You asked me: why do I write? As a student, I wrote only when professors required me to do so, and those writing obligations were about topics I didn’t care about and on deadlines I didn’t choose. Over the years, I’ve realized that writing when someone else sets the topic and schedule squeezes the joy out of writing for me. I enjoy writing much more when I pick my topic and schedule.

I operate a blog on legal topics (http://blog.ericgoldman.org). I’ve written around 4,000 posts over 20 years. That translates to about one blog post every workday for 20 years in a row. My posts range in length from 200 to 10,000 words, with an estimated average of about 700 words per post. That means I have blogged around 3 million words over the past 20 years, or the equivalent of publishing 60 non-fiction books.

My blog posts share my unique perspective on the world with my readers. As a professor, I spend hours each day consuming information. By blogging, I can let readers (metaphorically) look over my shoulders, and I can highlight for them the most interesting things I’m seeing and put those developments in context. My readers come away from my posts more knowledgeable about what’s happening and with a sense of how they can use that information.

Each blog post generates a few dollars of revenue for me–not even close to minimum wage. I obviously don’t blog for the money! And yet, blogging produces many payoffs for me. As a professor, my blog has boosted my reputation as an Internet Law expert. As a result, my blog produces additional opportunities to share my expertise, such as media interviews with reporters and invitations to speak at events. Furthermore, because my blog demonstrates my expertise, I have been hired to provide expert testimony in litigation. Some of those projects have paid me tens of thousands of dollars. Finally, through my blogging, I have made virtual friends and connections across the globe.

One last point: people often assume that blog posts are hastily drafted and unfiltered, but not in my case. I never post first-draft writing to my blog. I quickly write a raw first draft to get my ideas out, but I then edit my posts from top-to-bottom at least twice (and sometimes many more times than that) before publishing them. I often set aside my drafts overnight so that I can do additional editing passes with a fresh perspective. For important posts, I ask other experts to review my drafts so I can incorporate their feedback. My motto is that the real magic of writing occurs during the editing. I wish I had learned more about, and practiced, how to edit my works while I was in school.

The post Why I Blog appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

What made you become a content creator?

I started practicing law in 1994, at the beginning of the Dot Com boom. As my career grew alongside the Internet, I developed specialized expertise about Internet law that I wanted to share with the world, both to democratize my knowledge and build my personal brand. When I became a full-time law professor, publishing content became my day job. However, it wasn’t until I launched my blog in 2005 that I knew where I could express my specialized expertise.

What are some of the challenges you face as a content creator?

I blog about legal disputes. Many disputants believe in their cause, even if they aren’t good lawsuits, and some disputants really don’t appreciate having someone like me talk negatively about their choices (either in or out of court).

A few times a year, a disputant goes nuclear against me in response to my blogging. I’ve had disputants reach out to my bosses and colleagues to pressure me to delete or change my posts. I’ve had disputants leave nasty voicemails threatening to ruin my life. I’ve had disputants try to deindex my blog in Google and get my blog service provider kicked off AWS. I’ve had disputants falsely accuse me of sexually harassing my students. I’ve even had a disputant file a Title IX complaint against me (no, the law doesn’t work that way).

As a tenured law professor, I am extraordinarily privileged, so these attacks do not materially impact me. Still, it’s a sad reality of writing about legal cases.

What are some digital publications that you follow?

I rely heavily on four tools: (1) my RSS reader (I use Feedly), where I have over 150 subscriptions, (2) email alerts I’ve set up in databases like Westlaw and Lexis, (3) email newsletter subscriptions, and (4) social media. Collectively, I usually review over 1,000 news items a day. This provides the source material for my social media activity and my blogging. I can cherry-pick the 1-4 most interesting items per day that I’ve seen.

Why did you decide to syndicate your content with Newstex?

Newstex indexes my content in electronic databases like Westlaw. That gives me exposure to a greater audience than I would reach otherwise.

What do you like most about creating digital content?

I like translating complex legal and technical topics so that they become understandable for lay readers.

I like breaking news so that my audience can be the first to know about developments that matter to them.

I like telling jokes, especially when they land. Using the perfect meme, GIF, or emoji is really satisfying.

What do you dislike most about creating digital content?

