Archive for the ‘Movies & Television’ Category
The Hardest Thing to Predict Is the Future
posted by Derek Bambauer
SOPA and PROTECT IP are dead… for now. (They’ll be back. COICA is like a wraith inhabiting PROTECT IP.) Until then, Michelle Schusterman has a terrific graphic about the movie industry’s predictions of doom with each new technological revolution. (Ditto the music industry: the player piano, radio, CDs, the MP3 player, etc., etc.) One reason for this is that it’s difficult to predict the effects of a new communications technology. People thought we’d use the telephone to listen to concerts from afar. But another reason is that content industries see advances not as an opportunity but as a threat – a threat that they deploy IP law to combat, or at least control. And in a policy space where lawmakers don’t demand actual data on threats before acting, trumped-up assertions of job loss and revenue loss can carry the day. This puts the lie to the theory that IP owners will move to exploit new communications media, if only they are protected against infringement. We didn’t get viable Internet-based music sales until iTunes in 2003, and Spotify is the first serious streaming app (the “celestial jukebox“). Think about prior efforts like Pressplay and MusicNow, and how terrible they were. Letting the content industry design delivery models is like letting Matt Millen draft your football team.
This is why piracy is a helpful pointer: it tells us what channels consumers want to use to access content. Sometimes this is just displacement of lawful consumption, as when college students with copious disposable income download songs via BitTorrent, but sometimes it indicates an unaddressed market niche (as with me and the baseball playoffs). To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, I think a little bit of infringement now and again is a good thing. It is only when there is a viable threat in a new medium that existing players innovate – or cut deals with those who do. In that regard, even if SOPA and PROTECT IP are effective at reducing infringement, we might not want them.
Cross-posted at Info/Law.
January 31, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Posted in: Architecture, Culture, Cyberlaw, DRM, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Media Law, Movies & Television, Politics, Technology, Web 2.0
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Censorship on the March
posted by Derek Bambauer
Today, you can’t get to The Oatmeal, or Dinosaur Comics, or XKCD, or (less importantly) Wikipedia. The sites have gone dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act, America’s attempt to censor the Internet to reduce copyright infringement. This is part of a remarkable, distributed, coordinated protest effort, both online and in realspace (I saw my colleague and friend Jonathan Askin headed to protest outside the offices of Senators Charles Schumer and Kirstin Gillibrand). Many of the protesters argue that America is headed in the direction of authoritarian states such as China, Iran, and Bahrain in censoring the Net. The problem, though, is that America is not alone: most Western democracies are censoring the Internet. Britain does it for child pornography. France: hate speech. The EU is debating a proposal to allow “flagging” of objectionable content for ISPs to ban. Australia’s ISPs are engaging in pre-emptive censorship to prevent even worse legislation from passing. India wants Facebook, Google, and other online platforms to remove any content the government finds problematic.
Censorship is on the march, in democracies as well as dictatorships. With this movement we see, finally, the death of the American myth of free speech exceptionalism. We have viewed ourselves as qualitatively different – as defenders of unfettered expression. We are not. Even without SOPA and PROTECT IP, we are seizing domain names, filtering municipal wi-fi, and using funding to leverage colleges and universities to filter P2P. The reasons for American Internet censorship differ from those of France, South Korea, or China. The mechanism of restriction does not. It is time for us to be honest: America, too, censors. I think we can, and should, defend the legitimacy of our restrictions – the fight on-line and in Congress and in the media shows how we differ from China – but we need to stop pretending there is an easy line to be drawn between blocking human rights sites and blocking Rojadirecta or Dajaz1.
Cross-posted at Info/Law.
January 18, 2012 at 5:31 pm
Posted in: Advertising, Architecture, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Culture, Current Events, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Google & Search Engines, Google and Search Engines, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Media Law, Movies & Television, Politics, Technology, Web 2.0, Wiki
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The Fight For Internet Censorship
posted by Derek Bambauer
Thanks to Danielle and the CoOp crew for having me! I’m excited.
