Using Photos and Videos and the Role of the Creative Commons Licenses
July 10, 2007
Denise Howell raises some questions for bloggers and others who embed YouTube and other videos into their blog posts. Even better, she offers some answers to the questions in her post "Embedding a Headache."
Shelley Powers does a great job of summing up some of the key issues and unanswered questions about the Creative Commons licenses in her post "Virgin Bites Creative Commons on the Butt." Highly recommended.
We discussed the Creative Commons licenses (and some of the issues Shelley raises) a few years ago when we started the Between Lawyers blog as an effort to show our readers how a group of lawyers would think about applying a Creative Commons license. Those posts are collected here. I also talked about Creative Commons license issues in the recent Episode 26 of the WordPress Podcast.
Agreeing To The Cloud
June 28, 2007
As more and better communication and collaboration functions move to the Web (under non-negotiated, vendor-centric terms of use), what are our obligations as both tech- and ethics-savvy lawyers? I for one am not about to give up Gmail. So, what's the best practice?
- Shun Web services, you simply can't control the data?
- Use Web services only when you have specific, confidentiality and reliability guaranteeing service level agreements?
- Use Web services liberally, but acquaint yourself with the applicable terms of use and make sure clients are amenable?
I lean toward #3. You?
Microsoft Provides a Good Illustration of the Metadata Exposure Problem
June 13, 2007
Ed Botts offers up a great example of how tricky the hidden data, or metadata, issue can be in Microsoft Office. The victim this time is Microsoft. Irony aside, it's important to understand the example and be attuned to the potential problems.
Ed's recent post "What's Hidden in Your Word Documents?" also is an eye-opener on the topic for those who are not familiar with the workings of the default settings in Office 2007 (that may include some bar regulators in the US).
For a good overview for lawyers, see Mining the Value from Metadata by Dennis Kennedy, Evan Schaeffer and Tom Mighell.
Yet Another Use For Social Media: Narrowing The Defendant List
May 21, 2007
Blogger co-founder Evan Williams Twitters: "Dear person from law firm who wants to find the right person to threaten to sue at Blogger.com: Nope, not me."
Flashback To Cramming For The Bar
May 16, 2007
Dennis pointed us to this in email: The (Ultimate) Cheat Sheet to Law and Jurisprudence. Which reminds me: My dad says A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar is excellent.
SLAW on Virtual Law Offices
May 2, 2007
Steven Mathews, on the excellent SLAW group blog, neatly summarizes some discussion on virtual law offices.
Money quote:
I could see a metropolis-hinterland kind of effect, where firms put the rainmaker partners in downtown offices, and farm 'the work' out to less expensive premises.