I deal with complex areas of law where disputants repeatedly get the law wrong and where legislators propose (and sometimes pass) incredibly ill-conceived policies. I feel some ennui covering oft-repeated mistakes…over and over again…. At some point, it becomes joyless to talk about a new development when I’ve pointed out its pitfalls in dozens of posts over years. I cover these items in service of my audience, but it’s not particularly fun.

What inspires you to keep writing?

The Internet’s fate is hanging in the balance right now. Far too many regulators and litigants are doing everything they can to make the Internet less functional and more censored. After writing about Internet Law for 30 years, I am deeply invested in fighting to keep the Internet we know and love.

What do you think are the benefits of syndicating your content through Newstex?

In addition to the expanded audience, getting a check for the work I’m already doing feels like free money.

What are the top 3 tips you can give to others wanting to develop successful digital publications?

Don’t be shy about letting your personality shine through. Blog posts about legal developments that dryly report just the facts are tedious to read.

Develop unique information sources so you can break news in your community. This usually requires some extra effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, but you will earn greater loyalty from your audience for doing that work for them.

If you aren’t excited about writing a post, then don’t. Your lack of enthusiasm will come through, plus you’ll be miserable doing it. As I tell my co-bloggers: if blogging isn’t fun, don’t do it!

Where do you see your blog in 5 years?

I’ve been blogging now for over 17 years. Over the years, I changed blog hosts, the backend software, and the frontend UI, but the blog’s content scope and style of posts have stayed remarkably consistent over the last dozen years. So most likely, in five years, I’ll be doing pretty much exactly what I’m doing now.

What has been your proudest achievement as a blogger?

My blog has been cited in court opinions, cited by elected officials in their public remarks, and inducted into my industry’s blogger “Hall of Fame.” Because of my blog, I have been asked to write for prestigious publications, invited to give lectures, and hired as an expert witness. But honestly, my best moments as a blogger occur when I run into a reader who tells me how my blog helped them do their job better. My audience (mostly very busy lawyers) face extreme competition for their time and attention, so the fact that so many of them choose to read my blog is profoundly satisfying.

The post Newstex Interview About Blogging appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Thanks to Dan and the rest of the Concurring Opinions team for hosting me this month. Incredible as it may seem (given the number of law geeks involved and our sophistication about the applicable law), we enter into this guest-blogging arrangement without any contract of any sort. Thus, any legal consequences of my guest-blogging are governed by default rules…whatever those are.

Fortunately, with respect to liability to third parties, the default rules are generally favorable. 47 USC 230 absolutely immunizes my blog hosts from most types of liability for what I say or do. If I defame someone, I’ll be on the hook, but my peers won’t be. After the California Supreme Court’s opinion in Barrett v. Rosenthal, I think it’s also 100% clear that I’m generally not liable for the posts of my peers. (Pursuant to the reasoning of that case, I could claim to be a “user” of the Concurring Opinions interactive computer service). Even though Dan doesn’t like 47 USC 230 as much as I do, we all benefit from it in this case.

But 47 USC 230 doesn’t cover all types of third party liability—most critically, it leaves open the risk of copyright liability. For example, if I post an infringing photo to the site, not only would I be liable, but my blog hosts could face contributory or vicarious liability. A statutory safe harbor, 17 USC 512, putatively provides some relief, but (1) that safe harbor isn’t nearly as robust as 47 USC 230, and (2) more importantly, 512 has a number of prerequisite formalities, including the requirement that the website register with the Copyright Office, which Concurring Opinions has not done. (You can confirm that here).

As a result, default copyright doctrines apply to any infringing posts I make. Of most concern is vicarious copyright infringement, which would hold the Concurring Opinions folks liable for my infringing posts if they had the right and ability to supervise my infringing activities and a direct financial interest in those activities. (Because it’s a vicarious doctrine, scienter is irrelevant). Even though Concurring Opinions doesn’t generate any revenues (as far as I know!), the Napster court found that Napster had a direct financial interest in infringing P2P file sharing even though Napster didn’t generate a dime of revenues. Instead, the court said that the infringing materials acted as a “draw” to induce people to use Napster. So the principal issue in any vicarious copyright infringement claim would be whether my blog hosts had the right and ability to supervise my infringing activities. Many defendants do not find this a comforting standard…

(Note this analysis could work in reverse as well, where I could be liable for any infringements committed by my peers. As a guest-blogger, I feel a little better that I lack the requisite right and ability to supervise the infringing activities of my peers…but this may be a self-serving statement!)