Speaking of exciting developments, it appears that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is dead, at least for now. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has said that the bill will not move forward until there is a consensus position on it, which is to say, never. Media sources credit the Obama administration’s opposition to some of the more noxious parts of SOPA, such as its DNSSEC-killing filtering provisions, and also the tech community’s efforts to raise awareness. (Techdirt’s Mike Masnick has been working overtime in reporting on SOPA; Wikipedia and Reddit are adopting a blackout to draw attention; even the New York City techies are holding a demonstration in front of the offices of Senators Kirstin Gillibrand and Charles Schumer. Schumer has been bailing water on the SOPA front after one of his staffers told a local entrepreneur that the senator supports Internet censorship. Props for candor.) I think the Obama administration’s lack of enthusiasm for the bill is important, but I suspect that a crowded legislative calendar is also playing a significant role.
Of course, the PROTECT IP Act is still floating around the Senate. It’s less worse than SOPA, in the same way that Transformers 2 is less worse than Transformers 3. (You still might want to see what else Netflix has available.) And sponsor Senator Patrick Leahy has suggested that the DNS filtering provisions of the bill be studied – after the legislation is passed. It’s much more efficient, legislatively, to regulate first and then see if it will be effective. A more cynical view is that Senator Leahy’s move is a public relations tactic designed to undercut the opposition, but no one wants to say so to his face.
I am not opposed to Internet censorship in all situations, which means I am often lonely at tech-related events. But these bills have significant flaws. They threaten to badly weaken cybersecurity, an area that is purportedly a national priority (and has been for 15 years). They claim to address a major threat to IP rightsholders despite the complete lack of data that the threat is anything other than chimerical. They provide scant procedural protections for accused infringers, and confer extraordinary power on private rightsholders – power that will, inevitably, be abused. And they reflect a significant public choice imbalance in how IP and Internet policy is made in the United States.
Surprisingly, the Obama administration has it about right: we shouldn’t reject Internet censorship as a regulatory mechanism out of hand, but we should be wary of it. This isn’t the last stage of this debate – like Wesley in The Princess Bride, SOPA-like legislation is only mostly dead. (And, if you don’t like the Obama administration’s position today, just wait a day or two.)
Cross-posted at Info/Law.
January 16, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Posted in: Architecture, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Culture, Cyber Civil Rights, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Google & Search Engines, Google and Search Engines, Intellectual Property, Media Law, Movies & Television, Politics, Technology, Web 2.0
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Stanford Law Review Online: Don’t Break the Internet
posted by Stanford Law Review
The Stanford Law Review Online has just published a piece by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post on the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. In Don’t Break the Internet, they argue that the two bills — intended to counter online copyright and trademark infringement — “share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.”
They write:
These bills, and the enforcement philosophy that underlies them, represent a dramatic retreat from this country’s tradition of leadership in supporting the free exchange of information and ideas on the Internet. At a time when many foreign governments have dramatically stepped up their efforts to censor Internet communications, these bills would incorporate into U.S. law a principle more closely associated with those repressive regimes: a right to insist on the removal of content from the global Internet, regardless of where it may have originated or be located, in service of the exigencies of domestic law.
Read the full article, Don’t Break the Internet by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post, at the Stanford Law Review Online.
Note: Corrected typo in first paragraph.
December 19, 2011 at 3:14 am
Tags: banks, credit card companies, DNS, DNS filtering, domain name seizures, domain name servers, domain names, financial institutions, Intellectual Property, Internet, internet security, internet stability, IP, IP addresses, IP rights, online advertisers, PROTECT IP Act, search engine censorship, search engines, SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, World Wide Web
Posted in: Current Events, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Google & Search Engines, Google and Search Engines, Innovation, Intellectual Property, International & Comparative Law, Law Rev (Stanford), Law School (Law Reviews), Movies & Television, Property Law, Social Network Websites
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Health Care Blues
posted by Taunya Banks
Two things happened over the past few days that caused me to think more seriously about health care reform. First, my daughter, a physician, brought me a copy of a documentary film, Vanishing Oath, by physician-filmmaker Ryan Flesher. The film looks at the lives of health care providers under the current health care system and documents the abandonment of the profession by seemingly good and dedicated physicians. The film is well-balanced but offers no suggestions about change, focusing only on the likely doctor shortage. I recommend it to anyone teaching a law and health care policy course.
Second, today I spent almost an hour on the telephone with Social Security and the Medicare Coordinator of Benefits trying to determine why I had been enrolled in both Medicare part A and B since I am still working and covered by my University’s health care plan. I did not want to be charged the $115.40 monthly premium for Medicare part B. Even though it was their mistake I still had to send a written request to Social Security asking to be dropped from Medicare part B.
