Monthly Archives: October 2018

Gillum Speaks in Coral Gables

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

I attended an Andrew Gillum event last night, and recorded most of Gillum’s inspirational speech (I didn’t record the extensive thank-yous that prefaced the talk.)

Posted in 2018 Election, Florida | 4 Comments

Nothing Remotely Like a Fascist

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

Nothing to worry about, move along.

Posted in Trump | 3 Comments

Big Win for EFF and Everyone

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

The 11th Circuit ruled on Friday that law, and critical annotations to it, cannot be copyrighted. This bit is particularly good:

The general rule that legislative codifications are uncopyrightable derives from an understanding of the nature of law and the basic idea that the People, as the reservoir of all sovereignty, are the source of our law. For purposes of the Copyright Act, this means that the People are the constructive authors of those official legal promulgations of government that represent an exercise of sovereign authority. And because they are the authors, the People are the owners of these works, meaning that the works are intrinsically public domain material and, therefore, uncopyrightable.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which I’m an Advisory Board member, represented Public.Resource.Org and continues to represent them in their ongoing struggle to open access to privately drafted standards incorporated by reference in statutes and regulations.

Posted in Law: IP | Comments Off on Big Win for EFF and Everyone

Really?

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

My feed had the headline “VA official proudly displays KKK Grand Wizard portrait in his D.C. office” and quoted the official as saying about the portrait that, ‘I thought it was very nice’. Uh-huh. No one is that dumb, right?

I mean, I can sort of believe that a person might not know that Nathan Bedford Forrest was the founder of the Klan until someone pointed that out, but even so, how dumb do you have to be to hang a lighted portrait of a Confederate General in your federal government office? When nine out of 14 of your senior staff are Black? And then refuse to take it down when they point out the problem? Not credible.

And am I really supposed to believe that the VA has an “Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization”? Surely that belongs in the SBA, not the VA, right?

Well, shows you what I know. The article was from Boingboing, not the Onion. The Washington Post confirms the story and adds more damning details. And the VA does have an  “Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization”.  And someone with a decent supervisory civil service (not a Trump political appointee) job is really that dumb.

Posted in Onion/Not-Onion | 1 Comment

Twitter Follower Audit

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

SparkToro analyzes a random sample of 2,000 of your Twitter followers and tries to estimate how many are fake.  I did OK (love the spike at 9 out of 10), and given the methodology I think the 12% fake number is probably a slight over-estimate..

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Twitter Follower Audit

If You Read One Thing Today

Posted on October 21, 2018 by Michael Froomkin

…make it Getting Out (the print title; online it’s the much wordier, “Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out”) by poet, father, Yale Law grad (and ex-con), Reginald Dwayne Betts.

Posted in Law: Practice, Readings | Comments Off on If You Read One Thing Today