Yearly Archives: 2010

Jotwell Needs Your Help

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

The ABA Journal is asking for blog recommendations. It would be great if someone or someones could recommend Jotwell.

Here's the promo from the ABA Journal:

We're working on our list of the 100 best legal blogs, and we'd like your advice on which blawgs you think we should include.

Use the Blawg 100 Amici form to tell us about a blawg — not your own — that you read regularly and think other lawyers should know about. If there is more than one blawg you want to support, feel free to send us more amici through the form. We'll be including some of the best comments in our Blawg 100 coverage. But keep your remarks pithy — you have a 500-character limit.

Some additional tips:

  • We're not interested in “occasional” blawgs — blawgs you name should be updated at least weekly.
  • Editors make the final decisions about what's included in the Blawg 100; this isn't a scenario in which the blawgs that receive the most amici are the ones that make the list.

Friend-of-the-blawg briefs are due no later than Friday, Oct. 1.

Thanks in advance for your insight. Keep posting!

I'd do it myself, but that's against the rules.

Posted in Jotwell | Comments Off on Jotwell Needs Your Help

Kudos to Microsoft

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Wait long enough, you can find yourself saying anything.

But this deserves to be said twice: Kudos to Microsoft for this new policy — Microsoft Changes Policy Over Russian Crackdown.

By giving a blanket license to human rights groups and newspapers, without them even having to ask for them, Microsoft has just removed a weapon from the Russian state. Under the guise of copyright enforcement, Russia was taking computers from opposition groups, thus disabling the opposition and getting the groups' most private information all at once.

Microsoft's quick and inspired response just might put an end to it. At least it removes the fig leaf.

See the full Microsoft statement.

And while I'm at it, yes, Win7 is much better than Vista.

Posted in Law: Copyright and DMCA | Comments Off on Kudos to Microsoft

I Think Maybe He Didn’t Like the Book

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Leon H. Wolf unloads on Meghan McCain's Dirty, Sexy Politics.

Is this the most negative book review ever? Must be close.

(via…Tom Smith)

Incidentally, I heard Ms. McCain play “not my job” on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me — and she sounded, well, dumb. It just underlined how much the guys from ZZ Top, a week or two earlier, seemed grounded and cool.

Posted in Politics: US: 2008 Elections | 8 Comments

Rivera Is Desperate Already?

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Going on Spanish-language radio to call a popular Democratic politician an agent of Castro is a pretty standard tactic for South Florida Republicans. What's slightly weirder is to do it while promising in English to run a clean campaign. What's very weird is lying about it when caught. Watch as the Naples Daily News commits real journalism:

Posted in Politics: FL-25/FL-27 | 2 Comments

The Miami Herald Is Boring

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

It still boggles my mind that the Miami Herald can be so boring when there's so much talented state and local coverage online.

Today's Herald front page gives most of its real estate to a large, competent, story on property taxes. (“As market values plummet, tax bills still rise.”) Yes, it has some take-home value. But it doesn't say anything I haven't read in the Herald before.

The Herald routinely gives prime placement to predictable columnists such as Myriam Marquez (motto: “boring and conventional since 2009”), while burying on an inside page one of its few remaining, Fred Grimm Today's Grimm column was typical — a solid double. In Nut preacher hits jackpot in digital age makes the somewhat predictable point that Terry Jones is a cheap publicity hound, but illustrates it with personal experience from growing up in 50's West Virginia in an “unpainted, plumbing-free clapboard house where I lived with an aunt and her hard-preaching husband.”

Worse, the political coverage just isn't even close to being all it could be. The Herald could save itself it would just buy in some talent from online. Where — other than the soon-departing Beth Reinhard will you find anything to equal The Reid Report or Eye on Miami? How can the Herald stand to be so outdone?

Posted in The Media | 4 Comments

Get Notices of Jotwell Articles Via Twitter

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

You can now follow Jotwell (IReadJotwell) on Twitter. The name “Jotwell” was taken by one Jessica Otwell, so we had to go with “IReadJotwell” instead.

On my to-do list is figuring out how to tell law students and practitioners about Jotwell. My sense is that almost all of our current readers are law professors.

Facebook, here we come…

Posted in Jotwell | 1 Comment