Happy Election Day!

Bicoastal perspectives on the Golden State:

• Nick Denton: "Some territorial units are just not meant to be."


• Bill Maher: "We're home to Disney and Hustler, the Partridge Family and the Manson Family. [laughter] We can drink a Mudslide and a Sex on the Beach during an actual mudslide while having sex on the beach!" ([Update]: I know; unsexy.)

Courts On A Subscription Model

Why are there user fees for PACER?

In 1988, the Judiciary sought funding through the appropriation process to establish the capability to provide electronic public access services. Rather than appropriating additional funds for this purpose, Congress specifically directed the Judiciary to fund that initiative through the collection of user fees. As a result, the program relies exclusively on fee revenue.

[Link added, from the FAQ for Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), the case and docket information retrieval service for Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy courts.] At $.60 per minute OR $.07 per page, I wonder if the PACER system loses money, breaks even, or turns a profit? (I'm sure this information is available somewhere...?) Regardless, I'm guessing that because a system is in place at the Federal level—even if it may not be the least cumbersome and/or least expensive available given current technology—state courts may wind up leading the way in the use of RSS as a streamlined information distribution format. Rory Perry (Clerk of the Court, Supreme Court of Appeals for West Virginia) has been at the vanguard of movements in this direction, and now offers an early draft of a resource page for courts on weblogs and syndication. [Via Ernie Svenson] Bravo Rory, I'm pointing friends in the California court system your way.

(Note too that according to Rory's sidebar, as of 10/03/03 the top Google result for courts public access is the PACER Service Center Home Page.)

October's Real Sporting Challenge

With everyone in the US singularly obsessed with baseball at the moment, a reminder seems in order that Canada has the legitimate action this month. The Rock Paper Scissors 2003 International Championships will go down on October 25 in Koolhaus, Toronto. About 1,000 of the world's best players, including athletes from the UK, six US states, and Canada, will compete for $5,000.00 (CDN) and the coveted RPS Champion of the World title (2nd place $1,500.00, 3rd $500.00). Video clips available at the site provide a preview of the drama to come. It's not too late to take a run at the title; rules and strategies are available here.

Today's New Blawg

Greg Siskind writes the Visalaw Blog [via Rick Klau]:

I reminded Rick that I actually had set up a blog back in May 1998 before there was even a term "blog." In that year, we set up an "online diary" to keep readers apprised of legislative developments surrounding the H-1B cap. The page was extremely popular and in one day alone received more than 50,000 hits. If you're interested in seeing that page, go to the Wayback Machine and see our site as it looked in December 1998. The link is at http://web.archive.org/web/19980612151807/www.visalaw.com/h1b.html. According to Rick, our online diary would make us the very first law firm to use a blog.

We've decided to revive that online diary and this time use Google's Blogger software to get started. We hope that this service is useful and that readers will send us suggestions regularly on what to include on the page.

To the best of my knowledge this swells the ranks of blogs devoted to immigration law to two, with Randy Tunac's Manifest Border also covering related issues.

Courtyard Bazaar At The Ivory Tower

That was a subheading in an article about law blogging I wrote what seems like millenia ago now, and a recurrent theme in today's Weblogs and Law discussion at BloggerCon. Dan Gillmor: "The more you guys demystify what you do, the better." The session was excellent, covering all the key topics: copyright and fair use, first amendment protections, on the record and off the record treatment of oral and written material, how copyright principles may have to adapt to a world where everyone can simultaneously and instantaneously publish, privacy and right of publicity issues, and the role of blogs as communication/marketing tools (order intentional) on the commercial side of the law. The session ended with a discussion right in line with Boalt Hall Interim Dean Bob Berring's talk earlier this week about the future of legal research, and prior writings about technology and The New Blackstone.

Pics of Eugene and Doc are in the Carry-On (and include gratuitous shots of my Dock [via Jason Kottke]).