Post Symposium

Our Symposium on Net Neutrality was a success! You can find live-blogged details here by my co-writer on Webbed Footprint. We'll be posting the recorded event on our website soon as a podcast. Thanks to everyone who attended in person and online!

I'm still recovering from the energy expenditure of hosting this incredible event, and the subsequent celebratory debauchery. I did get to hang out with this cool guy, however:

 

No Immunity

UPDATE: This photo appeared on Boing Boing!

 

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Director Cindy Cohn:

We're asking folks to take a picture of themselves with a sign that
says something like: "Stop the Spying - No Telecom Immunity" and
indicating their city and state. They can also do a short video. We'd
like them to email the photo or video to us and we'll post them on
our StoptheSpying.org website and a corresponding Flickr website
we've set up with tagging, etc. We'd like folks to be creative
(include babies, different settings, etc), but respectful too. When
we get enough, we're hoping to convey them to Congress in some
fashion. I'm hoping to get enough to put together a collection of
them on a big poster board that Senator Dodd and others can use on
the Senate Floor but we may not have time.

Send an email to photo@stopthespying.org!
EFF info

Legal Posturing

I'm currently taking a course called Legal Drafting. Every other week we take a three-hour exam from real Bar exams. They consist of the Performance Exam section of the Bar. You're given an assignment (write a memo, an appellate brief, etc.) called a task memo. You're provided with two stapled packets: a Library of cases and statutes, and a File, consisting of lower court briefs, deposition testimony, etc.

Our professor instructed us on the first thing we should do when we get the exam: tear off the task memo sheet.

"Why, you ask, should you tear off the task memo?" He demonstrated with a powerful flourish the ideal motion. "First, because it will help you avoid 'mission creep.' Mission creep is when you lose track of the assignment. Secondly, you should tear off the task memo because it will freak the hell out of everyone around you."

Well Fed

My Corporations professor discussed agency on the first day of class. He proposed a hypothetical where his assistant (he works at a firm) bought lunch for a meeting and paid with a firm credit card that she'd been told specifically never to use for that purpose. The firm eats the food and then refuses to pay the bill. The question was whether his assistant was an agent of the firm such that the firm could be held liable for the lunch.

My prof asked, "So, will I have to pay for the lunch?" He let us marinate on it a moment and then said with a smirk, "You know I’m gonna have to. Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch."

Network Neutrality Symposium

Do you live in the Bay Area? Would love for you to attend my student group's symposium! Anyone who comes and tells me they read it on my blog gets a special surprise gift...

Net Neutrality refers to free access to the Internet without discrimination based upon content, how often a user accesses the Internet, or the type of services and programs used.

The University of San Francisco School of Law Intellectual Property Law Bulletin is sponsoring The Toll Roads: The Legal and Political Debate Over Network Neutrality, a symposium to increase awareness about network neutrality, bringing together lawyers, academics, economists, and technologists for a balanced debate on the issue. Panelists include Tim Wu, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Spiwak, and many others.

When: January 26th, 2008 8 AM - 7 PM
Where: Fromm Institute on the University of San Francisco main campus
Web: http://www.netneutrality2008.org
Cost: Professionals (6.0 Units MCLE Credit): $100
Non-professionals: Free - $75 (see registration page for details)
Register: http://www.netneutrality2008.org/Registration.html

(And with this I'm officially outing my school on this blog.)