April 2-4: speaking about age authentication at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington DC. Santa Clara Law is hosting a get-together at the Privacy Bash on April 3.

April 5-6: speaking about the SAD Scheme at the SFIPLA Annual Summit in Sonoma

April 7-8: personal trip to Eugene

April 10-12: personal trip to greater NYC area

April 15-17: speaking about the future of Generative AI as part of the Nies Lecture series at Marquette Law in Milwaukee

April 24 (tentative): annual Internet Law Year-in-Review for the law school’s Internet Law Student Organization

May 7: speaking about the CCPA/CPRA at PLI’s Twenty-Fifth Annual Institute on Privacy and Cybersecurity Law in San Francisco

May 16: fireside chat with Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter at the Copyright Office Comes to California event, at the Oracle facilities in Redwood Shores

May 29: AIPLA online seminar on the SAD Scheme

May 29: speaking about copyright year-in-review at the PLI Copyright Fundamentals event in San Francisco

Looking Ahead…

July 15-19: visit Traverse City on my way to speaking about Emoji Law and Copyright Year-in-Review at the ICLE IP Institute on Mackinac Island

July 22-24: Trustcon, San Francisco

August 8-9: IPSC, Berkeley

October 10: Bar Association of San Francisco IP Section, topic TBA

The post Speaking/Travel Schedule Q2 2024 appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

January 18-21: Eugene, Oregon (family trip)

February 2-3: WIPIP at SCU

February 9: Celebration of Dan Burk, UC Irvine

February 23-24: Trademark Roundtable at UNLV

March 2: San Diego (family trip)

March 19: USC IP Institute, Santa Monica

March 20: PLI conference (virtual)

Some of my commitments for the rest of 2024:

April 2-4: IAPP Global Privacy Summit, Washington DC

April 15-17: Milwaukee (details TBA)

May 25: AIPLA program on the SAD Scheme (virtual)

July 15-19: Traverse City and Michigan IP Institute, Mackinac Island

July 22-24: Trustcon, San Francisco

The post Q1 2024 Travel/Speaking Schedule appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

October 3: Hon. David E. Peebles American Inn of Court (videoconference). I’m presenting my SAD Scheme paper.

October 5: Santa Clara Law alumni and friends reception at IAPP PSR. Details to come! Let me know if you are interested in attending.

October 6: IAPP PSR, San Diego. I’m on a panel about the privacy risks of mandatory online age authentication.

October 12: Suffolk Law Fifth Annual IP & Innovation Conference (videoconference). I’m on a panel about the SAD Scheme.

October 13: Emoji law training for Arkansas judges in Rogers, AR.

October 13: Suffolk Law academic workshop (videoconference)

November 3: Pam Samuelson celebration in Berkeley

November 4: California Lawyers Association 47th Annual IP Institute, San Diego. I’m presenting on Section 230 for IP lawyers.

November 17: UNC Law First Amendment Symposium. I’m on a panel about mandatory editorial transparency.

* * *

My travels this summer included:

• A workshop at the University of Amsterdam IViR on the Digital Services Act. My photo album. Blog post.
• Family reunion in Suncadia, Washington. Photo album.
• Two presentations at the Michigan IP Institute on Mackinac Island. My photo album.
• Visits to our vacation rental in Caspar (not too often because it’s being remodeled). Photo album of the place. Photo album of the Mendocino Coast.

The post My Fall 2023 Speaking/Travel Schedule appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic Museum). Grade: A. It always astonishes me that during the “Alteration” (the Dutch name for the Reformation), Catholicism was more illegal than Judaism. However, in typical Dutch fashion, it was OK to practice Catholicism so long as you did it in your home. This prompted wealthy Catholics to build churches inside their homes. The Our Lord in the Attic Museum represents a well-preserved house church. The tour took about an hour and answered all of my questions. Recommended.

Dutch Resistance Museum. Grade: A. The Dutch responses to Nazi occupation were “complicated.” This museum explains in detail why and how it was complicated. It provided a big-picture review of the situation (the red buttons and the videos) along with dozens of individual stories representing many subcommunities of the Dutch population (often with detailed census counts), including those whose stories are often overlooked. You could do the big-picture highlights in an hour, but I spent over 2 hours diving deeper into the individual stories. The museum answered many of my questions, but I had some remaining. Why did the Dutch protest the Nazi’s initial attacks on the Jews, only to largely acquiesce; but when the Nazis later requisitioned all young Dutch males, the population fought back much harder? Why were the Nazis unable to control the input materials needed for the resistance, such as cameras, film, and paper? Why did the Dutch people and government do so little to help the Holocaust survivors who returned home? Overall, this wasn’t necessarily a fun museum to visit, but it accomplished its goals of telling many sides of a complicated story.

