random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
So this flight attendant is suing a televangelist who assaulted her, and in addition to emotional damages and hemorrhoids, the flight attendant is claiming she is owed damages for loss of faith. Broadsheet, Salon.com, 8/8.
Obviously the First Amendment is going to pose real problems for the plaintiff — American courts establishing a monetary value [...]
how on earth does blizzard keep winning these horrible cases? do they bribe the courts?
Patry covers the new case on software cheats, MDY Industries v. Blizzard.
How one might ask can there be a violation of the Copyright Act if no rights granted under the Act have been violated? Good question.
To [...]
yaay habeas corpus.
Kennedy is the difference between a conservative — someone whose values I frequently dislike and disagree with, but who is in many ways a respectful person — and a proto-fascist.
For the right-wingers who like to throw the term “fascism” around, the core concept of fascism is that the State takes [...]
Well, I loved the California same-sex marriage decision. Not just because it granted same-sex marriage, and not just because it said that the state needs to use the same term to refer to same-sex and opposite-sex unions, but because it significantly expanded Equal Protection jurisprudence.
For the non-law-geeks out there, federal and state constitutional [...]
The current New Yorker (2008/5/12) is chock-full of good stuff:
* Malcolm Gladwell, In the Air, New Yorker. link from MC on closed mailing list
Invention is part of zeitgeist. Many people come up with the same ideas at the same moment — true in her field, my partner says, and it looks true from any [...]
This is highly amusing. A Constitutional flaw in the way that patent appeals judges have been appointed since 2000 (by persons without authority to do so) threatens to invalidate all the decisions made by a panel that includes a judge appointed since 2000. [My initial hearing of snatches of this made me think [...]
This just in from AP: Mildred Jeter Loving, of Loving v. Virginia, passed away on Friday 5/2.
A longer obit from the NYT. “Mildred’s mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She preferred to think of herself as Indian rather than black.” I can’t tell if that was throughout her [...]
Word on the street is starting to trickle in that the popular music was not licensed:
* John Lennon’s “Imagine” was definitely used without permission. The Lennon estate + EMI are suing. (See Reuters, 4/23 (link from pharyngula); the NYT, 4/24; and Paste Magazine. (I can just picture the graphic on The Daily Show: “Ono you [...]
update 4/16: Both a commenter here and also P.Z. Myers have reported that Expelled filmmakers Premise filed on Monday a DJ (”declaratory judgment”) motion on XVIVO’s copyright claims against them — i.e., asked a judge to look at the evidence & say that they are not infringing. Premise v. XVIVO, N.D. Tex., 4/14/2008.
Here are links [...]
Just saw that the 9th Circuit has issued its en banc opinion finding that Roommates.com is not eligible for Section 230 immunity for discriminatory postings. Haven’t read it yet.
Decision at
* Judge White withdrew his order requiring the shutdown of wikileaks.org. See also 3/1 bits blog. (NYT 3/1)
* The music industry has yet to pay artists any of the money it has received in settlements and lawsuits; the artists are pissed. NY Post 2/27)
* The owners of the game scrabble are pissed off at Scrabulous. [...]
give it up already. we all know that the red cross means the Red Cross.
It’ll be interesting to see a major company actually litigate such a completely jury-unfriendly case. It will also be interesting to see if how licenses for intellectual “property” survive when the property — in this case, consumer identification of a mark [...]
The District Court of Utah has issued a decision and order finding that SCO does not own parts of Linux (D.Utah 2007/8/10). The lengthy litigation (funded in part with Microsoft’s investments in SCO) was the only serious shadow hanging over Linux, although the claims seemed bogus when examined closely. (I also liked this chart that [...]
The Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court in Fair Housing Council v. Roommate.com, limiting Section 230. Section 230 is the federal statute that immunizes online services providers for their users’ content. Most courts have construed Section 230 broadly, protecting ISPs against all sorts of liability. Intellectual property is (surprise) specifically exempted.
In this case, the [...]
Well, Steve Jobs certainly looks prescient, what with EMI dropping DRM for its iTunes sales. Why do I suppose they were already in negotiations when Steve Jobs wrote his editorial?
Never mind, it’s still good news. (As is the decision from the Supreme Court on EPA’s responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases, a case that worried [...]
I really can’t stand it when politicians engage in cheap & sleazy grandstanding, knowing that what they’re doing is actually irrelevant. I’m speaking of Mitt Romney’s “lawsuit” to get the Mass. courts to step in to force the Mass. legislature to vote on an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment. [nyt 11/25]
Cheap & sleazy political grandstanding may [...]
The NJ Supreme Court is releasing its SSM decision today @ 3pm. [available at NJSC website]
Will they help us out but energize the Republicans and lead to queers being blamed if the Dems don’t take the House or Senate? or will they fuck us over leaving everyone, but us, happy?
(And if I’m [...]
NY’s Court of Appeals just handed down its no-same-sex-marriage decision, holding that denying marriage licenses on the basis of gender to same-sex partners does not violate New York’s Constitution. In my opinion, this is a big setback for equal protection and individual autonomy. We had a certain momentum going forward in terms of courts [...]
* Alas (a blog) has deemed Father’s Day “queer sex day” for very good reasons.
* Jon Stewart points out the obvious to Bill Bennett’s proffered state rationale for recognizing only male-female marriages:
Divorce doesn’t occur because 50% of marriages end in gayness.
* New York’s highest court (the confusingly named “Court of Appeals”) heard arguments in [...]
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts finally issued its ruling on out-of-state residents marrying in Massachusetts, upholding a previously moribund statute that had been dusted off especially for same-sex marriages. [nyt 3/30; Cote-Whiteacre v. Mass. Dept. of Public Health, SJC-09436 (Mass. SJC 2006/3/30)]