Although I support universal health care provided by a single payer, this experience gives me pause. Do I really want to government in control of health care access? An Associated Press-GfK poll found that public support for comprehensive health is dropping. My concern is timely given the ongoing and fractious debate in Congress about the budget, including discussions about reform of Medicare. Further, on Wednesday President Obama is expected to propose modest changes in Medicare and Medicaid. (Please comment on his proposal.)
I agree with Princeton economist Paul Krugman that privatizing Medicare is problematic. I prefer to spend that hour on the telephone talking with a kind public servant. But I also realize that cost controls are necessary if the program in some form is to be preserved.
I a relatively affluent educated American am fearful about my access to health care and physicians in retirement and the future of Medicare. Barring some health catastrophe, I will survive, but I cannot image what the majority of Americans will do if needed reform substantially undercuts these benefits.
April 12, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Posted in: Health Law, Movies & Television, Uncategorized
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Mad Glee-actica: The Virtues of Extreme Recycling
posted by Jonathan Lipson
I don’t watch much TV. So, I am hardly the person to make strong claims about its quality or trends. That said, I find it fascinating that three of the best shows of the past few years—Battlestar Galactica, Madmen, and Glee—share a really odd structural feature: They have all taken ridiculously bad ideas from cringe-able eras and turned them around completely, made them not only fresh, but evocative, disturbing, intriguing.
Where's the goo?
They are, in short, evidence of the virtues of extreme recycling.
Just imagine the pitch meeting for Galactica: We’ll take what has to have been one of the dumbest pop-culture packing peanuts ever and make it stronger, faster, better: How about an allegory about civil liberties and faith after 9/11 using Cylons and vats of goo?
Or what about Madmen: Let’s explore the most virulent cancers on our culture with lovingly pornographic attention to detail, to demonstrate the complex symbiosis among banality, beauty, evil and exculpation. Madmen is the money shot of commodity fetishism, proving once again the truth of Chomsky’s admonition that if you want to learn what’s wrong with capitalism, don’t read The Nation, read the Wall Street Journal.
And Glee? Well, all I can say is: Don’t Stop Believing.
Which may lead you to this question: No one really takes the “and everything else” part of CoOps’s desktop mantra seriously, so what the frak does this have to do with law? Read the rest of this post »
November 2, 2010 at 10:25 am
Tags: Bankruptcy, battlestar galactica, Corporate Finance, Corporate Law, dodd-frank, glee, good faith, lender liability, madmen, shadow bankruptcy
Posted in: Bankruptcy, Contract Law & Beyond, Corporate Finance, Just for Fun, Movies & Television
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Signing Off (Plus Some Advice for Law School Admissions Committees)
posted by Adam Steinman
In the coming weeks and months, law school admissions committees will be making decisions on the Class of 2013. And they’ll be watching the numbers carefully, trying to make sure their inputs look good in the next U.S. News rankings. If your school needs help with GPA numbers but has some cushion on the LSAT, this star of MTV’s Jersey Shore could be just the ticket. As covered here, here, and here, Vinny Guadagnino boasts a 3.9 undergraduate GPA, although he calls his LSAT score “mediocre.” He says that law school’s “on the back burner,” but maybe now that his stint on the show is over he’ll be willing to entertain offers.
Speaking of stints being over, I wanted to thank Dan, Jaya, and the rest of the Concurring Opinions crew for the opportunity to guest blog here these last few weeks. I’ve really enjoyed it.
January 29, 2010 at 11:33 am
Posted in: Culture, Law School (Rankings), Movies & Television
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Legal TV Review
posted by Jon Siegel
I don’t watch much TV, but I will admit to enjoying “House.” “Polite Dissent,” an engaging blog by someone with medical knowledge, publishes a useful medical review of each House episode, which runs down the medicine in each show and notes the medical errors committed each week. But what House really needs is a legal review. Because really, whatever medical errors they commit, House and his team also commit almost unbelievable torts and crimes on a regular basis.
CAUTION: Many spoilers ahead.
