Bob Kohn opposes the DOJ’s proposed ebook pricing settlement with three book publishers. District Judge Denise Cote granted him leave to intervene as an amicus — but wouldn’t take his a 55-page brief. She gave him leave to file only five pages.
Kohn responded with the most unusual amicus brief I’ve ever seen: a comic strip. And it makes his point.
Here, if the embedding works, is the full text.
(Spotted via EFF’s James S. Tyre’s posting to a mailing list.)
Visiting the New York Times online dining section in order to link to What Restaurants Know (About You) for my seminar on ‘Regulation of Identification’, I get this popup:
Google has disabled use of the Maps API for this application. This site is not authorized to use the Google Maps client id provided. If you are the owner of this application, you can learn more about registering URLs here: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/guide#URLs
Coding error? NYT not paying its bill? The message popped up at the front page of a section, so it’s hard to see the NYT failing to have registered it.
Hacker steals $250k in Bitcoins from online exchange Bitfloor | Ars Technica
The future of the up-and-coming Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor was thrown into question Tuesday when the company’s founder reported that someone had compromised his servers and made off with about 24,000 Bitcoins, worth almost a quarter-million dollars. The exchange no longer has enough cash to cover all of its deposits, and it has suspended its operations while it considers its options.
This comes on the heels of news of the collapse of what’s been called a giant Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. See Official: Bitcoin Loan Shark ‘pirateat40’ Defaults for details:
A mountain of problems have been growing the past several weeks surrounding the recent drama around massive Bitcoin lender, pirateat40, as reports of fund inaccessibility came out of the wood work.
Purported to have had somewhere around 500,000 BTC in Bitcoin Savings & Trust, his fund that was offering deposit account holders up to 7% weekly interest on their holdings. The lending service provider announced a default on borrowed assets just a short while ago; the estimated value for the defaulted assets is $5,000,000 USD.
Actually, the amazing part is that Bitcoin isn’t totally dead.
Previously: Bitcoin & Gresham’s Law & Botnets (2/22/12); Checking In With Bitcoin (10/25/11) and Why Bitcoin Isn’t As Exciting as it May Sound (6/11/11).
Chisom v. Jindal is odd and sad. A federal district judge is required to adjudicate a dispute between Justices of the Supreme Court of Louisiana as to who has the most seniority. The most senior will become the next Chief Justice of that court.
At issue is the time-in-grade of Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson who, if all her years of service to the Louisiana Supreme Court are counted, will soon become Louisiana’s first black Chief Justice. Her first six years of service on the court were in a special seat created pursuant to a federal consent decree designed to remedy longstanding Louisiana racial gerrymandering of judicial electoral districts that had prevented black majority districts from electing a Justice of their choice.
The sad part comes not only from a state Supreme Court’s members being unable to settle this among themselves but from the fact that this dispute happened at all. At least from reading Judge Susie Morgan’s opinion in Chisom v. Jindal, this doesn’t even seem like a close case: the consent decree said that the new, temporary, seat that Justice Johnson occupied was to be “equal” to all the others and that she would “receive the same compensation, benefits, expenses, andemoluments of office as are now or as may hereafter beprovided by law for justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court.” Thus her seniority began there, and not when (after redistricting) Justice Johnson won further terms.
I don’t know what it means when state Supreme Court Justices are suing each, or choking each other (details here; further proceedings here), but it can’t be good.
Spotted via WSJ Law Blog.
‘In his convention speech about his second term, Obama could promise to govern like the Green Party, like a Democrat, or like a Republican; I’d sure like the Republican best.’
Long-form column, The Elevator Speech, if you must.
‘Shorter’ concept pioneered by Daniel Davies and institutionalized by Elton Beard.
The ABA is looking for nominations to its legal Blawg 100 list. It would be nice if someone who reads Jotwell but is not otherwise affiliated with it were to nominate it.
We’re working on our annual list of the 100 best legal blogs, and we’d like your advice on which blawgs you think we should include.
Use the form below to tell us about a blawg—not your own—that you read regularly and think other lawyers should know about. … We may include some of the best comments in our Blawg 100 coverage. But keep your remarks pithy—you have a 500-character limit.
Friend-of-the-blawg briefs are due no later than Sept. 7, 2012.
An online law journal isn’t exactly what it sounds like they are looking for, but it’s worth a try.
Jotwell Blenderlaw