High-Nitrite Lunch

Just a few quick bites of link sausage today:

• While out and about yesterday dealing with medical paperwork, I stopped by the local outlet of [famous menswear store's name deleted to save embarassment — on their part] and began browsing. I noted a new display for different monogramming options for dress shirts, and busted out laughing at part of it:

  RNWII
   
  monogram may include up to 4 letters

  demonstrating a distinct lack of numerical literacy... that it took half a minute to explain to the store manager.

• GBS minor update/kerfluffle As expected, someone has filed a pro forma objection to the parties' proposed schedule for dealing with the forthcoming "revised" proposed settlement agreement (see Doc. 760 (22 Oct. 2009)). Now let's see if they follow up by doing it correctly: Filing a motion to extend time after the "revised" proposed settlement agreement gets filed.

  I find it a bit tactically naïve that the "notice" filed by the EFF et al. does not raise the parties' proposed schedule as an additional subissue implicating adequacy of representation. In my experience dealing with class actions, judges tend to derogate adequacy attacks that are less than pervasive and continuous (however much those attacks are — in consumer litigation — improper, they're not here). Perhaps I'll have something to say... since I'm a putative class member, and even opting out won't protect my interests against the economic effects of this settlement <vbeg>.

• Professor Rebecca Tushnet is summarizing a number of paper and panel presentations at a conference on the intersection between copyright and "digital reality" (which is, to my mind, an oxymoron akin to "honest politician"... or "military intelligence"). Too bad the conference is at Vanderbilt, which sits in the circuit (the Sixth) farthest removed from reality on copyright! Part I and Part II are already up, and provide an interesting counterpoint to the procedural issues Professor Tushnet summarizes from a paper presented at a different conference on whether the Federal Circuit has been successful (by Professor Rochelle Dreyfuss).

  Kudos to Professor Tushnet for making these pretty clear and accessible to non-expert audiences; even though they include a lot of the jargon, they do so in a self-defining manner, which also serves to educate for the next controversy. (If you give a friend a pirated song, he can enjoy it now; but if you teach your friend to use LimeWire, he can enjoy all pirated songs forever. Or something like that.)