October 6, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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The Informant!
posted by Michael Kang
It’s not often that I hear about a new Hollywood movie based on the facts of a case that I first encountered while clerking, but The Informant!, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, is just such a film. It tells the story of Mark Whitacre, a central actor in a case decided while I was clerking for my judge on the Seventh Circuit. Whitacre served as the key informant in a successful FBI investigation into price-fixing charges against Archer Daniels Midland Co. that sent top executives to prison. As my co-clerk Kevin Metz observed, the case featured the type of direct evidence of an agreement to fix prices that antitrust professors explain is almost never available in antitrust prosecution. Whitacre secretly recorded many hours of conversations with co-conspirators in the lysine industry over three years, all while bragging carelessly to others about his role as an FBI informant and embezzling millions from ADM under the FBI’s nose. During my clerkship year, we worked on a number of memorable cases, but United States v. Andreas probably featured the most colorful facts. Whitacre was a very odd and unpredictable personality who suffered from bipolar disorder, which Matt Damon plays up for comic effect in the movie.
September 11, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Posted in: Antitrust, Criminal Law, Movies & Television
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Why so… socialist?
posted by Alice Ristroph
Sometime in the past few days, just in time for the President’s birthday, posters of Obama in Joker-style makeup appeared on a Los Angeles overpass. The images quickly spread across the internet and have sparked predictable praise from the right or criticism from the left. Whether or not the posters are unduly offensive to President Obama, they are a serious insult to Heath Ledger’s Joker and his gleeful nihilism. What strikes and fascinates me is the poster’s angry incoherence: under the image of Obama is the word “socialism.” Did this artist even see The Dark Knight? Or perhaps I should ask, what does this artist think socialism is, anyway?
Consider that socialism is associated with the concepts of “central planning” or a “planned economy,” in which a centralized authority manages everything (or at least the economy) according to plan. Now, thanks to a conversation with Brooklyn Law prof Nelson Tebbe, who offered a profound analysis of The Dark Knight, I watched that film with the close attention of a serious academic, ready to learn what it could teach me about violence. I even read the script. And the Joker’s worldview seems pretty antithetical to socialism. Here’s what the Joker has to say about planning:
August 4, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Posted in: Constitutional Law, Culture, First Amendment, Movies & Television, Politics
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Death on a Factory Farm
posted by Darian Ibrahim
I caught a few minutes of HBO’s new documentary Death on a Factory Farm the other night. It focuses on an undercover investigation of a hog farm in Ohio, the graphic footage of abuse it revealed, and the legal case that followed. It was so disturbing that I actually had to turn it off, but then again I’m a vegetarian – it’s those who are not that need to watch.
March 20, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Posted in: Agricultural Law, Current Events, Food, Movies & Television
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The Concurring Opinions Watching Election Results (COWER) Guide
posted by Scott Moss
Thanks to Dan & the gang for inviting me back. For my first post, I’m keeping it light: to help me make sense of the election returns, I’ve tooled around the web to gather state poll closing times, which I’m listing below along with each state’s recent polling average (from Pollster.com) and number of electoral votes; below that I’ve posted lists of which Senate races have a decent chance of yielding a party switch. Basically, you can make this the home version of the red/blue map game that Chuck Todd, John King, et al., will be playing all night; see if Obama is or isn’t picking up the electoral votes (EV) he needs in the first hour or two or three of poll closures. (Disclaimer: Because I’m not a profrssional at this, I may well have gotten some of the below wrong; please post any corrections in the comments, and I’ll try to get on it — though I’ll be pretty swamped all Election Day, so I can’t promise a promt fix to any errors, sorry.)
Electoral Vote Counts:
• Obama’s EV from the Kerry ’04 states: 252 (includes PA but not Bush ’04 states Obama may win)
• Obama’s EV from the Kerry ’04 states plus IA+NM (the Bush ’04 states Pollster is listing as “solid blue” for Obama): 264
• 11 possible “Bush ’04 swing states,” ones Obama has a shot at picking up: CO,FL,GA,IN,MO,MT,NC,ND,NV,OH,VA
• Obama needs 6 more EV from the 11 possible Bush ’04 swing states (above), or 27 more EV if McCain wins PA
Poll Closing Times for the key Bush ’04 states and PA:
(all times Eastern)
7:00 pm:
• Indiana (M +0.5): 11 EV
• Virginia (O +5.7): 13 EV
• Georgia (M +2.9): 15 EV
7:30 pm:
• North Carolina (tied): 15 EV
• Ohio (O +3.8): 20 EV
8:00 pm:
• Pennsylvania (O +7.7): 21 EV
• Florida (O +1.8): 27 EV
• Missouri (O +1.4): 11 EV
9:00 pm:
• Colorado (O +6.7): 9 EV
• Nebraska (?): divides its 3 EV by Congressional district; Obama may have a shot at the 1 EV in the Omaha district (no recent polling I know of that district)
10:00 pm:
• Nevada (O +6.8): 5 EV (may count quickly b/c over 70% of state already voted)
• Montana (M +1.9): 3 EV
Senate Races: Possible D Pickups, with recent poll data in parentheses (all are R seats that could switch to D; there are no D seats in which the R is within 10 points in the polls)
• Almost Certain Switches: VA (D+28.2), NM (D+16.4)
• Very Likely Switches: AK (D+4.9), NH (D+7.7), CO (D+10.4), OR (D+5.9)
• Possible Switches (slightly better than 50/50 shot): NC (D+4.1), MN (D+1.9)
• Iffy (slightly worse than 50/50 shot): MS (R+5.0), KY(R+3.1), GA (R+3.8)
November 3, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Posted in: Current Events, Movies & Television, Politics
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Injury, Probability, and Mamma Mia!
