:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Rocks, SOX, and roundhouse kicks

As all securities lawyers know, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act introduced new provisions relating to codes of ethics. Section 406 of the Act requires that companies disclose whether they have a code of ethics for their senior financial officers, and if not, the reason why not. This has led many companies to adopt codes of ethics.

I don't think that the market has realized how simple this requirement actually is. As with most other areas of life, the best course here is simply to follow the guidance of Chuck Norris. To make this easier, Chuck has provided a clear list of "Chuck's Code of Ethics." (link via sharp-eyed reader Steve Evans). A company simply needs to adopt the list wholesale, and it can't go wrong.

What does Chuck's code provide? A few highlights:

"I will develop myself to the maximum of my potential in all ways.

I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements.

I will always be in a positive frame of mind and convey this feeling to every person that I meet. . ."

Does Chuck's code meet the requirements of Item 406 of Reg S-K? You might as well ask, "Does Chuck Norris have a beard?"

It's true that, on the face of it, there may seem to be a few potential inconsistencies between Chuck's list and the SEC's.

For example, does the SEC need to approve "remaining goal-oriented throughout my life" as a business plan? Would an issuer need to provide a prospectus with risk factors for that? (And if the issuer fails to remain goal-oriented, is that a material misstatement? Or is it puffery? Or a forward-looking statement?)

Also, potential tensions could arise between the internal controls established under 404, and Chuck's suggestion that "I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements." (On the other hand, a roundhouse kick is a pretty darn effective system of internal controls!) In addition, regulators might be concerned that "always be as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own" could lead to anticompetitive practices.

However, it seems like the biggest concern is the potential disclosure effects of "if I have nothing good to say about a person, I will say nothing." Chuck's code of ethics, it seems, is not exactly in compliance with 10b-5. Oops.

Happily, all of these questions are easily resolved. After all, as the very useful and informative "Facts about Chuck Norris" website* notes, "When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever."

A similar strategy would no doubt work with the SEC. Simply fax over a photo of Chuck in response to SEC comment letters. And viola -- no further comments! (Talk about a no-action letter!) The SEC is powerful, to be sure, but even Christopher Cox knows his limits. He's not going to tempt fate by messing with Chuck's code of ethics. The roundhouse kick is the ultimate ethical trump card.

---

*Note: The "Facts" site (which is text-only) may not be work-safe, depending on how strict your employer is.

Posted by Kaimipono at 06:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

David Giacalone on the FTC's Price Gouging Statement

David Giacalone has a nice new post up about the FTC's recent position statement against a federal price gouging law. I had missed this development last week.

According the FTC's chairperson, "[e]nforcement of the antitrust laws is the better way to protect consumers."

As a first take, I think I agree that there is no pressing need for yet more federal regulation of economic activity, especially where states are both capable, and in this case motivated, to take care of the "problem" themselves. This is particularly true in this context, where the harms attributed to price gouging are localized and fleeting.

Posted by hoffman at 05:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Article III Groupie Groupie

Howard Bashman has yet more on A3G here, here, and here. If he keeps up this pace of blogging about A3G, I'm going to nickname Bashman "Article III Groupie Groupie." And the story has now made the New York Times.

Hat tip: ECPA Groupie

Related Posts:
1. Solove, Article III Groupie Disrobed: Thoughts on Blogging and Anonymity
2. Solove, The Mysterious Disappearance of Article III Groupie

Posted by Daniel Solove at 01:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Does Anything Really Disappear from the Internet?

I just posted about the Wayback Machine and that got me wondering whether anything really disappears from the Internet when it is deleted. Certainly, a ton gets archived in the Wayback Machine as well as in Google cache and in RSS readers. Of course, if something appears on the Internet, somebody could see it and copy it before it gets taken down.

But I was wondering to what extent information can vanish completely from the Internet. Thus, if a blogger posts something and then deletes it a minute later, can it escape from permanent fame? Maybe some ill-fated performances might be so brief that they can sneak on and off the Internet without being caught. What about a comment to a blog post that gets zapped quickly by the blog author? Can this escape becoming part of some permanent record?

The question, put another way: Can something posted briefly on the Internet, seen and heard by hardly anyone, not snatched up by anybody, and then deleted, be gone forever? Is there an Internet equivalent to a tree falling in the forest that nobody hears?

I don't know the answer to this question, and I would like to hear from those with more technical expertise.