If you’re interested in a more extensive analysis of liability for guest-blogging, see here.

While the liability situation could be disconcerting, I think the dynamics of being a guest blogger may alleviate some concerns. I am finding guest-blogging a little inhibiting because I don’t want to violate the norms of my blog hosts, which makes me even more cautious than normal. In this respect, guest-blogging feels a little like visiting a friend’s home. The friend may say “mi casa su casa,” but I’ll still carefully wipe the dirt off my shoes and try not to use the guest towels in the vanity bathroom. Similarly, I’ll blog politely here and save my reckless blogging for my own blogs.

The post A Guest Blogger’s “Meta” Post About Guest Blogging [Repost from Concurring Opinions’ Archive] appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

* Protip: the “I automatically delete my emails after reading them” defense rarely works http://j.mp/1OepwZ1 (Twitter 2016)

* Protip: don’t try to intimidate witnesses, especially if your Instagram handle is “snitch_killa305” http://j.mp/1ljPHpf (Twitter 2015)

* Protip: you’ll never match up with Mr. (or Ms.) Right if you don’t enter your email address correctly #millennials #TextingPreferred (Twitter 2015)

* Protip to personal injury plaintiffs: don’t Facebook-checkin at courthouse with the status “becoming a millionaire” http://j.mp/1mb18AE (Twitter 2015)

* I just signed a 14 page law firm engagement letter. Protip: if your engagement letter is 14 pages, it’s probably 12-13 pages too long (Twitter 2015)

* Kozinski used the term “neutral tools” five times, but he never defined the term or explained if online tool ever can be “neutral” (protip: the answer is no). (Blog 2015)

* Protip: usually when a disciplinary authority enforces the lawyer oath, it’s because they didn’t have a very strong case of misconduct (Blog 2015)

* Protip to lawyers: be careful signing online petitions, especially if they possibly relate to a matter you’re working on! (Blog 2015)

* a protip we knew even before Google’s critics shat on the first three settlement proposals: Google’s critics will *NEVER* be happy with any settlement proposal that Google would voluntarily accept (Blog 2015)

* protip to griping bloggers: even though it’s surely fair use, please don’t include headshots on your blog (Blog 2014)

* Protip: save your “I hate my job” gallows humor and workplace venting for your diary or happy hour at the local bar, not your Facebook timeline. (Blog 2014)

* another protip to griping bloggers: even though it’s surely fair use, please don’t include headshots on your blog. It’s avoidable litigation-bait (Blog 2014)

* Protip: before buying a digital song or movie, I check eBay and Half.com to see how much it costs to buy the same CD or DVD used (Blog 2013)

* Protip: Kegstands and Vertigo Are Inconsistent With Each Other–Johnson v. Ingalls (Blog 2012)

* A protip of general applicability: never allow sharp objects at family reunions. (Blog 2012)

* a new protip: if you’re involved in a fight, check with your lawyer before discussing said fight on Facebook (Blog 2012)

BONUS: My co-blogger Venkat Balasubramani has blogged some protips as well:

* Pro-tip: if you’re going to let someone borrow your phone, make sure you don’t have any sexy selfies that can be freely accessed by anyone who accesses the phone. (Blog 2014)

* PRO TIP: I presume the temptation is strong to monitor your soon-to-be-ex-spouse’s email, but resist it at all costs! (Blog 2014)

* Pro-tip: First Amendment merits aside, as a lawyer, I would avoid the “I have an absolute right to contact my ex” argument. (Blog 2014)

* Protip: Don’t Send Emails Threatening to “Inflict the Maximum Amount of Financial Pain” Allowed By Law (Blog 2014)

The post A Collection Of Protips From The Last Half-Decade appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

We’ve since learned that tens of thousands of Americans who never smoked, including a troubling number of young and healthy women, get lung cancer every year. Lung cancer kills more Americans than breast, prostate and colon cancers COMBINED, and the death toll for never-smoked lung cancer victims–about 30,000 Americans each year–is a major chunk of overall cancer deaths. However, you probably don’t hear much about these victims. Lung cancer is a ruthless and efficient killer. It’s hard to detect, so it’s typically diagnosed at a late stage, and it easily metastasizes, especially to the brain. As a result, lung cancer victims, including those who never smoked, often die before they can share their stories to the world.