posted by Sarah Lawsky
In Mamma Mia!, Sophie invites three men she has never met to her wedding. She knows that one of these three men is her father, but she does not know which one. The movie is notable for a number of reasons. It is notable, first, because it is the second movie this summer (after Sex and the City) apparently made for, and featuring, women over 40. It is also notable for its relationship to tort law (I mean, aside from the obvious link related to Pierce Brosnan’s singing). The explanation is after the jump (to avoid revealing a key plot point, to the extent there is a plot). (Translation: there is a spoiler after the jump–though really, if you are going to Mamma Mia! for the gripping story line, you have much larger problems.)
July 28, 2008 at 8:20 am
Posted in: Movies & Television, Tort Law
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The Dark (Frank) Knight
posted by Sarah Lawsky
Frank Knight wrote the great book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, in which he described the distinction between risk and uncertainty. (The book won second prize in a 1917 competition, sponsored by Hart, Schaffner and Marx, intended to “draw the attention of American youth to the study of economic and commercial subjects.” First prize was awarded to E.E. Lincoln, The Results of Municipal Electric Lighting in Massachusetts.) We are operating under risk if an event may or may not happen in the future, and we know the chances that it will happen. For example, flipping a fair coin is a game of risk. We do not know whether the coin will come up heads, but we know that the probability of this event is 1 out of 2, or 50%. An event is uncertain if it may or may not happen in the future, and we do not know the chances that it will happen. (Knight would require that we “cannot” know this chances that it will happen, though this is perhaps too strong; I have an excellent discussion of the do not know/cannot know issue, but this blog post is too small to contain it.) For example, I do not know whether McCain will win the next presidential election, and, unlike the situation with the coin, I also do not, and cannot, know the probability that he will win, because this election is a one-off event.
So what does this have to do with the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight? I have put the explanation after the jump, because it contains minor spoilers. (Or major spoilers, if you are totally unfamiliar with the Batman story.) Repeat: there are spoilers after the jump. Do not read the rest of this post if you do not want a few Dark Knight spoilers. Don’t! Seriously!
July 21, 2008 at 9:21 am
Posted in: Movies & Television
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Defamation by PhotoShop?
posted by Frank Pasquale
At 25, you have the face heredity gave you; at 50, you have the face you deserve; and at Fox News, your features depend on whether you’re a friend or enemy of the network. Or at least that’s how Jacques Steinberg and Edward Reddicliffe must feel after Fox aired doctored photos of them on its news show.
Note that the normal photo was not shown on Fox News; the distorted image was presented as the face of Steinberg. (I’ve embedded the full clip below the fold.)
Can such a distorted depiction give rise to a defamation action? Obviously if the picture were a cartoon, and/or the program a satire or non-news program, creative license lets just about anything go (though some particularly egregious images have sparked resistance). But does a news program have a special obligation to “objectively” present images? And, returning to defamation, is it possible to argue a) that the distorted image is a “lie” about the person it depicts and b) that ugliness (that which distortion seeks to convey) is actionable as something damaging to the person whose image is distorted?
July 5, 2008 at 10:50 am
Posted in: Media Law, Movies & Television, Privacy, Race
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Cross-Examining Film
posted by Jessica Silbey
Thanks for having me here at Concurring Opinions. I haven’t blogged for some time – reminding myself there is life outside of the Web – but for the next month I am excited to reengage my blogging-self and hopefully some readers of this blog.
