SBM Blog

Give Me That Old-Time To Do List

"To Do" lists must be an important part of the human condition (1. Hunt 2. Gather 3. Eat 4. Sleep), which surely explains even the earliest office management software included an automated To Do list.

But it turns out that some of us can't handle automated To Do lists (my own automated list still has items from 2008).  We have, perhaps shamefully, gone back to paper lists. Is there hope for us?

Now comes an app that allows you to automate your paper To Do list. Legal Technology News writes about  Retro List:

If you feel absolutely compelled to use dye suspended in solvent and fabricated treeware to make lists, you go for it. Once you've written your list the old-fashioned way, whip out your iPhone, open Retro List and take a picture of your opus. Click "manage" to view your digitized list. Then swipe your finger on the screen to cross out completed items. Problem solved!

Image: Actual list from Johnny Cash, courtesy of Julien's Auctions.

Image Hat Tip: Lists of Note

Forget Printing Your Own Gun With 3-D Printer, Go For The Invisibility Cloak

Legal scholars are beginning to weigh in on the Department of State's request that the software instructions for printing your own plastic gun on a 3d printer be removed from the Internet. Here's the Forbes story. Turns out the primary promoter of the instructions and the strongest defender of the constitutional right to print the instructions is a University of Texas law student.  (How did you spend your spare time in law school, slacker?)

Here's an excerpt of Gerald Magliocca's thoughts at Balkinization:

Moreover, there could be a Second Amendment question lurking here.  Suppose I have a disability that makes shooting a gun difficult.  Still, I want one to protect my home.  3D printing would (in theory) let me design a gun that is customized such that I could fire it.  Do I have a fundamental right to do that? Would a total ban on 3D printed guns place an unreasonable restriction on me? 

While the jury's out on the constitutional question, we recommend skipping the gun and going straight for a 3d-printed invisibility cloak. No kidding.

In USSC: One Friend To Rule Them All

SCOTUSBlog explains recent USSC rule changes, including the resolution of "a question that sometimes befuddled counsel for a potential group of amici: must you tell the parties who all your amici might be, or is one enough?" Answer: one amicus is enough.

What's The Value Of Expungement If News Lives Forever On The Internet?

History is history, and expungement (or expunction for the purists) is expungement. The legal erasure of a conviction is a remedy of sorts against the collateral legal consequences of conviction such as ineligibility for certain occupations.  But, the Internet never forgets and search engines are nearly all-seeing. Hence a new class action suit in Connecticut that seeks defamation damages against local news outlets responsible for news stories concerning events tied to records that are subsequently expunged. The woman who brought the suit had been arrested on a marijuana violation, but the arrest was expunged after she participated in a drug education program.  Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, in a NYT op-ed, finds the reasoning behind the lawsuit torturous:

There are passages in the court briefs that make you think the lawyers were possessed by the ghost of Lewis Carroll. They debate the difference between “historical fact” and “legal fact.” They dispute whether something that was true when it happened can become not just private but actually untrue, so untrue you can swear an oath that it never happened and, in the eyes of the law, you’ll be telling the truth. Several pages and copious footnotes are devoted to considering what the meaning of “publish” is. Martin’s lawyers insist that every time a search engine delivers the old story to a new reader, it amounts to republishing, and constitutes a new libel. The defending news companies say that is ridiculous.

Despite his obvious doubts about the legal arguments in the class action suit, Keller is sympathetic to the problem of the tyranny of Internet memory and suggests that the new European initiative to enshrine a “right to be forgotten,” in the law may get some traction here.

HT: ABA Journal 

New Frontiers of the First Amendment: Soldiers Insulting the Commander-in-Chief on Facebook

National Law Journal has an op-ed, "When Soldiers Go Social On Politics," that responds to vitriolic social media comments from members of the military, and says there are limits to what soldiers can say about the president publicly:

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Parker v. Levy (1974), upheld provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibited a Navy doctor from expressing anti-war sentiment to fellow seamen and encouraging African-American seamen to refuse to go to Vietnam. The Levy court explained the justification for limitations on military expression as deriving from the "fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, [which] may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it." Because of this, the "different character of the military community and of the military mission" allows for a "different application" of free speech protections under the First Amendment.

This Now In: Yelp Reviews Of Jails And Prisons

And the purpose would be to help you choose the location of your crime more carefully, in case things don't work out?  From the Washington Post, "With few other outlets, inmates review prisons on Yelp."  As of this writing, no Michigan facilities appear to have been reviewed on Yelp.

Five Clever Steps To An Effective E-Mail Message

These tips are adapted from Inc.'s How To Write a Convincing E-Mail:

• Have a specific conclusion in mind.
• Structure your supporting argument into "digestible chunks."
• Bolster each argument with evidence.
• Repeat your conclusion as a "call to action."
• Stick a benefit in the subject line.

The Inc. piece has six tips, beginning with one that strikes me as too specific to be really useful— "Start with a decision in mind." Most of the emails I send and receive are about questions and answers, seeking clarification, or an invitation to a dialogue. But as for the other tips—

• Specific conclusions give your emails focus.
• Digestible chunks are easier to read on a computer screen than unbroken blocks of text.
• Evidence drives your message home. ("There’s also the fact that numerous studies—including one that tracked eye movement, one that surveyed people, and even one that examined the habits displayed by users of two academic databases—show that we start to read faster and less thoroughly as soon as we go online.")
• Repetition? Duh.
• Offer a benefit in the subject line—brilliant! ("Chocolate in my office—now")

Digital Manhunts And The Law

Are crowd-sourced criminal investigations the future, and if so, what are its implications for criminal procedure and criminal jurisprudence? From Wired:

[T]here are messy precedents emerging from mass photo and video data emerging from an era of ubiquitous cellphone cameras augmenting police surveillance: the ex-FBI technology official says that “legal and ethical questions” cause investigators to hesitate before launching big data-mining projects, even with all the broad leeway they have to violate citizens’ privacy. That hesitation doesn’t have to apply when citizens volunteer the data.

Happy Birthday, National Digital Public Library

A potentially wonderful new national treasure, the National Digital Public Library, launches today, with copyright caveats as explained by NYRBlog's Robert Darnton:

The main impediment to the DPLA’s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published after 1923, and some that go back as far as 1873. Court cases during the last few months have opened up the possibility that the fair use provision of the copyright act of 1976 could be extended to make more recent books available for certain purposes, such as service to the visually impaired and some forms of teaching. And if, as expected, the DPLA excludes books that are still selling on the market (most exhaust their commercial viability within a few years), authors and publishers might grant the exercise of their rights to the DPLA.

In any case, we cannot wait for courts to untangle legalities before creating an effective administration. The informal secretariat at Harvard is being replaced by a nonprofit corporation organized according to the 501(c)3 provisions of the tax code. The steering committee has been succeeded by a board of directors. And the six groups will evolve into a committee system with carefully defined functions, such as outreach to public libraries and community colleges. The choice of an executive director, Daniel Cohen, a superb historian and Internet expert from George Mason University, was announced on March 5; the first staff members have already been hired; and administrative headquarters are being set up in Boston.

In An Emergency Text, Don't Phone

Emma Roller on Slate explains why:

Here’s a simple answer from the AT&T website: “During an emergency situation, text messages may go through more quickly than voice calls because they require fewer network resources.”