Diagnosing the quirky, hyper, and compulsive personalities of most technology people, Rands In Repose has dubbed this affliction Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder (or NADD).
How can you tell if you've got it? "Stop reading right now. Look at your desktop. How many tasks are you working besides reading this weblog? More than 10? You've got N.A.D.D."
The article is just over a year old, but as I told the author at Six Apart's Movable Type 3.1 shindig, "Legal people needn't be in the dark about this condition. Who knows - one day it may become a recognized defense to committing a crime."
Posted by Andrew Zangrilli on August 16, 2004 02:35 PMAttorneys from my former client Torys, LLP have published an article on workplace policies for cameraphones.
It's an interesting piece, and I'd like to comment much further, especially on some of the issues that have been left out. But I feel proscribed; for two reasons: first and foremost, loyalty to a former client, but second, the fact that the mobile blogging tool Justin developed and launched about a year ago - Airblogging - has been used on occasion to post live photos from workplaces. The results are usually positive, both for the blogger and the employer, but of course they needn't necessarily be.
Accordingly, I will re-affirm the obvious point, just in case: policies should be aimed at users and usage, not at the underlying technologies - which can always be used for good or ill, depending on the intention and motivation of the user.
According to this Reuters article, Yahoo! is being sued over an incident that occurred on one of its message boards.
The plaintiff, Stephen Galton of the law firm Galton & Helm, filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming that Yahoo unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.
Galton wants to certify a class of people who: 1) have been targeted by abusive messages on a Yahoo board; 2) tried to get such messages stopped or learn the identity of the message poster; and 3) had such requests denied within the last four years.
A class action suit is not to be taken lightly -- it requires serious financial committment for the plaintiff's firm, and special sanctions become available to the defense.
If this suit goes forward, it could have a major chilling effect on other California Internet companies that provide message boards and group discussions, such as Google, Craigslist and FindLaw.
All of the aforementioned companies have established rules regulating the group discussions, however Galton's suit alleges the failure to follow the posted rules. This point is reminiscent of lessons learned during the recent Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform: It's great to self-establish rules of conduct for your organization, but you'd better be prepared to follow the standards because you will be held to them.
In light of the available facts, an interesting question is: What are Yahoo's defenses? At first glance, there seems to be a serious class commonality issue. And then there's potential First Amendment arguments. Though Yahoo is not commenting on the litigation, a settlement or a demurrer may be forthcoming from the Internet company.
For now, I close with one observation: Yahoo's allegedly incomplete responses to Galton's requests for identities of message board users could be largely due to the fact that people frequently give false information during online registration processes. As a computer-using dog in a Far Side comic once said, "No one knows you're a dog on the Internet."
Posted by Andrew Zangrilli on August 6, 2004 02:11 PMContinuing our coverage of legal bloggers that appear in judicial opinions, we are pleased to report that Douglas Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy has been footnoted in two recent opinions: 1) The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' US v. Penaranda, footnote 9; and 2) The Federal District Court in Utah's US v. Croxford, footnote 33.
Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, posts an abundance of information concerning the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Blakley v. Washington. In Blakley, the Court held that where the facts supporting the defendant's exceptionally harsh criminal sentence were neither admitted by the defendant, nor found by a jury, the sentence violated defendant's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. To say that the Blakley decision has created a big ripple in Criminal Law practice is an understatement.
Sentencing Law and Policy blog is at the center of this whirlwind issue, and it's clear from the posts that Berman is deeply immersed in his subject matter. Detailed coverage of a highly specialized area, such as Criminal Sentencing, is an example how blogging can outshine the traditional media. We hope to promote more of this kind of blogging in the future.
Thanks to Robert Brownstone of Fenwick & West for tipping us to the July 19th WSJ article, "Law Professor's Web Log Is Jurists' Must-Read," by Laurie Cohen.
On a related note: Aggregating judicial mentions of blogging is core to the Blogbook's "mission," and we encourage all legal bloggers to email us with your good news.
Posted by Andrew Zangrilli on August 4, 2004 11:03 AM