This situation is changing. Blogging technology enables lung cancer victims to tell their stories first-hand, and recent improvements in treatment are helping lung cancer victims live a little longer–perhaps long enough to tell their stories.

As part of this broader phenomenon, Lisa has launched a blog, “Every Breath I Take.” Please check it out. Not only will the blog keep you informed about Lisa’s situation, but we hope it will give a voice to the many thousands of Americans dying each year from this silent killer. Emails were a big part of how Lisa and I communicated at the beginning of our relationship, and I fell in love with her in part because of her witty and conversational writing style. I’m glad that many of you will get to see that special side of her.

I understand that a blog post like this will likely engender many sympathetic emails and offers of help. We are grateful for the overwhelming support we’ve received. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but this outpouring has changed my worldview. It’s easy to be cynical about the human condition, but I’ve now experienced the other side: many people–close family members and virtual strangers–have gone out of their way to show us extraordinary kindness and thoughtfulness. It’s taught me a lot about the value of “paying it forward,” a lesson I hope to use extensively for the rest of my life.

If you are motivated to help out, here are my two requests of ways you can be most helpful:

1) I’d be grateful for your understanding if my email responses are short or curt and for my sporadic blogging. Lisa was the principal childcare provider, and I’ve taken over that responsibility for now. We are still working on longer-term childcare arrangements. Until we resolve that, my time is stretched very thin.

2) Please spread the word about Lisa’s blog and the reality that lung cancer isn’t just a “smoker’s disease.” Until we get past the “blame the victim” narrative, we won’t fully understand the disease and the victims who have it, nor will we make optimal investments in preventing and treating it.

The post My Wife Has Lung Cancer. Read Her Story appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Back in the good old days, I used to freely reply to such inquiries. I felt like I could–and should–share my expertise in a way that cost me little and potentially provided a lot of help. It was about treating people as I would want to be treated.

The good old days are unfortunately over. Despite helping hundreds of people over the years with minor legal inquiries, I’ve changed my policy. Now, I won’t be able to respond to your inquiry or any follow-up inquiries.

Why the change? As the expression goes, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel. I’ve had two recent situations where people who contacted me–essentially asking for a favor–have turned around and overclaimed that we formed an attorney-client relationship. In one situation, I simply made some referrals to attorneys who might help; in another, I was sent publicly available documents that the sender later (and, IMO, falsely) claimed were part of asking for my legal help with the case. In both, the overclaim of an attorney-client relationship interfered with my activities as a researcher and a blogger, i.e., my ability to do my job. As a bonus, usually the attorney-client overclaim is coupled with threats to notify the state bar or my dean or other folks, or otherwise to ruin my life.

As a result of the rare rotten apples, I have to assume all such inquirers are potential plaintiffs who will thank me by threatening to take my house and destroy my life–even though 99%+ are just well-meaning folks making fair requests of someone who probably could easily help. I’m so sorry to presume the worst when so few inquiries deserve it; it is unfair, and I wish I lived in a different world where trying to be a mensch wasn’t punished.

The post Why I No Longer Respond to Unsolicited Inquiries About Legal Matters appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

I don’t often make purely administrative posts, so let me start by thanking you for reading the blog. Whether you’re a long-time reader or a relative newcomer, it means a lot to me that you’re willing to share a portion of your busy day with us.

This blog dates back to Fall 2004, when two of my Internet Law students, Matt Goeden and Rex Holmes, told me that they would read my blog if I started blogging. (Rex and Matt, are you still reading?!) When I expressed willingness to consider it, Rex built the blog and my website back in Fall 2004.

