Ritual disclaimer: This blog contains legal commentary, but it is only general commentary. It does not constitute legal advice for your situation. It does not create an attorney-client relationship or any other expectation of confidentiality, nor is it an offer of representation.

All material © 2003–09 except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. N.B. This blawg does not use the Creative Commons License, although I'm usually pretty good-natured about permissions for attributed reuse.

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Warped Weft

Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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• Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
• Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
• Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
• US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
• Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
• US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
• Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
• The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
• Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
• Legal, free music is available through
  • ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
  • Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
  • Janis Ian (artist)
  • John McCutcheon (artist)

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

• How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
• Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
  • Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
  • Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
  • Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
  • Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
  • Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
  • Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
  • Professor Rick Hasen (Loyola-LA Law)
  • Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
  • Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law)
  • Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
  • Professor Larry Ribstein (University of Illinois Law)
  • Professor Lawrence Solum (University of Illinois Law)
  • Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
  • Professor Tom Ulen (University of Illinois Law)
• BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
• The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
• Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
• The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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