A digital dilemma
Searching the web, I found this flickr photo by “Ksaad,” who calls it “Digital Garbage.” Ksaad’s photo (which I’ve cropped slightly) nicely captures several parts of the [tag]digital preservation[/tag] dilemma — how many of these programs won’t work on a standard PC configuration of 2006? 2016? 2106? Even if a platform might somehow run these programs in 100 years, the media might degrade beyond recovery anyway.
Paper seems immortal in comparison.
Ksaad licensed this work under a Creative Commons License. 
Congratulations to Jurist!
Congratulations to my former mentor and current colleague & friend Bernard Hibbitts for winning a “People’s Voice” Webby award for his Jurist law website. Very cool, and very, very richly deserved.
Shakespeare & serendipity
Why use a chunk from Shakespeare’s first sonnet as my first posting?
Quick answer #1: Because he wrote so much more beautifully than I ever will.
Quick answer #2: Because I wanted a placeholder.
Not-so-quick answer #3: When working on the blog’s design, I wanted something — anything — to serve as a placeholder. Shakespeare seemed like a good idea: because I’m interested in the technical, policy, and legal problems of preserving information, Shakespeare’s works seemed a textbook example of what should be preserved.
So I found a Shakespeare website and gleefully exercised my right to copy, clip, and paste from the public domain. Sidebar: it would have been even more interesting if I had clipped from a DRM’d CD-ROM of Shakespeare’s works, but that’s another post and another day . . . .
And an admission: Although I was an english & philosophy major in my undergraduate days, it’s been a very, very long time since I thought about Shakespeare. (Notwithstanding Shakespeare in Love, which was great). Having absolutely no idea what might be relevant or useful, I simply looked at the the first thing I found, Shakespeare’s first sonnet.
But serendipity is a funny thing. Considering that I’m currently writing about digital preservation, and further considering that so much of what we electronically preserve is forgettable noise and infoglut — or digital garbage! – I thought Shakespeare’s language was a keeper. Which, of course, it is.
Hello and welcome!
Welcome! I’m currently a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and in the fall, I’m joining the faculty of St. Thomas University School of Law, where I will teach intellectual property and civil procedure. This blog will focus on the law & policy of intellectual property, digital preservation, privacy, technology, and similar issues.
To keep or not to keep, that is the question
FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies . . . .
Shakespeare, excerpt from Sonnet #1.
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A blog on IP, information, and technology by Professor Ira Nathenson, St. Thomas Univ. School of Law. Nothing on this site is intended as legal advice.
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