BLS Library Blog

The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom designated this past Friday, January 28, 2011 as Data Privacy Day. The second annual Choose Privacy Week is scheduled for May 1-7, 2011. This website developed a resource for libraries called Data Privacy Day: Our Shared Responsibility — What Libraries Can Do, a tip sheet developed by Data Privacy Day and the National Cyber Security Alliance’s Stay Safe Online. This 23 minute film on privacy issues has “man on the street” interviews and features Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Geoffrey Stone, and ALA President Camila Alire discussing privacy.

News from the Congress and law enforcement raises concerns about data privacy as the Department of Justice has renewed calls for legislation mandating that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) retain certain customer usage data for up to two years. On Tuesday, January 25, the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security’s hearing on Data Retention as a Tool for Investigating Internet Child Pornography and Other Internet Crimes chaired by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R. WI) had testimony from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein that data retention was crucial to fighting Internet crimes especially online child pornography. Current policies that only require ISPs to preserve usage data at the specific request of law enforcement authorities are just not sufficient, Weinstein said. 

It is unclear if the hearing is a sign that a data retention bill is imminent, said John Morris, the general counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, who also testified. It is also uncertain whether only ISPs will be required to retain data, or whether services such as e-mail providers might be included, said Morris. Regardless of the scope, mandatory data retention laws raise important privacy and free speech concerns. “In the privacy realm, the bottom line is that law enforcement is talking about having a massive amount of information on 230 million presumably innocent Americans using the Internet, being tracked and retained,” he said.

The recent launch of OpenGovernment.org will make keeping track of local government easier for researchers at Brooklyn Law School. The project allows users to search local, city and state level government. The initial launch has data from five state legislatures: California, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin. The site hosts official announcements, news coverage, blog posts, social media alerts and more information about local government. It also makes it easy for citizens to organize around issues being debated by state legislatures and contact their elected officials directly. 

The website states in its Background and Mission page that the site “comes from the team that brought you OpenCongress.org, a leading web tool for government transparency in the federal U.S. Congress.” More data and additional states and cities will be added as they become available. Interestingly, the webpage cites the New York State Senate as complying with open government principles. “Writing in early 2011, the situation with official websites for U.S. state legislatures is nearly exactly as it was with THOMAS in 2004. Unfortunately, almost no U.S. state government makes its data available in ways that are compliant with the Principles of Open Government Data, or even close. Out of the 49 bicameral state legislatures in the U.S. and one unicameral body (that of Nebraska), only one single chamber — one entity out of 99, namely the New York State Senate — makes its legislative data available in ways that sufficiently comply with the community-generated Eight Principles of Open Government Data.”

The site came out of a 2007 working group held in Sebastopol, California, which developed the 8 Principles of Open Government Data. These principles are the starting point for evaluating openness in government records.

1. Data Must Be Complete – All public data are made available. Data are electronically stored information or recordings, including but not limited to documents, databases, transcripts, and audio/visual recordings. Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations, as governed by other statutes.
2. Data Must Be Primary – Data are published as collected at the source, with the finest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.
3. Data Must Be Timely – Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
4. Data Must Be Accessible – Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes. 5. Data Must Be Machine processable – Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing of it.
6. Access Must Be Non-Discriminatory – Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
7. Data Formats Must Be Non-Proprietary – Data are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
8. Data Must Be License-free – Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed as governed by other statutes. Finally, compliance must be reviewable. A contact person must be designated to respond to people trying to use the data. A contact person must be designated to respond to complaints about violations of the principles. An administrative or judicial court must have the jurisdiction to review whether the agency has applied these principles appropriately.

A seminar is a course offered for a small group of advanced law students.  A seminar paper is a record of what you say to the group about a topic you have studied.

How to Write Legal Seminar Paper: Brooklyn Law School Library is co-hosting  a workshop on February 2, 2011, at Brooklyn Law School,  Room 504 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM.

The workshop focuses on finding topics, researching topics, developing theses, and avoiding plagiarism. Led by  Elizabeth Fajans, Associate Professor of Legal Writing and Kathleen Darvil, Reference Librarian and Adjunct Professor of Law, this workshop will help improve and sharpen your skills.

