Well, it took a little bit of time, but the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has issued revised jury instructions, recommended for all federal cases, updated for today’s social media age. It’s “old wine in new bottles” — i.e., traditional rules adapted to new social networking communications — which illustrates that some things really should not (and do not) change at all where social media are concerned.

Federal Court Officials Issue Guidance on Jury Use of Blackberries, iPhones, Twitter, LinkedIn Etc. [TechLaw].

You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cell phone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The U.S. Supreme Court, for the first time, took note of social media today, observing that “soon … it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues.”

This landmark event occurred in Citizens United v. FEC, a case overturning the McCain-Feingold 2002 campaign reform legislation which required corporations to fund “electioneering communications” through PACs. Supreme Court Removes Limits on Corporate, Labor Donations to Campaigns [Fox]. So get ready to see explicit corporate-funded movies, TV spots, Twitter campaigns and Facebook fan pages furthering their political views every November.

Whether that is good or bad for American democracy I will leave to readers’ own judgments.

Rapid changes in technology—and the creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expression—counsel against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media or by certain speakers. See Part II–C, supra. Today, 30-second television ads may be the most effective way to convey a political message. See McConnell, supra, at 261 (opinion of SCALIA, J.). Soon, however, it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant informa- tion about political candidates and issues. Yet, §441b would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds. See 2 U. S. C. §441b(a); MCFL, supra, at 249. The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.

Hearing Room

It is hard to understand how “conference reports” from Congress on pending legislation can have fallen from 200 per year to just 11 over the past three decades. Secret Bill Writing On the Rise [Washington Post]. But it indicates, sadly, that laws in America are increasingly being made in back rooms, not the public forums our system of politics has traditionally used. That may be mere window-dressing, but it is IMPORTANT symbolically, in my view.

In a letter to C-SPAN Chairman Brian Lamb, House Republican leader John Boehner wrote, “Unfortunately, the president, Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader (Harry) Reid now intend to shut out the American people at the most critical hour by skipping a bipartisan conference committee and hammering out a final health care bill in secret.”  The complaint sounded a lot like one nine years ago, when Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Republicans “locked out the Democrats from the conference committee” meeting on the budget. “We were invited to the first meeting and told we would not be invited back, that the Republican majority was going to write this budget all on their own, which they have done. So much for bipartisanship.”

A J.D. degree is not worth what it once was as the legal industry wrestles with unprecedented business changes.

Posted via web from glenn’s posterous

http://shortyawards.com/glennm

Hey, it’s hardly an Oscar or People’s Choice award, but this rocks!!

Posted via email from glenn’s posterous

There has been much discussion recently about the movie industry’s efforts to maintain its product release “windows,” so that theatrical performances precede pay-per-view, followed by DVD sales, pay TV (HBO, etc.) and finally advertiser-supported television. My view is that these folks are shooting themselves in the foot, because DVD sales actually declined in 2009 for the first time. The lesson is not that DVDs are being sold OR rented “too early,” rather that technological convergence is making more and more options available to consumers, so building a library of physical DVDs is relatively unimportant, and certainly no longer a priority.

But as usual — see their opposition to the VCR — Hollywood has this all backwards. Again.

Netflix, Warner Bros., Adjust Online Movie Renting [CNet News.com].

In a ground-breaking deal for the online movie renting, Netflix and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal that calls for Netflix to get access to more of the studio’s catalog content.In exchange, Netflix agreed to do something it has never done before. Netflix won’t offer new releases from the studio on DVD and Blu-ray for a period of 28 days after they go on sale.

It’s not a good political sign at all that liberals seem to be departing the president in droves. The more things “change,” the more it appears politicians give us more of the same.

As the Nation’s Pulse Races, Obama Can’t Seem to Find His [NYTimes.com].

President Obama’s favorite word is “unprecedented,” as Carol Lee of Politico pointed out. Yet he often seems mired in the past as well, letting his hallmark legislation get loaded up with old-school bribes and pork; surrounding himself with Clintonites; continuing the Bushies’ penchant for secrecy and expansive executive privilege; doubling down in Afghanistan while acting as though he’s getting out; and failing to capitalize on snazzy new technology while agencies thumb through printouts and continue their old turf battles.

See all the photos at glenn’s posterous or flikr.

Snowdrifts Everywhere

In my view, the second sentence here is the most important. If one posts material viewable by the entire world, the author implicitly licenses anyone to use the content-—in other words, no copyright applies, and the author does not “own” his or her user-generated content. The necessary corollary is that when the whole world can see your stuff, the government does not need permission, let alone a warrant, to look too.

Privacy law was largely created in the pre-Internet age, and new rules are needed to keep up with the ways people communicate today. Much of what occurs online, like blog posting, is intended to be an open declaration to the world, and law enforcement is within its rights to read and act on what is written. Other kinds of communication, particularly in a closed network, may come with an expectation of privacy. If government agents are joining social networks under false pretenses to spy without a court order, for example, that might be crossing a line.

Of course, where a social network allows users to restrict access, to friends or followers, the opposite conclusion holds. For instance, unless Facebook wall posts are made available to “everyone” in the user’s privacy settings, then there remain both legitimate ownership and privacy interests, such that the government can’t monitor that content without both probable cause and a warrant.

It is hardly surprising that as digital video recorders (DVRs) become more ubiquitous, their basic function (i.e., automatic time shifting of television shows) is rapidly becoming commoditized. When TiVO was introduced in 1999 it revolutionized TV by giving users control of what they watched, when they want to watch. So as that feature spread to other devices—and especially once DirecTV stopped licensing TiVo technology for its set-top boxes—it is only natural that pundits would begin declaring the death of TiVO. Can TiVo Reinvent Itself in Time? [paidContent].

But TiVO has never been a simple DVR device, Coupled with a smart filters, custom recommendations and a sophisticated “season pass” feature, TiVO offers to consumers a software-based platform for customizing the television experience, while it simultaneously offers advertisers and broadcasters a tremendous wealth of valuable data on viewing habits. Moving into the next decade, it is this information aggregation function that promises to be the value proposition for the business going forward.

With its highly intuitive and user-friendly software, TIVO is better-positioned than anyone else to help users sift through and manage “infinite choice” in the same way Google has made the Web itself searchable. Recording linear TV for later playback will continue to have its place, but as more Internet-delivered video comes to television screens, TiVO will be the front-end portal through which subscribers access TV, video-on-demand, broadband content, interactive services and advertising.

To me, this says that TiVO’s biggest competitor is not stand-alone DVR machines, but rather the advent of on-demand video devices like Netflix-enabled Blu-ray players, Roku boxes and AppleTV. The biggest question is whether the need for local storage of videos, whether on a PC or DVR, will survive the transition to Web-enabled streaming video. As sites like Clicker.com make Internet video fully searchable, is there enough value-added with TiVO to convince consumers to continue to buy a hardware device in order to get access to software?

Prediction: Within five years, the market will see TiVO-branded software for multiple operating systems, leveraging the company’s technological superiority in a way that Hulu and the like have not as yet even tried to match.