UPDATE: People with expertise have answered, and their replies are worth checking out if you're interested in the issue.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:10 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

What's On the Net Stays on the Net: Thoughts on the Wayback Machine

Steve Vladeck (law, Miami) visiting at PrawfsBlawg tells an interesting anecdote about the Internet Archive, otherwise known as the "Wayback Machine." Steve writes about a student who discovered his childhood pictures:

Well, apparently that cute idea I had for a webpage when I was a freshman in college, including the fun pictures page, didn't die quite the fiery death I had hoped for it upon graduating (or, to be more honest, one month after last updating it in the fall of my sophomore year).

So, new law prawfs, beware!! If there's a cute, funny webpage all about you from somewhere out there in the Internet ether, your students will find it... what they do with it, well, I'm just glad I kept some of the college photos off the page.

Sobering thoughts for any blogger before clicking on the "publish" button.

According to the Wayback Machine's FAQ:

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains approximately 1 petabyte of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. If you tried to place the entire contents of the archive onto floppy disks (we don't recommend this!) and laid them end to end, it would stretch from New York, past Los Angeles, and halfway to Hawaii.

A few other facts about the Wayback Machine:

Sites are usually crawled within 24 hours and no more then 48. Right now there is a 6-12 month lag between the date a site is crawled and the date it appears in the Wayback Machine. . . .

If a site owner properly requests removal of a Web site through http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php, we will exclude that site from the Wayback Machine.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

I don't know why Jack Chin says Goodbye; the Virginia Legislature Says Hello

In a recent issue of Constitutional Commentary, Gabriel J. Chin has a very thoughtful article, “Jim Crow’s Long Goodbye,” [21 Constitutional Commentary 107 (2004)]. I applaud Professor Chin’s research, which measures vestiges of the Jim Crow era in education, primarily through a study of statutes left on the books, which are now largely unenforced. Such statutes, for instance, provided for public financing of segregation academies. While the statutes are now largely symbolic, Chin identified several that have some continuing impact on state budgets. Alabama and Mississippi both allow teachers at private schools to join the teachers’ retirement system.

Chin is correct that in order to understand the appropriate legal and legislative response to Jim Crow we must have accurate data on its extent and continuing impact.

I don’t know why Professor Chin says goodbye; the Virginia legislature says hello. Well, hello, at least, to funding the memory of the Confederacy. The Virginia Code, § 10.1-2211, provides for a modest grant ($5 per grave per year) to be administered by the United Daughters of the Confederacy for the maintenance of graves of Confederate soldiers.

State funding for cemeteries is appropriate, in my opinion. We ought to remember our ancestors and preserve their places of repose. So funding for the graves of Revolutionary War soldiers, which the legislature began to do in 2002, is appropriate. Va. Code § 10.1-2211.1. Civil War cemeteries (and in an earlier era pensions for Civil War veterans) pose particular questions, however. For in the years after the war, as the nation struggled to reunite itself, cemeteries and the seemingly ubiquitous public monuments in both north and south were places where the memory of suffering at the hands of the former enemy was kept alive and where the place of slavery in the war was forgotten. The understanding of the war in both North and South become one of Southerners fighting honorably for preservation of their homeland and for a cause they honestly (if mistakenly) believed to be just.

In July 1913, fifty years after the battle of Gettysburg, veterans north and south gathered to celebrate the anniversary. The Gettysburg reunion was a great act of national unity and of national forgetting.

Providing public funds for pensions to those who suffered during the war and for monuments is naturally divisive. In the years after the war, as the Union provided its veterans pensions, the struggling southern states were left to provide meager pensions for their veterans. Many will likely agree with the federal government’s policy of providing funding only for Union veterans; however, the policy caused hard feelings in southern states. The problem with Virginia’s action today is that it, similarly, provides funding for one group. It remembers and honors those who fought, among other purposes, to maintain the system of slavery. Virginia also should provide money to maintain the graves of slaves, which also dot the countryside.

Yet, the study of the vestiges of Jim Crow education leads naturally to a broader investigation of the vestiges of Jim Crow (the system of racial violence and of segregated schools, housing, public accommodations, and even segregated memory). We should count legislative action that contributes to that segregated memory as one of those vestiges, particularly because the funding for confederate cemeteries began in 1950, as legislatures were looking for ways to shore up Jim Crow.

The amount of money provided by the Virginia legislature to care for Confederate cemeteries is small. But the statement it makes, about the memory of the war, is not so insignificant. In our world symbols are important. As Ralph Ellison reminds us, “Since the Civil War . . . symbolic action has served as a moral substitute for armed, warfare, and we have managed to restrain ourselves to a debate which we carry on in the not always justified faith that the outcome will serve the larger interests of democracy.” The preservation of cemeteries is a worthy and noble cause. I hope that we will consider the inequities in funding some cemeteries and not others.