Professor Fajans is the winner of the 2011 Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning & Research Section Award. The award is given to an individual who has made a significant lifetime contribution to the field of legal writing and research. Professor Fajans has been Brooklyn Law School’s writing specialist since 1984. She is a co-author of the seminal book, Writing and Analysis in the Law, now in its 5th edition, and the more recent Writing for Law Practice, as well as the publication, Scholarly Writing for Law Students: Seminar Papers, Law Review Notes, Law Review Competition Papers, co-authored by Fajans and BLS Professor Mary Falk.

Law Students and Seminar Papers: Here are five great reasons to write a legal seminar paper:

1.       Opportunity to publish, develop professional reputation

2.       Writing product for jobs, especially judicial clerkships

3.       Opportunity to specialize in area of interest and to learn substantive law

4.       Self-fulfillment achieved from producing a truly independent scholarly writing

5.       Enter and win a legal writing competiton

Legal Writing Competitions: Entering a legal writing competition helps you hone your legal research and writing skills, which increases your attractiveness to potential employers.  You’ll have a superior writing sample which you’ll be proud to discuss and show others.  Moreover, the odds are excellent that your paper will be published, you’ll win a monetary prize, or you’ll be invited to present your paper at a conference of practitioners in your area of interest.

Locating Legal Writing Competitions:  Unless specifically noted, all contests listed are open to students at all ABA-accredited law schools.

• University of Idaho: Legal Writing Competitions Directory http://www.law.uidaho.edu/legalwritingcontests
• ABA Law Student Division: Awards, Competitions, Grants and Scholarships http://www.abanet.org/lsd/competitions/writing-contests/
• University of Arkansas School of Law Legal Research and Writing Program: Legal Writing Competitions Blog http://legalwritingcompetitions.blogspot.com/

Launched in mid-December, The Discography: Legal Encyclopedia of Popular Music is a new database that links to legal decisions relevant to the music industry. Maintained by Washington University’s Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL), the site is the brainchild of Loren Wells, a recent University of Washington law school graduate. He began working on the site as a personal project, and then developed it for use in a law school paper. CERL invited him to launch the project full-scale. The central Database includes 1,300 entries covering 2,400 court opinions (including over 30,000 pieces of data) spanning almost 200 years, fully summarized and searchable by numerous variables, featuring nearly every artist, covering copyrights and contracts, trusts, torts and more. There’s also a Blog and up-to-date legal music News.

Wells envisions that the site will be useful for academics, music writers or journalists, and independent music managers who wish to gain familiarity with the legal aspects of the music industry. Some of the most interesting disputes have been eliminated from the database as it does not contain cases that settled out of court. The academic or practical usefulness of the database is unclear for now as Wells decides how to organize the “Case Type” search parameters. The site could provide anything from basic entertainment to meaningful guidance for small-time music managers trying to run a business and protect their clients.

The National Law Journal article “Project marries recent law graduate’s love of music with his new vocation” has more details on the database. This YouTube video features Loren Wells explaining features of The Discography and its use in answering such questions as whether black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars. Researchers interested in music can see how the courts dealt with this question and nearly any other legal issue involving the music industry.

A search of recent Second Circuit cases dealing with the issue of royalites lead to the case of Robinson v. Sanctuary Record Groups, Ltd., 383 Fed.Appx. 54, 2010 WL 2649849 and this short description: “The Sugar Hill Gang, Grand Master Flash, The Wall Street Mob, The Furious Five, and Grand Master Melle Mel, along with Sylvia Robinson, founder of Sugar Hill Records, godmother of rap music, and former member of Mickey and Sylvia, which had a few hits back in the day, sued Sanctuary Records Group for release from record contracts. After obtaining a default judgment for rescission of the contracts, Plaintiffs sought damages in the realm of $30 million, even though they’d initially only sought rescission. and damages from unpaid royalties. Artists were released from contracts after default judgment, but were awarded no damages. Both Sanctuary and the Plaintiffs appealed, the former seeking to vacate the default and the latter requesting monetary relief. After first being unsuccessful, the Court of Appeals later remanded to the District Court to reconsider their denial to vacate the default; it is the preference of the courts to resolve disputes on the merits.”