Stanford Center for Internet and Society

On December 1 and 2, Supernova will be back in San Francisco with a really great assortment of discussions (agenda) and an extraordinary group of provacative speakers (speaker list). I will be moderating a panel focused on Fair Use issues issues that will include Zahavah Levine, Chief Counsel for YouTube, and Ashlie Beringer, a litigator at the law firm Gibson Dunn and Crutcher.

There are some obvious things about fair use in copyright that are worth discussion - especially with recent issues around the news/journalism/media industry (like Rupert Murdoch's threats about content aggregation and search tools) and the on-going debates around copyright and user generated content. So, what issues relating to fair use are on your mind? What questions do you have for these panelists? What would you like to see covered by this discussion? I'd love to hear from you as we prepare for this discussion.

Registration information for Supernova.

Creative Commons just released Defining Noncommercial: A Study of How the Online Population Understands 'Noncommercial Use'. (pdf link).

Don't miss the annual Bandwidth Conference in SF happening later this week. It's going to be a good mix of digital media experts and music rights experts. It also offers some great mingling between the sessions and good happy hour fun in the evenings.

I'm at the State of the Net West conference hosted by Santa Clara U. Law School. My favorite comment so far was from Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren: "It's good to be back in nerd land." I was heartened that Lofgren sees a core area for investigation is the conflict between copyright laws and antitrust laws.

Next week is the Stanford Summit hosted by Always On. It's been a great event in the past and I bet it'll be a good one this year. In this economic environment, especially, I'm curious what the start up and venture funding worlds are cooking up. I've blogged the event in the past, and anticipate seeing/reading some good coverage out of this year's event.

Through the fortunes of Twitter, @VBalasubramani (and his RT of @AdrianL), I came upon this awesome guide for lawyers who are sticklers for how their documents look - It's called Typography For Lawyers. A CC-licensed guide that will back me up on use of curly quotes and one space after periods. Yay!

A close friend of mine is facing some serious health problems that has brought our group of friends together. One friend in that group passed along this NYT article to me today. The article, in a nutshell, is about the power of friendship in healing. I think the article and the studies discussed are super important. I wanted to pass it along to my friends who read this blog. (There's also a worthwhile podcast that discusses the article. The discussion is in the last 5:30 minutes of the podcast.)

The next Legally Speaking - cosponsored by the California Lawyer and Hastings Law School - will feature Lawrence Lessig. It's scheduled for March 19. CLE credit and a pre-event reception are included in the $50 registration fee.

Denise hosted her 20th episode (Ethically Cleansed) of her legally-minded program This Week In Law. I had a great time appearing on the program with my co-panelists Evan Brown, Ernie Svenson, and Ben Franske.

Enjoying the day at the O'Reilly TOC Conference (Tools of Change for Publishing). The audience has a much more traditional publisher feel to it than the new media conferences I've attended, and I'm enjoying the dialog with some of the attendees. There are at least 3 panels/discussions/programs that involve the Google Book Search settlement and how it will impact publishers. Obviously that's on the mind of many here.