Rex implemented the blog using Movable Type 3.2. At the time, Movable Type was state-of-the-art, and it’s served us well over the past 9 years. Still, I found it just complicated enough that I feared making any changes to my Movable Type installation (because if it breaks, I may not be able to fix it), so the blog basically still looks like it did 9 years ago. Of course, we could update to the latest Movable Type version, but that doesn’t solve the complexity problem. As a result, I’ve decided instead to make the inevitable move to WordPress now. Not only do I use WordPress for my Tertium Quid blog, but it’s simple to maintain and it’s easy to implement new plug-ins.

Thus, I’m pleased to announce that we’ll convert the blog from Movable Type to WordPress today, October 18 at 3 pm Pacific. The blog will be off-line at that time for what I hope is a short period.

Any conversion runs the risk of breaking things, and I’m especially worried that the conversion will break the existing RSS feeds. We have taken numerous steps to avoid breaking the RSS feeds. When the conversion is complete, I’ll post an all-clear message. If you get that all-clear message in your RSS feed, then it looks like the transition worked for you. If you don’t get an all-clear message by Monday, please contact me and we’ll sort it out.

Moving to WordPress has numerous benefits for you. Let me just mention three:

* Cleaner user interface. Although I like the current interface, it’s dated. The blog looks like a 2000s-era blog. We’ll be rolling out a modern and simple interface that should make the blog easier to read and easier to find what you’re looking for.

* Email subscriptions. The #1 most requested feature from readers is a way to subscribe to new posts via email. We’ll be offering that feature!

* Comments. I shut down reader comments in 2006 after a virulent comment spam attack. With the move to WordPress, we’ll be offering a new commenting feature for the first time in 7 years. I must confess that I have mixed emotions about turning comments on. On the one hand, a lot of sophisticated readers, with a lot of expertise, read the blog, and it would be incredible if we can get readers to share their expertise with each other. I often get brilliantly insightful emails from readers in response to posts, and I hope that some of those emails will turn into public comments that benefit everyone. On the other hand, just being honest, I rarely see blogs where user comments are a net benefit to the conversation. At my Tertium Quid blog, I’d guess that less than 10% of the user comments are actually useful to other readers, and I can think of numerous blogs where I cringe when reading the user comments. So I will be tightly monitoring the comments to see if they work, and it’s entirely possible we’ll decide that the commenting function isn’t an improvement and turn it back off. However, I’m cautiously optimistic that the sophistication of the readers will help this blog defeat the odds.

The conversion from Movable Type-to-WordPress has been a long time in coming–over a year since we started working on it. I’m eternally grateful to my RAs Jake McGowan (3L) and Addam Kaufman (1L) for working on this project. I’m often asked by prospective employers for recommendations of students I can personally endorse. Please contact me if you have job opportunities for a 3L or 1L where a Goldman-trained and -vetted student would be interesting to you.

While the blog’s skin may be changing, I don’t expect any change to the substance. Venkat and I (and our guests) remain committed to telling you what we’re seeing and why it matters. Thanks so much for all of your support and encouragement over the years. As always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback.

The post Some Exciting Changes to the Blog–PLEASE READ appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Back in the 2000s, I helped organize several gatherings of “Bay Area Blawgers,” an informal group of local bloggers covering legal topics. (Here’s the recap from the last gathering). The participants came from almost all corners of the legal industry: students, academics, small firm practitioners, non-lawyers and more; but one player in the legal industry ecosystem was conspicuously absent: big firm lawyers. At the time, most big law firms were fairly blogging-adverse. Blogging was still new, and large law firms are notoriously late adopters of new technology. Furthermore, many law firms were petrified of the conflicts issues, including the risks of blogging about clients or their adversaries and the risks of having their words quoted against them.

With this background, I note the recent article from the Recorder, “Law Firm Blogs Come of Age.” The article discusses how big law firms have embraced blogging, including lawyers at Orrick, Duane Morris, Shearman & Sterling and Allen Matkins.

I’ve noted this trend in my RSS subscriptions. Most of the law-related RSS subscriptions I’ve added in the last few years are from big firm law firms/lawyers–such as Venable’s All About Advertising, Arnold & Porter’s Seller Beware, Edwards Wildman’s Digilaw, Orrick’s My Distribution Law Blog, Thompson Coburn’s Sweepstakes Law Blog, Seyfarth Shaw’s Trade Secrets, and others.