One of my summer projects is to think about how to turn some of my more theoretical writing on law and film into a practical “how to” piece on lawyering in the courtroom with filmic evidence. To that end, I have been watching lots of police films (a subset of what I have called “evidence verite”). These films can be found without much effort on YouTube or VideoSpider. Anyone else out there know of good sites storing this kind of film footage, I would love to hear about it. I found one piece of footage that is the subject of a recent court case – Jones v. City of Cincinnati, 521 F.3d 555 (6th Cir. 2008) – which can be found here. This film, of the police using a tremendous amount of force to subdue Nathanial Jones (who subsequently died), is an excellent example of how the film frame (what is seen and what is not seen due to the limits of the camera’s size and angle) can affect the viewer’s response to the images. When watching this film, we must imagine the blows delivered and the pain received because both are off-camera. How we imagine them might depend on our experience with police brutality more generally. (We do hear the police and the criminal suspect protesting loudly.) Do we imagine Hollywood violence (which way does that cut for the defendant here)? Do we have any experience seeing this kind of violence first or second hand so that it is hard to imagine anything but the worst? The boundaries of imagination are hard to predict and therefore a formidable opponent in a court of law. Imagination is obviously not evidence in a court of law, although it likely wields mighty influence nonetheless. A former student suggested to me that not seeing the blows Nathanial Jones suffered makes us more callous to the pain he received. I tend to think that is the case.
The Sixth Circuit in Jones v. City of Cincinnati affirmed the district court’s refusal to dismiss the case on defendant’s 12(b)(6) motion and said this in relation to the film: “Where the evidence ‘captures only part of the incident and would provide a distorted view of the events at issue,’ as the district court concluded with respect to the videotape, we do not require a court to consider that evidence on a 12(b)(6) motion.” Id. at 561. To this, I would say “no kidding,” but we will have to wait and see what the trial court does on a Rule 56 motion. Given the Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Harris, I remain skeptical that a court can resist the myth of film’s obviousness and objectivity.
For those who need a refresher, Scott v. Harris was the 2007 Supreme Court case concerning a high speed police chase that resulted in the police ramming the suspect’s car causing him to become a quadriplegic. A police camera on the cruiser recorded the chase from the point of view of the police car, and the Supreme Court said that the trial court should have considered the facts in that case “in the light depicted by the videotape” despite contradictory testimony. For an excellent analysis of the flaws of that case, see Howard Wasserman’s short piece here . For an even shorter analysis, see my Op-Ed here . For a longer more empirical analysis of the video in the case, see Kahan et al. here.
How do courts and lawyers deal with filmic evidence in light of film’s inevitably partial nature? That is what my new piece is working through with some practical tips on cross-examining film in a courtroom. The piece should be up on-line soon. For those who want a preview, feel free to email me.
June 2, 2008 at 10:57 am
Posted in: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Culture, Empirical Analysis of Law, Evidence Law, Law and Humanities, Law Practice, Movies & Television, Supreme Court
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Grand Theft Legal System
posted by James Grimmelmann
Last week’s release of Grand Theft Auto IV (actually somewhere between the sixth and ninth game in the series, depending on how you count) was big news in the gaming world (even if some observers questioned the suspiciously universal acclaim). Players cleared their calendars and in some cases emptied their wallets to play the latest installment in this series of open-ended games, which drop the player into a vast city of cars to steal, bystanders to gun down, insane stunt jumps to make, and real-life references to spot.
Among lawyers, the games may be best-known for the regular moral panics they induce over fears of copycat violence, and for attorney Jack Thompson’s increasingly bizarre crusade against them. We might also ask what kind of a legal world the GTA series envisions within its famously capacious in-game universe.
The series’s built-in attitude of rampant lawlessness—it’s named after a crime, after all—might suggest a kind of deliberate criminality. That’s certainly the interpretation that fuels the regular calls for the games to be banned. And yes, the plots typically chart the protagonist’s Scarface-style rise as he carries out errands both murderous and larcenous for an entertaining assortment mob bosses. This interactive representation of lawlessness—the player playing at the role of criminal—puts the Grand Theft Auto games squarely within the tradition of deliberate shockers like Postal.
