April 2009

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CaseCheck crosses the border

23 April 2009 in Cases

CaseCheck, headed by Stephen Moore, has since late 2007 been delivering case summaries from the Scottish Courts and EAT in a Web 2.0 environment.

Now, in a tie-up with Law Brief Publishing, CaseCheck has added 4,000 England and Wales and EU case summaries from Law Brief Update. Law Brief Publishing was set up by Tim Kevan, barrister and BabyBarista. Tim was impressed by Stephen’s dynamic and innovative approach and views the arrangement as a great way to give Law Brief Update’s extensive back catalogue of case reports a new audience.

Free Culture – the extended Remix

8 April 2009 in Copyright, Free culture

Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy (published in the UK by Bloomsbury Academic) is the latest in Lawrence Lessig‘s series on regulation of cyberspace. Lessig is undeniably the leading thinker on copyright in the digital age and, though many label him a radical, his arguments derive from those of earlier leading thinkers and statesmen, many of whom were conservatives.

In Remix, Lessig has developed and refined the arguments in Free Culture (2004), remixed and added plenty of value and thereby produced something new and freshly relevant.

Remix‘s central theme is that the current copyright regime is so at odds with the 21st century context in which it operates that we risk criminalising an entire generation – the net generation – who are growing up with the means to consume, remix and create and publish media in ways unimaginable even 30 years ago, yet with the permission to do less even than consume according to the 20th century industry models. Saddled with arcane laws of whose reach they may be unaware, and which, if acknowledged, they cannot understand and cannot respect, our children do what comes naturally, what seems fair to them – they “break the law”. I’d be surprised if most of us with regular internet access have not done so too, albeit to a lesser degree.

The book is in three parts: in Part 1 Lessig charts the transition from the read-only culture of the past to the read-write culture of the present; in Part 2 he describes the evolution of the hybrid internet economies, exhibiting varying mixes of commercial and sharing economy attributes, with numerous case studies of well known Web 2.0 successes; and in Part 3 he suggests the reforms that will enable the future of creativity rather than criminalise it. These are both the reforms to the law he rehearsed in Free Culture, but also, more importantly, reforms to our norms and expectations around the control of culture.

His conclusion is, however, bleak. Before a truce in the copyright wars has any hope of being brokered, the wholly disproportionate influence of BigMedia on Congress must be addressed.

Laws and politics are different here of course, but the net effect (pardon the pun) is much the same. The uncustomer is always in the wrong.

Read this book.

Blowing it

8 April 2009 in Publishing

Plenty to ponder about the future not just of the established news industry but also of other old media players in this post from Jeff Jarvis and the numerous comments:

You’ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn’t. You blew it.

Martindale-Hubbell opens the doors – just a crack

3 April 2009 in Social networking | 4 comments

For LexisNexis it’s simple: lawyers want a network developed by legal professionals, for legal professionals, and LexisNexis will provide it.

From their recent press release on the launch of Martindale-Hubbell Connected:

A survey conducted by Leader Networks in 2008 demonstrated the need for a private, online network for lawyers. According to the survey, while 54 percent of attorneys belong to an online network, fewer than 10 percent of lawyers can rely on current networking tools to help them work more efficiently and cost effectively. Lawyers trust other lawyers; 40 percent responded that they want a trusted, private, authenticated network….

At launch, the network is open to any private practice attorneys and corporate counsel. Non-lawyers such as law school faculty and students, law firm marketing directors, paralegals and other qualified legal professionals will be invited to join the network later this year as the network continues to evolve.

“Outsiders” from amongst legal commentators, marketing and social networking experts have not to date been given access and even many “insiders” (attorneys) have had difficulty signing up. Pulling no punches, Kevin O’Keefe thinks this stinks:

The days of launching a web based product without seeking real feedback and ownership from users and early adopters are over. The days of closed communities locking out those who may speak frankly and openly about community experiences are over. The days of a controlled PR campaign without integrity and transparency are over.

In developing MH Connected, LexisNexis seems to have interpreted the findings that less than 10 per cent of lawyers polled said they can rely on their current network to help them work more efficiently and that 40 per cent said they wanted a trusted, private, authenticated network as showing the need for a closed, lawyers-only network. But as Kevin, Doug Cornelius and other commentators have pointed out, non-lawyers should not have been excluded and useful feedback will come mainly from early adopters. Non-lawyer early adopters of legal networking should have been key to beta testing; and amongst lawyers those early adopters are that less than 10 per cent who already get value from public networks, not the 90 per cent who say they don’t. LexisNexis have belatedly discovered this.