Portuguese Synagogue. Grade: A. I had previously visited the Jewish Museum, which I also recommend, but this time I had a personal tour guide through the Portuguese Synagogue. It was at one point the largest synagogue in the world, and it influenced several other Portuguese Jewish communities throughout the globe. The synagogue itself wasn’t particularly ostentatious, but it remains an impressive sight nonetheless, and the treasure room further demonstrates the community’s wealth and power. 2 hours was a perfect amount of time to appreciate the synagogue, the historic Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam, and the tiny community of Jews still using the facilities.

Tropenmuseum. Grade: skip it. I only went because they had a free admission day and I had a small window of time that made this museum a feasible option. At one point, I think the museum was supposed to examine the Dutch history of colonialism. That’s a topic that sorely needs more public accountability. However, this museum seems to have morphed into a general catchall about countries in the tropics…? I’m not sure what the museum’s agenda is any more. The exhibits made no sense to me.

Van Gogh Museum. Grade: A. Still one of my favorite museums in the world. The paintings are amazing, especially in person where it’s possible to see the true colors and dimensionality.

Rijksmuseum. Grade: A*. A tour de force through Dutch history and artistic accomplishment, including many paintings by Dutch old masters like Rembrandt. The asterisk is because I couldn’t stop contextualizing the items on display as the fruits of an economy built on colonialism and slavery, even those items that hadn’t been looted, so I felt some sadness throughout the experience.

* * *

My vegan tour of Amsterdam included:

• TerraZen. This Japanese-Caribbean fusion place is so legendary, it doesn’t even display its name on the exterior (just the word “VEGAN” on the window).
• Vegan Junk Food Bar. It’s Instagram friendly with pink buns and purple sauces, but the flavors disappointed.
• Golden Temple. Indian food, Dutch-ified.

I had some strikeouts on my vegan quests. De Patchka turned me away because they were already overwhelmed with orders. Mooshka was closed for remodeling.

The post Recap of My Second Visit to Amsterdam appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

In California:

* Inspiration Point, Anacapa Island
* Bennett Point, San Miguel Island
* The Desert Divide, Garner Valley, Southern California
* Fern Canyon/Gold Bluffs Beach, Del Notre County (this is where Lisa and I got engaged )
* The Mendocino Coast
* Top of Half Dome (but the whole hike is amazing)
* Any old-growth redwood grove. I love them all, but some favorites include Montgomery Woods and groves off the Avenue of the Giants

Beyond California:

* The drive from Haines, Alaska to Haines Junction, Yukon. A contender for one of the world’s most scenic drives
* The Western Wall, Old City of Jerusalem
* Tent Rocks, New Mexico (1, 2)
* Kalalau Trail, Kauai
* Pinea Trail, Kauai

The post Some Tourist Destinations I Dream About appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

After that long hibernation, our family is slowly reemerging from the pandemic. In 2022, I took 3 flight trips (Hawaii, Chicago, and Denver/Montana) and several long drive trips (Mendocino/Redwood National Park, Santa Rosa Island, Palm Springs, Bend, Mendocino (second time), the Southwest (photo album in process)). My travel schedule isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels, but we’re taking steps towards “normalcy.” Some of the trips and in-person talks on the docket for Q1 2023:

January 6: AALS in San Diego (IP section program on the metaverse + emerging IP scholar commentary)

January 25: Enigma Conference in Santa Clara (book project talk)

February 3: Northwestern Law & Tech conference in San Francisco

February 3: Municipal Law conference at SCU

February 5: Yuba City and Sutter Buttes hike

February 24-25: Trademark conference at UCLA

March 13-16: Ventura and Santa Cruz Island camping

March 17-19: Wedding in San Diego

March 26-27: Private training and possible public talk in Fort Worth, TX

Because I’m still following heightened COVID protocols, I don’t do as much socializing on my trips as I used to. Still, if you want to connect during my travels, let me know and we’ll see what’s feasible.

Longer range 2023 commitments:

• Trustcon 2023 in San Francisco, July 11-13
• Michigan IP conference on Mackinac Island, July 20-21

The post Q1 2023 Travel and Speaking Schedule appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

About Redwood Forests

I love redwood forests. I find them calming and spiritual. Photos and videos never do justice to redwood forests. You have to experience them firsthand. Whenever tourists ask me about what to do in California, visiting a redwood forest is my top recommendation. A person’s first visit to a redwood forest often changes their worldview forever.

