Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Hannity Apologizes

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

TMP runs the story of Hannity's apology as Cold Day in Hell.

Hannity claims it was an “inadvertent” error. (See Hannity = Dishonesty for background.)

Now on his program last night he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct. We screwed up. We aired some video of a rally in September, along with the video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So Mr. Stewart, you were right. We apologize. But by the way, I wanna thank you and all your writers for watching.

I find that hard to believe (how does fresh video get mixed up with archival stuff?), but there you have it.

Posted in The Media | 4 Comments

How to Fix the Tweetdeck No Updates Bug

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I have a house guest who is probably one of the few teetotal geek folksinger freelance journalists in captivity.

The guest described to me a potentially useful feature of Tweetdeck that I didn't know existed (dividing people you follow into 'groups'), so I fired it up. (I don't use Twitter very often, life is too full already). It wanted to be synchronized and updated. Adobe Air wanted to be updated. I complied. The result was that all my Tweetdeck columns were blank – “no updates”. And I knew this wasn't true since the house guest was telling me of a recent Twitter post commenting on a visible feature of my family room.

Google to the rescue. It seems if you close all your Tweetdeck columns and then reopen them, all is well again. And so it was.

Posted in Software | 1 Comment

Hannity = Dishonesty

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

The most amazing thing about this story is that I think no one will care.

Jon Stewart catches out Fox propagandist Hannity in a stunning piece of dishonesty, one that could not possibly be accidental. In any normal democracy with a well-functioning press and political culture, this sort of neo-Goebbelian manipulation of the news would produce some reaction, perhaps shunning, from the political and literary class. (And if his employer were honest, instead of Ailes, one would expect heads to roll.)

At least we get this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage
www.thedailyshow.com

Posted in The Media | 24 Comments

EFF Gets US to Back Down on Vastly Overreaching Subpoena

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

From EFF's Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena

Stuff like this is why I'm proud to be on EFF's Advisory Board. (Although I can claim zero credit for EFF's great work on this matter.)

Here's a part of EFF's intro to the report linked above:

We at EFF, like the public at large, are often left in the dark about what the government's practices in this area look like. However, sometimes — just sometimes — the fog will clear and we'll get a worrisome picture of what the government gets up to behind closed doors. Sometimes this happens when an independent-minded judge publishes an opinion revealing the government's practices, like the judge that first revealed that the government was tracking cell phones without warrants. Other times, someone served with an SCA demand such as a National Security Letter comes to us for legal assistance.

Recently, one such recipient of an SCA demand did come to us, and we're glad she did. The story of that subpoena — to the administrator of www.indymedia.us, an independent activist news site aggregating stories from Indymedia web sites across the country — provides yet another example of how government abuses breed in secrecy. Hopefully this analysis will be helpful to other online service providers who receive such bogus requests masquerading as valid legal process.

Posted in Law: Free Speech | Comments Off on EFF Gets US to Back Down on Vastly Overreaching Subpoena

Deans May Know This

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Joho the Blog, Line from a conf:

“There is a way to herd cats: Move their food.” — speaker at a closed conf

Posted in Law School | 2 Comments

Jotwell: Third Party Beneficiary Law Meets Virtual Worlds

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

oie_globes_and_books5_sm.gifJames Grimmelmann has a nice piece up on Jotwell called Third Parties to the Rescue.

Here’s how it starts:

Michael Risch’s Virtual Third Parties, 25 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. L.J. 416 (2009) tips the scales at a mere eleven pages—but it punches far above its weight class. He gives a clear and straightforward reading of third-party beneficiary doctrine in contract law to put a new spin on old problems of online power.

Risch’s subject is virtual worlds, where the immense technical power of the world’s provider is so well-recognized that it has its own shorthand name: the “God Problem.” If Blizzard wants to exile you from World of Warcraft, confiscate everything you own in-world, or stick your avatar in the stocks, their control over the servers lets them do it with a few keystrokes. Your avatar’s arms are never going to be long enough to box with a game god whose software controls arm length.

Posted in Virtual Worlds | 4 Comments