But this may be an unduly harsh take, and not just because the claim that playing violent games leads to violence in meatspace rests on some dubitable social science. San Andreas may well show us the world as Holmes’s bad man would see it, but consider the lessons he’d learn from it. Crime doesn’t always pay. In fact, offhandedly casual offenses—driving on the sidewalk to circle around traffic, say, and in the process clipping a pedestrian—can put the police on your tail. And the aggresive things you do to try and shake them often wind up making matters worse. Before you know it, you have a six-star wanted rating, they’re sending in the black helicopters, you’re crouched in a doorframe, and there’s pretty much only one way this story can end. Exaggerated though the arc may be, it does illustrate some of the vicious circles trapping the poor, the desperate, and the criminal.
Or consider the in-game depictions of the legal system itself. Get arrested by the police, and you’re back on the streets within seconds—minus some bribe money. Call it an indictment of revolving-door-prison liberalism, or call it an indictment of police more interested in protecting their turf than in doing justice or confronting Liberty City’s very real problems. The lawyers don’t come across much better: Ken Rosenberg is a paranoid cokehead who asks our hero to fix a case by intimidating jurors.
One last thought. Given the games’ increasingly humongous alternate reality, how about building in a penal code? Grand Theft Auto’s legal geekery index would soar if every unlawful act were accompanied by a statement of exactly what crime the player had just committed. “Arson in the second degree!” “Involuntary manslaughter!” “Grand theft garbage truck!” For added fun, the crimes could be correlated with a set of sentencing guidelines, so that the in-game statistics screen would tally up precisely the number of years of imprisonment the protagonist deserved.
May 8, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Transcript (Part I)
posted by Daniel Solove
We are very pleased to be able to present a transcript of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. Joe Beaudoin, Jr., the project leader of the Battlestar Wiki, transcribed the interview for us. We edited the transcript, but the bulk of the work was done by Joe. The transcript is also posted at the Battlestar Wiki, which has a ton of great information for fans of the show. In editing the transcript, we took the liberty of cleaning up grammatical errors and eliminating “ums” and other distractions in order to make it more readable.
In this interview, we explore the legal, political, economic, and social ideas raised by the show. If you prefer to hear to the interview, click here to listen to the audio files.
Below is the introduction to the interview and the transcript for Part I, which explores the legal system, morality, and torture. I couldn’t fit the entire transcript into one post, so Parts II and III are contained in another post. Part II examines politics and commerce. Part III explores the cylons.
March 2, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Movies & Television, Privacy, Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Transcript (Parts II and III)
posted by Daniel Solove
This post contains Parts II and III of the transcript of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. Joe Beaudoin, Jr., the project leader of the Battlestar Wiki, transcribed the interview for us. We edited the transcript, but the bulk of the work was done by Joe. The transcript is also posted at the Battlestar Wiki, which has a ton of great information for fans of the show. In editing the transcript, we took the liberty of cleaning up grammatical errors and eliminating “ums” and other distractions in order to make it more readable.
Our interview explores the legal, political, and economic dimensions of the show. Part II (see below) examines politics and commerce. Part III (see below) examines the cylons. Daniel Solove, Dave Hoffman, and Deven Desai pose the questions to Ron Moore and David Eick.
Click here to read Part I of the interview transcript, which examines the legal system, morality, and torture.
March 2, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law and Humanities, Law Talk, Movies & Television, Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Part III
posted by Daniel Solove
Dave Hoffman, Deven Desai, and I are pleased to present Part III of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the hit television show, Battlestar Galactica.
Part I of our interview explored the role of law in the show, exploring topics such as the legal system, lawyers, trials and tribunals, torture, necessity vs. moral principles, and deference to the military.
Part II of our interview examined the political system and economic issues.
In Part III of our interview (the final part in this series), we discuss the cylons. How do the humans view the cylons? As mere machines? As quasi-human? Are the humans heading toward a recognition of more humane treatment of the cylons? Why did the cylons choose to try to annihilate the humans? How do the cylons govern themselves? What role does the cylons’ religion play in all this? We explore these questions and more, including what political and philosophical books most influenced Ron and David in their creation of the show. We learn why Adama changes his views about Boomer and accepts her as a person. And we try to coax out spoilers for the upcoming season.
Part III of the interview is 16 minutes, 15 seconds long. You can access it, along with Parts I and II, here.
UPDATE: The interview has now been transcribed. You can read Part I here, and Parts II and III here.
February 26, 2008 at 12:11 am
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law and Humanities, Law Talk, Movies & Television, Politics, Science Fiction, Technology
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