Denise Howell, Buzz Bruggeman, Jason Calacanis on Today’s Digital Legalities

Date: June 25, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Buzz Bruggeman
30 yrs practiving law
litigation
bg with technology
built activewords

Denise – appellete and IP law
programmers of the legal field

Buzz – huge friend of mind manager
lead the discussion and your things

law is static – wrong – very dynamic
lots of people blog about the law
Howard bashman – aappelete law blogger who keeps up to date on all the app courts in the US
broad readership w/ lawyers but even broader with judges
blog has been cited in a SCOTUS opinion
notion of participatory law

thinking about the audience – we have to confront issues in daily life
comparing the notion of locked silos of info (westlaw, lex-nex)

Jason C
weblogs inc
106 paid bloggers
use the soapbox you have to impact the pragmatic and practical
things to discuss:
1. rss
2. fair use for bloggers
3. attribution – blogs and apple and suing
4. picking your fights – what to do when MS, motorola, and lawsuits
5. blogger contracts

patent mojo – rss enabled sit ewhere you can sub to patents that are being granted to ms, apple, ibm etc.

MS internal policy – we dont want you lookign at other peoples patents

all the guys who came up with patent mojo are bloggers

inc availability of information – pr people dont go to tech or lawyers

law firms wising up

delicious tag – at lawnow

JC – more serious bloggers inc. for protection
legal letters – yell out
extend the discussion – take it down or else

good technique

quote of the week – “what do you guys think, am I stupid?”

if the lawyers letters are wrong, they look stoopid when you put them online

stuck to their guns and the truth came out

go thru the ed process withthe bloggers

EFF pubbed valuable legal guide for bloggers
another ex of the kind of detailed qual info you cant get 5 yrs ago

would you hire a lawyer b/c he is a blogger

need to have a bloggin policy
if you are gonna write aboutit, blog first

take a balanced approach

Havent seen lawyers who worked for pub traded companies blogging – SOX? SEC?

Denise Howell – scary smart, gets it

one of the many people who ran for gov, hamidi – intel sued him
sent 40000 emails tointel employees – trying to get them to rally around org/union
faceintel.com – accused of tresspassing on intel servers

JC – inc as a level of protection for their personal assets?
BB – inc doesnt reduce the risk of litigation

BB the more you write the better you write – dont get fired for being stupid (google guy and delta guy) – violate code of conduct, “there are no first amendment rights protcting stupidity.

ex of Davezilla (toho – people who own godzilla tradmenark) sent him a leter – community provided all the legal support and info he was able to resopond

JC
relatioship with people who do the segway, do we need to piss these people off? do what you think is right? Non competes with bloggers, trying to stop them,

know when it is unneccessaryt to go all the way
alot of time to see what happens – dont get scared when you see the letters – talk to them

BB – morganstanley-pearlstein lawsuit – document retention – last line says dont throw anythign away – play it stragihtl tell the truth
MorgS played cute – couldnt find email or docs, then found some – midway thru the drama – this is bullshit, default judgement – trial will be about damages.

pearlstein 1.4billion – booyah!

JC – do a project or biz and believe enought in it – document it – leave the lawyers out or let them negotiate – go direct – work out the ‘prenup’ conv early… before i go thru legal contract with you lets do bullet by bullet in email – bring it all up in the fresh air – send a letter of agreement – ‘what we are discussing doing legal doc – not gonna debate going forward – fax back intitial items – fax back – go thru the motions and dont do deals w/o everyhting in writing, oral agreements – do it right or dont do it

DH
how participatory law has a relationship to part-journo and part-media – rewrite copywrite law for compulsary licenses to make it more streamlines, do away with comp license – link at top of delicious list

anything that streamlines is a good thing – this media is bubbling up out there

pushing the issues bmi and ascap are interested –

if the ? is you have a ? to the guys who are blogging about it it will be a great conv.

even if you are within fair use – respect it

talk and communicate – talk about whats fair – solve both problems

where are the boundaries with fair use? See wikipedia – too long a q to answer here

Dig the LONG TAIL

Date: June 15, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

While everyone else is bemoaning the Long Tail in buzzword bingo, this is something you HAVE TO READ.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. “… shifting from Mass Culture to Massively Parallel Culture.” and “Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously, often overlapping (geek culture and Lego), often not (tennis and punk-funk).”

