Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As argued in my recent article on private copyright enforcement and feedback loops, a deficit of transparency and public participation in private copyright enforcement has fostered gross overreach by copyright owners. A recent example of copyright overreach is amply demonstrated by the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was negotiated secretly and addresses far more than mere “counterfeiting.” (See here for a law professors’ letter I’ve signed against ACTA.)

It’s good to see such concerns echoed in the Congress’ just-released Declaration. For example:

International intellectual property policy making should be conducted through mechanisms of transparency and openness that encourage broad public participation. New rules should be made within the existing forums responsible for intellectual property policy, where both developed and developing countries have full representation, and where the texts of and forums for considering proposals are open. All new international intellectual property standards must be subject to democratic checks and balances, including domestic legislative approval and opportunities for judicial review.

Along similar lines, the Declaration calls excessive IP enforcement out to task, noting that “Government and private IP enforcement are commandeering greater social resources in order to impose stricter penalties than ever before, with fewer safeguards and less procedural fairness.” The Declaration contains many other important ideas, such as making sure that new IP protections are rooted in transparent research that demonstrates the need for new IP rights, including addressing the fact that fair uses and other IP limitations also generate economic value. Other important mentions are the importance of libraries and archives, strengthening IP exceptions, rejuvenating notice-based formalities, and much more.

I’d go on, but instead you should read the full document at http://infojustice.org/washington-declaration. Even better, sign it. (I did: I’m # 95.).

Chicago is a beautiful town.

It wasn’t all play. My presentation focused on my ongoing Cyberskills project, which uses live, online role-playing simulations to teach law. I presented portions of two papers, the abstracts for which are provided below:

Best Practices for the Law of the Horse:
Teaching Cyberlaw (and Law) with Online Role-Playing Simulations

Judge Frank Easterbrook once mocked Cyberlaw as “the law of the horse,” a subject lacking in cohesion and therefore unworthy of inclusion in the law school curriculum. This Article responds squarely to Easterbrook’s challenge and concludes that Cyberlaw is a course that can be taught particularly well in law schools when learning occurs through live, online role-playing imulations. These techniques have been successfully used by the author for the past three years, casting students as lawyers in realistic simulations that unfold on the live internet. Unlike other Articles responding to Easterbrook, this Article bypasses a doctrinal or theoretical approach, avoiding (for now) the longstanding debate between Cyberlaw exceptionalists and unexceptionalists. Because Easterbrook’s attack is ultimately educationally rooted, the Article takes a pedagogical approach, concluding that Cyberlaw presents a unique opportunity for holistic and experiential legal education that combines doctrine, theory, skills, and values in a highly engaging manner. Accordingly, in light of the recent studies Best Practices in Legal Education and the Carnegie Report, the Article explains how the author came to develop such a course and outlines how such a course might be structured. The Article concludes with a response to Easterbrook’s existential (“surface”) and normative (“illumination”) attacks on Cyberlaw, concluding that both are without merit.

Navigating the Uncharted Waters of Teaching Law
with Online Simulations

The internet is more than a place where the Millennial Generation communicates, plays, and shops. It’s also a medium that raises issues central to nearly every existing field of legal doctrine, whether basic (such as torts, property, or contracts) or advanced (such as Intellectual Property, Criminal Procedure, or Securities Regulation). This creates tremendous opportunities for legal educators interested in using the live internet for experiential education. This Article examines how live websites can be used to create engaging and holistic simulations that tie together doctrine, theory, skills, and values in ways impossible to achieve with the case method. In this Article, the author discusses observations stemming from his experiences teaching law courses using live, online roleplaying simulations that cast students in the role of attorneys. The Article concludes that such simulations have significant benefits for law students, and surprisingly, can also benefit scholars who use simulations proactively to deepen the synergies between their teaching and scholarship. However, the resources required for simulations may also exacerbate long-standing systemic tensions in legal education, particularly regarding institutional resources as well as the sometimes conflicting roles of faculty as teacherscholars. Because the American Bar Association will almost certainly, and appropriately, require law schools to expand their simulation offerings, the benefits and tradeoffs of simulations teaching must be addressed now.

Live websites provide a dynamic “sandbox” for role-playing simulations that cast students as lawyers acting for fictional clients. Such simulations, initially crafted for a Cyberlaw class, can also be used in a wide variety of other courses. This provides a highly configurable platform for the immersive and holistic learning of knowledge, skills, and professional identity, including realistic fact-finding, advocacy, negotiation, ethical traps, and much more. The workshop will first provide background on relevant technology and methodology. We will then move to a mini role-playing exercise using the live Internet, followed by a discussion of the benefits and challenges of online simulations.

Interested readers can find my presentation materials, including a sample scoresheet incorporating all MacCrate skills factors, here.

Does the three-year program of legal education work well? This depends entirely on what legal educators do with the three years. If legal educators are lazy, uninspired or indifferent to their responsibility to educate, three years is certainly too long. But if they are thoughtful, focused and creative, three years may not be long enough.

