Court Allows Courtroom Tweeting in Criminal Trial–State v. Komisarjevsky
State v. Komisarjevsky, 2011 WL 1032111 (Conn. Super. Ct. Feb. 22, 2011) In a sexual assault and homicide case, the defendant asked the judge to ban the media from posting tweets from the courtroom. Connecticut court rules explicitly prohibit “broadcasting”…
Faculty Talk on Blogging and Personal Websites
Earlier this year, I gave an informal talk to our faculty and staff about how I use blogging and my personal website. My talk slides. As you can see, I made one basic point: like-minded people may be interested in…
Distrust in the Cloud Part #2: Facebook Blocks J.mp Links and Takes Down Lots of Status Updates in the Process
I previously blogged about my problems with Scribd, the document hosting service, when they put up a paywall on user-uploaded documents. Scribd tried to soft-pedal the change by giving users an opt-out, but they never fully acknowledged how they changed…
Contrary MySpace Evidence Strikes A Litigant Again–HAC, Inc. v. Box
HAC, Inc. v. Box, 2010 OK 89 (Okla. Dec. 14, 2010) I’ve repeatedly blogged on social networking sites providing evidence that undercuts a litigant’s position (my last post on the topic). Today’s example involves a minor working in a grocery…
Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist
Over the last year, I’ve become a heavy user of Scribd. I have posted over 100 documents to Scribd that have generated over 100,000 reads. Posting to Scribd is fast and easy–much easier than using my extremely cumbersome web hosting…
Note to Law Students: A Way to Jumpstart Your Job Search
The New York Times has a nice feature on Joshua Fisher, a Minnesota Law 3L who runs “dodgerdivorce.com,” which tracks every detail in the messy divorce between the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Through his blog coverage, Fisher has…
How Much is a Single Blog Link Worth?
I get emails asking me for links, both free and for-pay, just about every day from folks looking for a little PageRank love. Here’s an example of one I got today: ________ Hello, I ran across your page on https://blog.ericgoldman.org/…
Blog Comments as Evidence of Consumer Confusion–QVC v. Your Vitamins
QVC, Inc. v. Your Vitamins, Inc., 2010 WL 2985801 (D. Del. July 27, 2010) This case involves two competitive products. Lessman, the principal behind one of the products, posted 4 blog posts deconstructing his competitor’s products. The competitor sued Lessman…
MySpace Postings Foil Another Litigant–Sedie v. U.S.
Sedie v. U.S., 2010 WL 1644252 (N.D. Cal. April 21, 2010) I’ve previously blogged about online postings exposing litigant duplicity, i.e., arguing one thing in court but saying something contrary online. (1, 2) This case is typical of the trend…
Disturbingly Humorous MySpace Posts Used as Impeaching Evidence in Spousal Abuse Case–Embry v. State
Embry v. State, 2010 WL 768755 (Ind. App. Ct. March 8, 2010) I’ve blogged before about the use of postings to MySpace or other social networking sites as a new source of impeaching evidence. In this case, an ex-husband was…