The Volokh Conspiracy examines the consequences of the Kelo v. City of New London decision by the Supreme Court five years ago.
h/t Instapundit
Author Archives: legallysociable
Early to bed, early to rise…should cut one’s carbon emissions
A new recommendation from the Japanese government to its citizens: go to bed earlier and get up earlier. The benefits: a 85kg reduction a year in a family’s carbon footprint.
Spring cleaning
Summer may have officially begun, but it looks like the New York Legislature could still stand to do a little spring cleaning. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided that a police officer cannot be liable for an illegal arrest because the unconstitutional no-loitering law that he was enforcing was still “on the books.” Though it may be “hard to understand why the [New York] Legislature would continue this statute on the books, given that it is now close to 20 years since it was determined to be unconstitutional,” the Second Circuit held that the issue for the police was “whether it was objectively reasonable for [Officer] Novarro to fail to realize that the statute he was attempting to enforce against [the arrestee] had been held to be unconstitutional by the New York Court of Appeals.” Because the court thought it was reasonable for Novarro to think the law was still in effect under the circumstances, he couldn’t be successfully sued by the arrestee.
How to succeed in business without really trying
Forget the 1961 Broadway play. According to the July/August 2010 issue of the Atlantic, all you have to do is be white and be willing to go to China.
Oh, and to check your ethical qualms at the door.
“It’s like they took my essence, bottled it, and poured it all over the car.”
This line comes from one of the Toyota Sienna commercials featuring a family that truly does see itself reflected in their minivan. A number of the advertisements are quite humorous – but this single line would sum up the advertising pitch for many consumer products: “this product reflects your truest and best self.”
Enjoy.
Pew Research: “Apocolypse Now”?
A number of news outlets are reporting on an April 2010 nationally representative survey from Pew Research of roughly 1,500 Americans that included questions about the future. Some of the findings are summarized in these two tables:
The titles of each table point out some of the differences. Education, a trait that is linked to social class, income, places where people live, occupations, and more, makes a difference in views of the future and even more so in looking for Jesus’ return.
See no evil
The Wall Street Journal is reporting a summary judgment ruling in the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright infringment case (link to the opinion here).
For those of you not familiar with the case, Viacom, which owns a host of media outlets, is suing on the theory that YouTube/Google is legally responsible for Viacom clips that YouTube users post. As Judge Louis Stanton puts it, “the critical question” from a legal perspective is whether the law punishes an online service provider that has “a general awareness that there are infringements” taking place (i.e., the fact that everyone knows there are infringing videos up on YouTube) or whether YouTube is only responsible if it has “actual or constructive knowledge of specific and identifiable infringements of individual items.” Closely reading the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [text] and its legislative history, Judge Stanton concludes that “[m]ere knowledge of prevalence of [infringing] activity is not enough….To let knowledge of a generalized practice of infringement in the industry, or of a proclivity of users to post infringing materials, impose responsibility on service providers to discover which of their users’ posting infringe a copyright would contravene the structure and operation of the DMCA.”
This one’s virtually certain to be appealed. Stay tuned…
Chunga – 6/23/10 8:24 PM – The onus now seems to be on the content providers, like Viacom, to monitor which of their products are uploaded and then ask for their removal (which Google appears quite willing to do). If Viacom does not explicitly ask for a removal, YouTube/Google can keep all sorts of of copyrighted material online?
Sagescape – 6/23/10 9:34 PM – Generally speaking, that’s correct. There’s a very helpful FAQ maintained by ChillingEffects.org that describes the DMCA’s “notice and takedown” process in some detail.
An argument for reducing the amount of poor research
Several academics make an argument in The Chronicle for Higher Education for reducing the number of published research articles in order to limit low-quality publications. The measure of “poor research” is linked to the idea that later science should build upon previous findings:
Consider this tally from Science two decades ago: Only 45 percent of the articles published in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within the first five years after publication. In recent years, the figure seems to have dropped further. In a 2009 article in Online Information Review, Péter Jacsó found that 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social-science journals (the figures do not include the humanities) were cited in the period 2002 to 2006.
The authors go on to say that uncited articles are akin to “useless information.” This seems a bit premature: uncited articles might be the result of studies in new fields or new approaches to old problems. Graduate students are often told to specialize and perhaps this article glut is due to very specific knowledge and more recent articles that have less of a broad appeal. Regardless, good journals are still publishing these pieces, indicating that somewhere in the peer review process, editors and reviewers thought the authors made a scientific contribution.
Some of the proposed solutions include a greater emphasis on citation and journal impact scores.
Tax credit over, new home sales drop 33%
The sales of certain large-ticket items, such as new homes or new cars, are often reported on in the media as indicators of the strength of a consumer-based economy. So this probably is not a good sign:
New-home sales in May fell from April to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 300,000, the government said Wednesday. That was the slowest sales pace on records dating back to 1963. And it’s the largest monthly drop on record. Sales have now sunk 78 percent from their peak in July 2005.
The tax credits, $8,000 for a first-time homeowner or $6,500 for a current homeowner, expired April 30.
On the whole, we have come a long way from the housing-sale crazed days of the first half of the 2000s.
Collective effervescence in front of my TV
I worked from home this morning while watching the USA take on Algeria in the final group-stage match in the World Cup. When the US scored in the 91st minute, I was excited. And then, like I occasionally do while watching the Olympics, I felt a swell of national pride. For a moment, I was connected to other Americans…and the images on ESPN of joyous fans at some pub in Seattle.
