Have you seen how strongly Republicans are supporting States rights with regard to sanctuary cities? I posted elsewhere a few weeks ago that people should be consistent on their position about States rights, but I’ve moderated my position. Think of…
Category: Law
A Frenzied Legislative Crackdown on Civil Rights
I’m seeing a flurry of bills that limit protest: Resisting arrest can now be considered a hate crime in Louisiana Republicans pass bill to charge demonstrators for police overtime costs North Carolina Republican proposes legislation that would ban people from…
A Supreme Court Strategy for Democrats
Democratic Senators should refuse to approve any Supreme Court nominee until Merrick Garland is renominated. This would be a principled stand that allows Republicans to make amends for their recalcitrance, offers a centrist appointment to a divided country, and is less radical…
Political bias measured in Supreme Court Decisions
The NYTimes reports that how Supreme Court Justices vote on 1st Amendment claims depends on their political leanings. The worst liberal bias is 1.3, whereas the conservative biases range from 3 to 7. This is unsettling enough by itself, but…
Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including “gold”, “silver” and “bronze”, “summer”, “sponsors” and “London”. Publicans have been advised that blackboards advertising live TV coverage must not…
Posted in Intellectual Property, Law
Three Arguments against Copyrights
1 Let’s start with the delightful video Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (10:48) that says that when performing mechanical tasks, an incentive such as money improves performance, but when the task is intellectual, it doesn’t! In fact,…
Posted in Intellectual Property, Law
The Logic of Prop. 8 Supporters
From Tuesday’s NYT: The defense sought to show that claims of bias against gay men and lesbians were overblown. In particular, Dr. Miller testified, gay men and lesbians in California could count on a deep and varied contingent of allies,…
Supreme Court Goes Rogue Again
Emily Bazelon has an excellent post highlighting the contradictions in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to block video streaming of the CA gay marriage trial, e.g. The problem, the majority says, is that in his haste, Judge Walker changed a federal…
The equivalence of patents and source code
The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a Supreme Court brief re Bilski, and I loved this idea within it: “The source code of a program which performs the steps described in a software patent is distinguishable from the literal…
Google vs. Newspapers
There is an excellent analysis of the plight of newspapers on Groklaw, and PJ ends by pointing out that Groklaw itself is an example of what the newspapers have not been providing, and what will arise in the wake of…