New Site Time

Elaine's new digs are lovely! Go take a tour.

Copyfight/Donna Wentworth/Berkman News

Copyfight has a new co-sponsor, the Berkman Center, where Web Publications Editor Donna Wentworth (separated at birth from Laura Dern?) also writes and edits The Filter and is a GrepLaw author and Chilling Effects contributor. (Ahem.) In the current issue of The Filter, Donna and Berkman report among other things that Donna will be blogging live from the Berkman Center's Internet Law Program on July 1-5, and that the program will include "a debate between Lawrence Lessig and Jason Matusow of Microsoft Corporation on the merits of open source, shared source, and proprietary software." The program sounds terrific, but since I can't go I'll be checking in with Donna for the highlights.

You know you grew up in California when...

your schools always just said "indivisible."

Stephan Bechtold On Digital Rights Management

Dr. Stephan Bechtold (of the Link Controversy Page mentioned here before) is "a 27-year-old German lawyer who is a Fullbright Fellow at Stanford Law School" [via The Daily Journal], and has written a paper titled "From Copyright to Information Law - Implications Of Digital Rights Management." (link: PDF) The paper examines DRM's tendency to supplant copyright law (since it allows providers to protect "the economic, moral and personal interests" in an author's works without further legal assistance), and posits that if measures are so overprotective as to trample on fair use, laws will develop to limit DRM and clarify fair use principles in the digital environment. Dr. Bechtold thinks "it is far from clear that content providers really need the combination of five different means of protection (technology, contracts, technology licenses, anti-circumvention regulation and copyright law) instead of one (copyright law)," observes that private parties implementing DRM "may or may not honor the interests of third parties and society at large," and concludes "[i]t is the law that has to react to this 'overprivatization' and limit the different means of protection in a DRM system." The paper provides a thoughtful take on the unsettled state of DRM technologies and the current legal framework, with interesting ideas about where things might go from here.

"To improve our justice system and ensure a free and just society under the law."

Incoming California State Bar president James Herman was elected last Saturday, and wants to make more people aware of the Bar's mission statement, above. [Via The Daily Journal] James lives near Doc in Santa Barbara, so if they should bump into each other over coffee Doc may have some suggestions...

P.S. Dig student Declan Murphy's "Images Of Freedom" photo.