[Note 1: I follow a lot of blogs, as I explain here. Note 2: I often purge blogs after a while if I don’t find them consistently useful, so I cycle through blogs frequently.]

The Recorder article, and my associated realization, prompts my question to you: has there been any noteworthy legal blog started since 2010 that isn’t attached to a big law firm? I’m sure the answer is yes, but I couldn’t think of it. Email me your suggestions.

I draw three tentative conclusions from all of this. First, legal blogging has become corporatized. This trend was apparent by the end of the last decade, but I think it’s been fully realized. Corporatized legal blogging is still useful blogging, but in general corporate bloggers don’t have as strong a blogging voice as independent legal bloggers.

Second, it’s long been my position that bloggers are born, not made. When blogging first emerged, there was a backlog of born-to-be-bloggers folks who started blogging; but now that we’ve worked through the backlog, the rate of new emerging born-to-be-bloggers per year has dropped to much lower equilibrium levels.

Third, I wonder if we’ve seen the end of large numbers of new independent legal bloggers. Given the slow rate of newly emerging bloggers generally, and the increasing market share of the corporate bloggers–who are well-financed and already have built-in audiences–we’re not likely to see many new blogging “stars” emerge. Some surely will, but the deck is now stacked against the independent legal bloggers. The 2000s were a wild time for legal blogging, and it appears that things have calmed down a lot.

UPDATE: One reader pointed out the emergence of book-related blogs, many of which peter out soon after the book launch. Some blog suggestions of good new entrants since 2010: Thomas Cotter’s relatively new Comparative Patent Remedies blog.

The post Are the Days of Independent Legal Blogging Over? appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

For countless people, the Internet is producing a substantial decrease in unanticipated, unchosen interactions with others.

The resulting lack of intellectual diversity may produce “echo chambers,” where only like-minded people talked to each other and reinforce each others’ own increasingly polarized viewpoints.  This in turn jeopardizes core democratic principles.

The past dozen years have suggested that these dystopian fears aren’t completely unfounded.  As one example, many people now rely on social media as a primary news source.  In many cases–especially with “bi-directional” services like Facebook or LinkedIn where people only connect with “friends”–social media only surfaces content from people who are likely to share common viewpoints.  Plus, those posts are culled by mysterious algorithms (such as the algorithm controlling Facebook’s newsfeed) that further reduce exposure to diverse viewpoints.

Still, I never believed these dystopian predictions, mostly because I believed technological tools like RSS would triumph over them.  (For my more detailed rebuttal to the dystopians, see this article).  RSS makes it easy and quick to keep up with dynamically changing online sources.  The effectively zero transaction cost means that readers can easily monitor a smorgasbord of sources–including a greater diversity of source–than was possible with other technologies.  Plus, RSS feeds bypass third parties’ black-box algorithmic filtering that might suppress countervailing views; RSS enables a direct communication from the publisher to the reader.

In my case, the costlessness of subscribing to RSS feeds, plus the simplicity and reliability of Google Reader, has helped me aggregate a vast number of RSS subscriptions (over 220).  With that many subscriptions, I can track developments across a wide variety of industries, topical areas,  databases, and yes, viewpoints.  Rather than circumscribe my worldview, the Internet in general, and RSS in particular, have vastly increased the diversity of my information consumption compared to the heyday of mass-media offline publications.

People have been predicting the death of RSS for years (see, e.g., this 2009 TechCrunch article), but the death of Google Reader moves us closer to RSS’s demise than ever before.  Without an obvious RSS reader alternative to Google Reader (and with heightened fears that any replacement RSS reader might exit the market, just like Google and Bloglines), some folks will simply give up on RSS altogether and rely exclusively on social media, email alerts or bookmarks.  Others will use RSS less frequently because the alternative provider isn’t as reliable or elegant as Google Reader.  Collectively, with reduced reader demand, fewer publishers may support RSS feeds, creating the possibility of RSS’s downward spiral.