The picture is from the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Suffolk, Virginia. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that one of my hobbies is visiting cemeteries, and one of my areas of interest is cemetery law. Maybe in the spirit (ha, ha) of Ann Althouse's pictures of Madison, I'll post some pictures of my favorities cemeteries, like Tuscaloosa's Greenwood Cemetery.

Posted by Alfred_Brophy at 08:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

More on National Security Letters

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has a post about National Security Letters (NSLs) with comments by Michael J. Woods, former chief of the National Security Law Unit in the FBI. Woods was quoted in a recent Washington Post story that provided extensive information about NSLs. Check out Orin's post, which quotes from an email Woods sent in response to Orin's request for further comments.

Related Posts:
1. Solove, National Security Letters
2. Solove, The USA Patriot Act: A Fraction of the Problem

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fortune on Alito's "Pro-Business Record"

Marc Gunther of Fortune Magazine has written a great new article discussing Judge Alito's record as a "pro-business" jurist.

[Self promotion alert: The article quotes yours truly, along with Larry Ribstein and Cass Sunstein, on Alito's record.]

Posted by hoffman at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Top 10 Tips to Protect Your Privacy

Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's West Coast Office has posted a list of the "top 10 things you can do with very little money or effort to protect your privacy." There's hardly anyone who knows more about consumer privacy than Chris, so his Top 10 tips list is definitely worth checking out.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Mysterious Disappearance Article III Groupie

Having unmasked himself as Article III Groupie, David Lat has disappeared. We haven't heard a word from him. His blog is now offline. Why? What's become of David? Will his blog be back?

Howard Bashman is sleuthing out the case like Sherlock Holmes, so check out How Appealing for the latest news here, here, here, and here.

Bashman also has done some original reporting too, interviewing Judge Richard Posner, who says he feels vindicated because he thought A3G was male, and Jeffrey Toobin (the author of the New Yorker article), whose answer to practically every question is "I don't know."

Related Posts:
1. Solove, Article III Groupie Disrobed: Thoughts on Blogging and Anonymity

Posted by Daniel Solove at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Unauthorized Practice on Craigslist?

I was recently browsing Craigslist's Legal Forum. On that forum, folks post legal problems and others answer them. Some of the answering posters identify as lawyers, but do not provide their names.

The forum describes itself as follows:

res ipsa loquitur

DISCLAIMER - craigslist is not responsible for, and you may not rely upon, the accuracy of any information or advice posted here - this forum is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only - you should consult with an attorney prior to acting on any information found here.

Will such boilerplate really protect CL if, say, the PA Bar were to seek an injunction again the discussion group for hosting the unauthorized practice under 42 PA C.S.A. 2524? Or if the Bar were ask the attorney general of Pennsylvania to seek criminal penalties under that section's misdemeanor provisions? I'm imagine that CL would try to avoid liability by pointing to the "Terms of Use" provisions on the page, but do such disclaimers survive a Grokster-like analysis? Maybe Dan's analysis of suing wikipedia would throw some light on this problem. I haven't been able to find much in the legal ethics literature on this problem - and some might argue that state bars have enough on their hands without investigating internet practice.

Obviously, what constitutes the practice of law is a matter for debate, and you should feel free to visit the site yourself and make your own mind up.

Posted by hoffman at 01:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Amazing Investment Opportunity!

About three weeks ago, I blogged about the silly calculator that computes the value of your blog. At the time, Concurring Opinions was worth $33,307.86. Not too shabby, but not ready to sell yet.

Out of curiosity, I checked back again and now we're worth $141,135.00. Wow! That's an increase in value of over 300% in just three weeks. We'll start selling shares soon. Dave, can you take care of the details please?

Posted by Daniel Solove at 01:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Power of the Blog: My Most Widely Read Work

This is a navel-gazing post, but it is self-deprecating, so please read on. What is my most widely read work? Is it one of the articles I wrote? Nope. My book, The Digital Person? Nope. My casebook, Information Privacy Law? Nope. None of the above.

The answer is The Airline Screening Playset: Hours of Fun!

The Airline Screening Playset: Hours of Fun! isn't a book. It's not an article. It's a blog post. And it's not a blog post about the law; nor does it have deep thoughtful musings about information privacy. Instead, it is a humor piece about the Playmobil airline screening playset.

I posted the blog post on October 11, 2005. Within just a few hours, the post got linked to at many other blogs and in countless chatrooms. Hits to the post began to pour in. I received over ten thousand hits in the first day, and the hits just kept coming afterwards. The sitemeter is on the left.

I still get many hits each day for that post. In all, based on my server's statistics, it appears that the post has received over 50,000 visits. If you add up all the sales figure