Archive for January, 2008
NCBLE v. West
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008Today’s case comes out of North Carolina. Bar Bri Bar Review published essays from the North Carolina Bar Exam and designed lectures around how the material is tested on the exam.
The Board of Law Examiners sued, claiming a copyright in the essay questions and demanding a permanent injunction and an award of actual damages or [...]
Elections: FL & NH
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008This week’s dirty election was held in Florida, where bad machines using secret software were used to process the votes.
The same type of fatally flawed voting machines that were used in New Hampshire were used in Florida. These are Diebold machines. In an effort to avoid scrutiny, Diebold has changed its name to Premier Election [...]
Ali v. Bureau: A license to steal?
Thursday, January 24th, 2008A bitterly divided Supreme Court just gave federal law enforcement a license to steal, in a case called Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. This case interprets the Federal Tort Claims Act, which sets forth federal employees’ liability for damages. Usually, federal employees are not immune from civil suit when they cause damage, but [...]
Transformative Works and Copyright
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008Parody is the best-known kind of derivative work. Parody is protected as a “fair use” under copyright law. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose , 510 US 569, 1994. Justice Souter wrote the majority opinion. Another kind of derivative work is so-called “transformative” art.
“Fan fiction” is the most well-known type of “transformative” creative work product. Another [...]
Elections: SC GOP Primary
Sunday, January 20th, 2008The South Carolina Republican primary election was hardly a model of democracy. Once again, expensive voting machines, running secret software, ruined a close election. McCain was declared a winner by 3%.
Electronic voting machines got in the way of a fair election.
This election was conducted on bad machines. There is no paper trail. Republicans in South [...]
Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008The Stoneridge decision is a huge win for investment banks, accountants and vendors. It’s a big loss for those who lose money on stocks issued by companies that commit fraud.
The facts in the case were not in dispute. A cable TV company persuaded Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola, two commercial sellers of cable-TV boxes, to jack up [...]
How Clean is Your Election?
Sunday, January 13th, 2008There’s good news and bad news this week about Voting and election integrity. The good news comes from San Luis Obisbo, California, where we saw ballots counted with an Open Source Voting Software program.
The bad news comes from New Hampshire, where more than three quarters of the votes were counted in secret by a [...]