The potential death of RSS increases the odds that the dystopian predictions will come true.  Without a viable RSS reader, I would dramatically reduce the sources of news I consult, probably by 90% or more.  It’s not feasible to keep up with hundreds of sources via bookmarks (seriously?!).  Email alerts?  I have a tough time managing my in-box as it is.  Social media?  I already use it extensively as a complement to RSS, but it’s scattershot and much slower to read.   Plus, some sources I current track don’t enable any of these RSS alternatives today.  Without an RSS reader as reliable and efficient as Google Reader, my information flows will be lower-volume, slower, more heavily intermediated by third party algorithms, and–as the dystopians predicted–less diverse.  And if I and others circumscribe our reading sources, publishers will get fewer readers, and the entire Internet ecosystem will shrink.

I don’t blame Google.  It’s their choice to kill a service, especially one they offered for free.  Still, I’m hoping that one or more RSS reader competitors will emerge a trustworthy addition to my daily routine.  RSS may not be a mainstream tool, but for those of us who use it, its loss would be a major blow.  If Google Reader’s demise accelerates that unfortunate outcome, we will have lost something of significant social value.

The post How the Shutdown of Google Reader Threatens the Internet (Forbes Cross-Post) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Another entry in the ever-popular series of litigants foiled by social media evidence. Sara Jaszczyszyn (an even more impressive name than Balasubramani…is this her?) took FMLA leave from work due to back pain. This FMLA leave was intermittent, allowing her to be out only on days when she had a flare-up, but the court says “Jaszczyszyn appears to have treated the leave as continuous, open-ended, and effective immediately.” For a while, company employees tried to accommodate her ongoing absences, but apparently the mood soured after “Jaszczyszyn attended Pulaski Days, a local Polish heritage festival. Over a period of at least eight hours, she visited three Polish Halls with a group of her friends. One friend shared approximately 127 pictures from that day with Jaszczyszyn, who posted, on her Facebook page, 9 pictures featuring herself.” During that same weekend, Jaszczyszyn left another voicemail with her supervisor indicating she was in pain and couldn’t come to work on Monday.

Her managers summoned Jaszczyszyn into the office and confronted her with the photos. The court recounts what happened next:

Jaszczyszyn did not agree with their characterization of the pictures, but she did not voice that disagreement at the meeting. She defended attending the festival by arguing that no one had told her it was prohibited. When asked to explain the discrepancy between her claim of complete incapacitation and her activity in the photos, she did not have a response and was often silent, occasionally saying that she was in pain at the festival and just was not showing it.

Apparently not good enough. The employer terminated Jaszczyszyn. Jaszczyszyn responded with a lawsuit claiming FMLA violations. The Sixth Circuit (how in the world did this case get to the Sixth Circuit???) affirmed the legitimacy of the firing.

The subsequent news is mixed for Jaszczyszyn. In a seemingly gratuitous footnote, the court recaps the good–and miraculous?–news that “Jaszczyszyn appears to have made a full recovery very shortly after she was terminated,” but also the bad news that she was subsequently fired from her next job for excessive absenteeism. Oh, those millennials!

Other posts in the series:

* Plaintiff’s Claims to Be “Bedridden” and “Vegetative” Rebutted by Facebook Evidence–Cajamarca v. Regal Entertainment

* Facebook Jokes About “Naked Twister” Could Undermine Sex Discrimination Claim–Targonski v. Oak Ridge

* Protip: Kegstands and Vertigo Are Inconsistent With Each Other–Johnson v. Ingalls

* Facebook Boasts/Taunts Undermine the Legal Defense for a Fight at a House Party–In re DLW

* Social Media Photos Foil Yet Another Litigant–Clement v. Johnson’s Warehouse

* YouTube Video Impeaches Witness’ Credibility–Ensign Yacht v. Arrigoni

* Facebook Entries Negate Car Crash Victims’ Physical Injury Claims

* Contrary MySpace Evidence Strikes a Litigant Again–HAC, Inc. v. Box

* MySpace Postings Foil Another Litigant–Sedie v. U.S.

* Disturbingly Humorous MySpace Posts Used as Impeaching Evidence in Spousal Abuse Case–Embry v. State

* Latest Example of Social Networking Site Evidence Contradicting In-Court Testimony–People v. Franco

The post Disability Leave Foiled By Facebook Photos–Jaszczyszyn v. Advantage Health appeared first on Goldman's Observations.