Today's New Blawg

Thoroughly Modern Monyca is a criminal defense attorney in New York City. [Via the Blawg Ring] Here's Monyca on anticipating the results of the New York Bar exam: "It's sort of like waiting for Santa Claus, only with fear." No worries, she passed; New Jersey too!

Wired 11.11

The November issue of Wired Magazine was chock full of good stuff, as I just got around to discovering. Some highly subjective highlights:

• A Fair User's Manual: Brendan I. Koerner unpacks the fair use doctrine.


• The Only Thing I've Copied Is My Lawyer!: Mark Robinson and Adam Rogers supply a C&D response for any occasion (this thing's suitable for framing).


• Dan Gillmor on Mitch Kapor and Chandler: Reinventing Your Inbox. Bittersweetly, Mitch posts today that he's putting his weblog on hold in order to focus more on OSAF and Chandler, and offers this insight on what details will be revealed publicly and when: "After all, transparency is not Reality TV."


• Larry Lessig (now a regular Wired columnist), The New Road to the White House – How grassroots blogs are transforming presidential politics: "A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built."


• Bruce Sterling, on findings from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Cosmic Reality Check): "Are there political implications to the idea that most of the universe is untouchable, endlessly expanding, scarcely knowable? Will we finally get over our obsession with static utopias, sudden armageddons, limits, and closure? Is there philosophical comfort to be found in a silent, never-ending steady bang?"


• And from Gary Rivlin's cover story, a profile of Linus Torvalds (Leader of the Free World), "He jokingly refers to himself as 'Linux's hood ornament,' and he's anything but an autocrat. His power is based on nothing more than the collective respect of his cohorts."

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies...

Blogger has a helpful and only partially tongue in cheek "Official Stance" on the Mom issue, courtesy of Biz Stone: "Our experts here at Blogger Support have come up with a list of suggestions to help you navigate around the dreaded 'Mom Scenario' (or prevent it altogether)."

(My Mom's computer shy, but she likes it when I read posts to her occasionally. And show off pictures of her handiwork.)

Today's New Blawg

Displacement of Concepts is by a group of lecturers from the University of East Anglia and the Norwich Law School, writing about "technology, innovation, law, economics, cyberspace, intellectual property, and other things of interest to the humans inhabiting the information society." [Via Donna Wentworth] Very interesting stuff to this human, and most likely you too.

Blog Comment Liability Threatened

Justene Adamec: "I have a letter from an attorney threatening to sue me and 'my agents' for invasion of privacy, misrepresentation and interference with economic relations all because of the comments to this post." As Steve Glover points out in response to commentary from Right on the Left Beach [via Kevin Murphy], the post and its comments live on in Google's cache as (at present) the #2 result for "Infotel Publications." Some of my initial thoughts on how this kind of question might be affected by the 9th Circuit's Batzel v. Smith decision (PDF) are included here.

[Update] Unsurprisingly, lots of posts are flowing on this, and McGehee has a good round up.