So I'm up in Seattle for a few days to attend Gnomdex later this week and to spend some time with my family and our newest member, Marcus Paul Vogele, who I'm happy to report is doing quite well. He joined us in mid-May (8-weeks before his due date) and we are optomistic that he'll soon be released from the NICU and come home to play with his brothers.
While here, I had the opportunity yesterday to meet up with my CIS colleagues Tom Rubin of Microsoft and Elizabeth Townsend Gard, who is now a Visiting Professor at Seattle University Law School.
Tom and I had a interesting lunch conversation about things going on in the IP community. We discussed the launch of a free "add-in" feature availabe for the Office suite of products that allows the user to embed a Creative Commons license directly into the Office document (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint). (Link to download the feature here.) The feature lets the user select a license that fits his or her needs, and then generates a Creative Commons logo, a summary of the license chosen, and a hyperlink to the Creative Commons Web site. (Unfortunately, a download for the feature does not yet exist for mac versions of the MS products.) I think this is a great feature and reflects an internal committment at Microsoft to create technical solutions to some of the difficulties in content distribution on the web. (Another example of MS's committment to reasoned IP laws is reflected in Rubin's recent testimony on behalf of MS regarding the orphan works problem.)
In the evening, I gave a lecture at Seattle U to Elizabeth Townsend Gard's IP survey course. My talk covered podcasting and how the law deals with this new technology. (CC-licensed PowerPoint slides available for download here.) The students had some good questions. In particular, they wondered about the statistics that are noted in these slides. I've been meaning to drill down on some of those statistics, and especially the 62% statistic that was the talk of the OnHollywood conference in May.
Next up will be Gnomdex on Friday and Saturday... I'm really looking forward to it!