Laws of Ochlocracy

Law and Ochlocracy Digest for October 8th from 21:47 to 21:55:

• Google Books Settlement – A Library to Last Forever – NYTimes.com – Sergey Brin: Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting.

  The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project.

• Angry Outbursts on Twitter Prompt Lengthy Legal Discussions – NYTimes.com – Courtney Love was sued by a fashion designer after she posted a series of inflammatory tweets, one calling the designer a liar and a thief. A landlord in Chicago sued a tenant for $50,000 after she tweeted about her moldy apartment.
• Toyota Hybrids Face Potential U.S. Import Ban on Patent Probe – Bloomberg.com – Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest maker of hybrid vehicles, faces a potential U.S. import ban on Prius and other hybrid models as trade officials begin a patent-infringement investigation.
• The criticism that Ralph Lauren doesn’t want you to see! – Boing Boing – Ralph Lauren's marketing arm and its law firm don't see it that way. According to them, this is an "infringing image," and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada's Priority Colo. One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don't automatically act on DMCA takedowns.
• IBM faces DOJ antitrust inquiry on mainframes – Network World – CCIA's complaint against IBM alleges that the company has refused to issue licenses for IBM's mainframe OS to competitors, as required in a series of actions the DOJ took against IBM dating back to the 1970s
• I Gave Mayor’s Text Messages to Paper, Lawyer Testifies in Discipline Case | ABA Journal – Law News Now – Testifying today as a defendant in an attorney discipline case brought against himself and other attorneys over their handling of settlement negotiations in which the mayor attempted to suppress the messages from publication, Mike Stefani said he gave a copy of the text messages to the Detroit Free Press for safekeeping in 2007, a few days after he received them
• Monsanto Under Investigation For Antitrust Abuses : NPR – The Justice Department is investigating whether Monsanto Co. violated antitrust rules in trying to expand its dominance of the market for genetically engineered crops.
• Astor’s Son Found Guilty Of Looting Socialite’s Estate : NPR – The jury convicted Marshall of 14 counts, including first-degree grand larceny and scheming to defraud, but acquitted him on two charges, falsifying business records and another first-degree grand larceny count. His co-defendant, estate lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr., was convicted on all five charges, including scheming to defraud, conspiracy and forgery.
• Linden Lab Sued Over Copied Virtual Goods | Techdirt – It was, in effect, taking bad real world laws and bringing them into a virtual world. It was even worse, because it was taking real world laws that were designed for a world of scarcity, and bringing them into a world of abundance — and effectively allowing the laws to reach from the real world into the virtual world. That's a recipe for trouble.
• The Art of Blackmail – Blackmail is a “wonderfully curious offense,” to use the phrase of Paul H. Robinson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his coauthors in a recent paper. A threat to tell the truth is no crime, and neither is asking someone for money. But if you demand money to prevent the truth from being told, Professor Robinson said, you’ve crossed the line. At its core, he explained, the offense is “a form of wrongful coercion.”
• Craigslist Expands Legal Battle Against Spammers – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – On Monday, Craigslist, the classified advertising site filed four lawsuits in the northern district of California against companies and people offering tools that automate the mass posting of ads on the site.

  Craigslist is suing Red Trumpet, a San Francisco company that runs the Web site Craigsup; Eddie Temple, an Internet marketer; and several individuals, some named and others still anonymous, who appear to be in the business of online advertising.

• A ‘Visibly Angry’ Justice Scalia Ponders ‘Some Conglomerate of a Cross’ | ABA Journal – Law News Now – The dispute began when Eliasberg said Jewish war veterans would not want to be honored by a cross. Scalia disagreed. “What would you have them erect?” Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

  Eliasberg said Jewish cemeteries he has visited don’t have crosses. Courtroom spectators laughed, but Scalia didn’t join in. "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” Scalia said. “I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

• How DLA Piper Plans to Save $1M a Year in Travel Costs | ABA Journal – Law News Now – About 80 percent of the megafirm's American lawyers are now within an hour's drive of one of DLA Piper's new telepresence sites, Jaycox says.
• I Gave Mayor’s Text Messages to Paper, Lawyer Testifies in Discipline Case | ABA Journal – Law News Now – Testifying today as a defendant in an attorney discipline case brought against himself and other attorneys over their handling of settlement negotiations in which the mayor attempted to suppress the messages from publication, Mike Stefani said he gave a copy of the text messages to the Detroit Free Press for safekeeping in 2007, a few days after he received them
• Monsanto Under Investigation For Antitrust Abuses : NPR – The Justice Department is investigating whether Monsanto Co. violated antitrust rules in trying to expand its dominance of the market for genetically engineered crops.