Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

School Board Persists in Book-Banning Folly

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

It’s election season here in Miami and that means it’s time for stupid posturing with taxpayer money. Today’s installment is brought to you by the School Board, which voted to waste a lot of money appealing a case it has no hope of winning:

Continuing its efforts to remove a controversial children’s book, the Miami-Dade School Board voted this afternoon to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that forced the district to keep Vamos a Cuba and 23 other titles on school library shelves.

In a 5-2 decision, with two members absent, the board said it wanted to protect the right of the district to determine the content of school libraries, rather than leave it up to a judge.

”Do we have a right to protect our children?” said board member Frank Bolaños, who joined Agustín Barrera, Perla Tabares Hantman, Ana Rivas Logan and Marta Pérez in voting for the appeal. “I think we have the right and responsibility to do that.”

…

The debate has become a passionate cause for some Cuban exiles, who have cited errors in the book and believe it omits so much about life’s hardships under Castro as to render it inaccurate and misleading.

The issue intensified during the spring as two review committee and Superintendent Rudy Crew said the book should stay on shelves, only to be overruled by the School Board in a politically charged 6-3 vote.

The debate inspired attorney Manny Anon to challenge Barrera in next month’s elections and has a been a powerful political undercurrent in outgoing Bolaños’ Republican-primary challenge to incumbent state Sen. Alex Villalobos.

That last bit, buried as it is in the Herald’s article, strikes me as the real key to the whole sordid affair: like so many local pols before him, Bolaños is playing the Castro card to get elected to something.

Of course, given current events, this may the last ride for that particular hobbyhorse. As it is, the whole show ws starting to wear thin — this time the relevant parents’ committees and the school bureaucrats both stood up against book banning. Only the craven School Board took a dive. Around here, that’s actually progress.

Posted in Law: Free Speech, Miami | 2 Comments

RIAA Meets Its Match

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

RIIA — the people who are building the spamigation capability to sue each and every of their customers — officially lost the culture war today. Despite all their efforts to define any form of copying as “piracy,” and to frighten children away from fair use, despite their efforts to blanket college campuses with their anti-downloading videos (contains several artful true but misleading statements), on this evening their efforts come to naught: yes, tonight Weird Al Yankovic unveils video for his latest tune, Don’t Download This Song. And you can download it now…

I think that even Captain Copyright won’t be able to overcome the Weird Al effect on impressionable young minds.

Posted in Law: Copyright and DMCA | 2 Comments

Ryan Air Objects

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Ryan Air’s CEO is threatening to sue the UK government if it doesn’t relax air-security hysteria:

TERRORISTS are “rolling around the caves of Pakistan, laughing” at Britain’s response to the terror threat, an airline boss said last night as he gave the government a seven-day deadline to relax restrictions or face legal action.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary described some of the security measures as “farcical, Keystone Kops-like and completely insane and ineffectual”.

Pilots also attacked the measures, which ban them from taking toothpaste on to aircraft, and said subjecting flight crews to the same restrictions as passengers made “no sense at all”.

An estimated 800,000 passengers have been disrupted by the chaos caused by new measures, which resulted in massive queues at airports and led to the cancellations of about 1,800 flights.

Ryanair demanded the government return passenger-search requirements to pre-alert levels. It also wants the government to restore the hand-luggage allowance for passengers leaving British airports, and an assurance that military and police personnel would be released to help with airport security checks next time there is a major alert.

Mr O’Leary yesterday gave the government a seven-day deadline to make the changes or face legal action, arguing that some of the security measures had been stupid and it was “completely untenable” to expect airport staff to continue working flat-out to cope with the new regulations.

But at least Ryan Air has a sense of humor about the situation. Here’s their graphic — very graphic — take on the absurdity of new airport security procedures.

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath | Comments Off on Ryan Air Objects

Geneva Conventions Now Universal

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

via Opinio Juris:

This is a landmark month in the history of international law: with the accession of the Republic of Montenegro on August 2, the 1949 Geneva Conventions have become the first international treaty in modern history to achieve universal acceptance.

The irony, of course, is that the US has re-interpreted the Geneva Conventions, especially the reach of Common Article 3, in a way that makes our copy of the convention different (and much less meaningful) than the rest of the world’s….

Posted in Law: International Law | Comments Off on Geneva Conventions Now Universal

Fate Worse than Death?

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Under the headline Decision of the Day: The Worst Sanction Ever?, Robert Loblaw reports on Willhite v. Collins, 06-1004 (8th Cir., Aug. 21, 2006), as follows:

Attorney David Van Sickle was a little too zealous an advocate for his clients in a property dispute. After losing several actions in state court, he filed the same suit in federal court. The district court was not amused, imposing monetary and other sanctions on Van Sicke, including a requirement that he take and — gasp! — pass a law school class on federal jurisdiction. The Eighth Circuit remands on other grounds, but encourages the district court to revisit this sanction because of the burden it would place on some unlucky law school to accept a practicing attorney as a student.

Seems to me the real problem would be if no local school would accept him; attending a single class out of town would be enormously expensive and disruptive. But otherwise, I kinda like the idea.

Might even be good for students, too, as a sort of ‘Don’t Let This Happen to You’ example.

Posted in Law School, Law: Ethics | 3 Comments

Canada’s Revenge

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

My family got a big kick out of this Canadian comedy show in which interviewers get ordinary Americans to demonstrate astonishing ignorance while mesmerized by a TV camera. Personally, I found it so painful to watch I stopped part one half way. Not for the softhearted or squeamish:

“This Hour Has 22 Minutes” CBC news/commentary show, in which Rick Mercer would go to the USA and ask Americans whether they believed that Russia should given the Chechens in Saskatechwan their freedom, or for help defending our national igloo, or for congratulations on legalizing insulin. This show is a national institution, but it has never been aggressively marketed to Americans. You’d be hard pressed to get a funnier outside look into the USA.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

(via boing-boing, Talking to Americans: hilarious Canadian TV show about USA).

But then I don’t like slapstick either. Nothing funny about people falling over in my book.

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on Canada’s Revenge