Rose Cuison Villazor says:

Ultimately, the question about reducing the cost of legal education should be less about its length but rather its quality. Law schools must put greater emphasis in developing and strengthening programs that would help law students become engaged and ethical lawyers. These include increasing the availability of skills-based courses, clinical and internship programs, enhanced academic support and mentoring services, providing more mentoring and offering more interdisciplinary courses. By enhancing the traditional model instead of radically changing it, many law students might just view their legal education as an important investment in time and money.

For more, go to the main debate page.

H/T to Therapeutic Jurisprudence page on Facebook.

Scholars often focus on the substance of copyrights as opposed to the procedures used to enforce them.  Yet copyright enforcement procedures are at the root of significant overreach and deserve greater attention in academic literature.  This Article explores three types of private enforcement procedures: direct enforcement (cease-and-desist practice); indirect enforcement (DMCA takedowns); and automated enforcement (YouTube’s Content ID filtering program).  Such procedures can produce a “substance-procedure-substance” feedback loop that causes significant de facto overextensions of copyrights, particularly against those creating and sharing User-Generated Content (“UGC”).  To avoid this feedback, the Article proposes descriptive and normative frameworks aimed towards the creation of better procedures. Looking to the source of procedures, the relevant actors, and the functions of enforcement (the descriptive framework), the Article suggests principles of transparency, participation, and “balanced accuracy” (the normative framework) that might lead to private enforcement procedures that accommodate the reasonable cost and efficiency needs of copyright owners without trampling on UGC.

You can find the abstract and download the article here.

Today’s New York Times carries a really well-written editorial by former Bronco Nate Jackson. He says:

Before the 1950s, when they wore soft helmets without face masks, players didn’t lead with their heads. They dived at opponents’ legs and corralled them with their arms. Leading with the head meant facial disfigurement and lots of stitches. But once leather was replaced by hard plastic, enclosing the head in protective armor, all bets were off. Couple that with the size of today’s players and the speed of the modern game, and you have a recipe for cerebellum custard.

In reading it, I couldn’t help but think of Lessig. Jackson notes that part of the problem is that modern helmets make it easier to make aggressive, head-first hits. He also notes that a player’s “manhood” will be questioned if he shies away from helmet contact.  In Lessig’s terms, regulation is done by the combined interactions of laws, social norms, markets, and architecture (or “code” in the case of computers).

The helmet problem is a paradigmatic case of the difficulties of regulation. Even if NFL rules (“law“) prohibit certain kinds of contact, it still takes place. So the NFL is trying a band-aid solution through fines and possible suspension (“markets“).

But I doubt that the problem will be solved merely through the occasional penalty or fine. A major reason for the massive amount of head hits and injuries is because of social “norms,” namely, players and coaches who expect aggressive play. Jackson says “The N.F.L. could also try educating coaches, who now believe that a headless hit is an ineffectual one, about the perils of head-first tackling, in hopes that over time safer techniques would become the norm.” (Note the use of “norm” there?!) Maybe some education will help, but I suspect that “prisoner’s dilemma” thinking will prevent any coach or player from voluntarily abandoning techniques that might risk a won-loss record. That’s not a justification, it’s a fact. When a player’s manhood is defined by his aggressiveness and lack of fear, then fines, penalties, and best practices won’t cut it. When a coach’s success is defined by his won/loss record, he’ll put winning first. And when a league’s bottom-line stems largely from hard hits, it may apply band-aids as long as possible, blinding itself to the real source of the problem.

The source of the problem? Ultimately, it’s one of “architecture” – here, the physical architecture of the game. It’s what enabled more aggressive play, as well as the success that gave rise to the norms of let-slip-the-dogs-of-war head-butting Havoc. And that, in turn, brings us back to law. But here the law is one the NFL can’t fight. It’s physics: force = mass x acceleration. Combining helmeted heads with bigger, faster players, and you have a recipe for what Jackson aptly calls “cerebellum custard.”

What’s the solution? Jackson toys with the idea of doing away with helmets altogether and returning to the earlier “rag days” of “bloody noses.” Maybe. But in a day of 300-lb. linemen, that’s a recipe for instant death, not instant replay. My instinct is that the NFL’s desire to make money and its fear of losing its fan base will outweigh any meaningful efforts to reform the game. As Jackson says:

But stiffer on-field penalties, fines, suspensions, seminars, summit meetings, press releases — these are knee-jerk public-relations reactions that will do little. The only way to prevent head injuries in football is no more football. It is a violent game by design. The use of helmets plays a critical role in creating that violence. The players understand the risks, and the fans enjoy watching them take those risks. Changing the rules enough to truly safeguard against head injuries would change the game beyond recognition. It wouldn’t be football anymore.

Short of better helmets, smaller players, or meaningful changes to player/coach/league norms, I am not hopeful. But being a indirect part of the problem, at 1PM, I and millions of others will be watching the gladiators go at it on CBS.

Maybe we really are the Romans.