This is the best thing I have read all day

Saatchi 17 Vs. Kevin Roberts

Date: June 14, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Check out the New York Magazine article here.

This article is to ad people what red meat is to Atkins people. Love, war, primma donnas and wonks, tears, high 5’s, all the creatives resignations in the same envelope. Where is Kenneth Branagh when you need a Shakespere-set-in-modern-day movie.

Holy crap. Roberts doesn’t come out of this article looking like a saint – he looks like a jerk. I loved Lovemarks, so afaik, this is a bit of a hatchet job.

The boss always will piss people off (its good at the top).
If you dont have P&L you are a Pee-On (thanks Ken Gray).
There is no contact sport (even Rugby Mr. Roberts) that compares to agency politics.

Quote of the week:

I’ve been ‘in like’ with Tod from when I first met him. I’m still in like with him. But I need to love somebody, and we need to win more awards. We need to go in a different direction. It’s a new bus; either you’re on the bus or you’re off the bus. These are my new rock stars.
-Kevin Roberts

Good Enough is Not Enough

Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Seth is preaching the gospel.

Why do we settle. Why do we go 90% and then stop because we figure “the client will love it” or “the client wont appreciate more than that” or “we can move on to other stuff – this will get the job done”.

Jeff Einstein talks about how “time is out only real inventory”. But we use time as an excuse. We needed more time, we had other things to do, we ddnt have enough time, etc.

Good enough. Close enough. Why bother.

I am probably the most guilty of this in the world. Expedience, pragmatism. Sure we are doing kick ass work – but are we really going all the way? Are we limiting ourselves? I used to joke about how my teams can work miracles, given enough time.

Andy Law, in his book Creative Company, wrote about how Jay Chiat used to say “Good Enough Is Not Enough”.

Then why do we settle? Why do we follow the “conventional wisdom”?

Theres a reason why Seth was voted the top marketing blog of 2005 by Marketing Sherpa.

Instant Outlining!

Date: June 13, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

The thing I am really looking forward to at Gnomedex is the density of demos at the event. Dave Winer’s debut of Instant Outliner. Adam Curry is bringing something new. Dean Hachamovitch is keynoting and presenting on Longhorn.

Check out John Robb’s comments on Dave Winer’s instant outlinerhere

It connects IM, weblog publishing (a weblog is essentially a published outline), RSS (if RSS items are brought into the outline), and outlining in a new way that radically improves team productivity.

I have been searching in vain for some groupware for the boutique ad agency I work for for about a year now. MS Project is too unwieldy and most of the open source apps dont fit the bill. Shrinkwrap? too expensive.

Cant wait to see what Dave & co. is cooking up.

Einstein’s Corner – Must Read

Date: June 12, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Einstein’s Corner is the blog of New Media pro, conference speaker and writer Jeff Einstein.

Einstein’s Corner explores the spiritual, emotional, physical, and social effects of our obsessions with and addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives and work in the Great Age of Addiction.

Some of the dotcom refugees in the NYC scene may remeber Jeff from the NY Times Magazine cover story about the unemployed new media types. Jeff has been writing a lot in the last year about media addiction, both on his blog and at mediapost.com. It dovetails with some of the recent discussions in the blogosphere about attention (thanks Steve Gillmore and Scoble) and the discussions Ace and I have had about information overload (unsubscribing from blogs, who you read, how much you read).

Are we addicted to the media? I might be. I follow over 100 blogs per day. 4 or 5 magazines a week. 3-4 books a week. I watch pretty much just the news, or a few select shows (Lost, the Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, House). I am definitely addicted to consuming media. I dont like quiet time, unless I need to think about something.

In the interest of full disclosure, Jeff was partners with J. Sandom (my old boss at OgilvyInteractive) in the first interactive agency Einstein and Sandom. He most recently worked at Rapp Digital with Jamie Corl (one of my favorite people in the world, and a kick-ass producer).

Einstein’s corner is definitely worth a look.