Not everyone shares my passion for redwood forests. A common sentiment: if you’ve seen one redwood grove, you’ve seen them all. If you agree, then the Headwaters Forest Reserve probably isn’t for you. You can find nice old-growth redwood groves that are easier to get to.

About the Headwaters Forest Reserve

Redwood forests thrive in central and northern California’s coastal area. Loggers have logged old-growth redwood trees for 150+ years. The logging leads to second-growth groves, which are degraded both biologically and scenery-wise.

By the 1980s, few large areas of old-growth redwood groves hadn’t been logged and remained unprotected by the government. Headwaters Forest was the largest remaining old-growth redwood forest in private hands. Pacific Lumber owned it. Although all logging of old-growth redwoods hurts the ecosystem, Pacific Lumber was regarded as a relatively gentle land steward. That made them a juicy target for a corporate raider. Charles Hurwitz of Maxxam did a hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber and initiated more old-growth clear-cutting. Activists pushed back and turned Headwaters Forest into a cause celebre. This spurred Congress and California to purchase 7,472 acres of the Headwaters Forest for $380M.

There are two public access points. On the north side is the Elk River Trail, which the public can access without restriction. On the south side is the Salmon Pass Trail, which can be accessed only via a ranger-led tour. The reserve’s heart, about 2,500 acres of unbroken old-growth redwoods, has no public access.

The Elk River Trail

Access to the Elk River Trailhead is via the paved Elk River Road, about 15 minutes from Eureka. Along the way, check out the covered bridges at Zane’s Ranch and Bertas Ranch. The road ends at a paved parking lot.

The trail is 11 miles roundtrip. This map (apparently not available elsewhere online) depicts the trail:

The trail has landmarks every mile:

• Mile 1: the paved trail ends at the site of Falk, an abandoned company town. There are few artifacts remaining. Check out this video on Falk. There are some picnic tables around here if you want to lunch with the mosquitos. The first mile had educational signage and two bypass trails on the southside. A short bypass is marked on the map; the longer bypass isn’t.
• Mile 2 bridge. More buggy picnic tables near here.
• Mile 3 bridge. The trail’s steepest and most overgrown parts start here.
• Mile 4 bridge (actually a small boarded crossing over a creek, and the map doesn’t depict a second boarded crossing soon after). We think the mile 4 bridge is more like 4.25 miles from the start.
• Mile 5: the beginning of the old-growth loop.

The mile-apart spacing of the landmarks made it easy to track our progress. At our hiking speed, each landmark was roughly 30 minutes apart. The trail is nicely graded, well-maintained, and well-signed, making navigation a breeze. Everything about the trail is in great condition.

The scenery is standard for the area. The first three miles follow the riverbed. We enjoyed snacking on trailside vine-ripened blackberries and other edible berries. We saw plenty of flowers in early August. Until the old-growth loop, the forests are clearly second-growth–nice but unremarkable. The trail’s big payoff is the old-growth loop. Still, per my introductory remarks, it looks like other old-growth redwood groves.

The bottom line: this is a lovely 5 hour hike through typical North California terrain. But if your goal is to see old-growth redwoods, you can find just-as-nice groves that are quicker to reach.

The Salmon Pass Trail

The Salmon Pass Trail requires advance reservations. The gathering point is at Newburg Park in Fortuna. A sign near the parking lot entrance lets you know you’re at the right place. Ranger Julie led our tour. She offered to give us a ride, but we followed her in our own car. The road to the trailhead passes over private property, so it is restricted by a gate. The road is mostly dirt/gravel and has a few steep parts that strained the Prius, but the Prius had enough ground clearance to handle the road.

Like the Elk River Trail, the Salmon Pass Trail hikes through logged areas to reach an old-growth redwood grove. The contrast between the logged and old-growth areas was stark. Some of the areas were clearcut within the last 40 years. Those areas are dominated by red alder trees that, over the centuries, will give way to the redwoods. As with the Elk River Trail, the old-growth grove is great but looks like other old-growth groves. Many redwoods were marked with blue paint, indicating that they had been scheduled for cutting. I’m so glad they survived. The trail runs about 4 miles, and our group spent about 3 hours on the trail (plus the drive time to/from Newburg Park to the trailhead).

If you have to pick between the Elk River and Salmon Pass trails, I’d recommend the Salmon Pass hike. Both trails are beautiful, but Salmon Pass is shorter and benefits from expert narration. However, if your schedule doesn’t sync with the Salmon Pass reservation options, you’ll still enjoy the Elk River trail a lot. If your goal is to experience an old-growth redwood grove with as little time investment as possible, then skip both hikes and go to the Avenue of the Giants, which has multiple awesome old-growth grove options right along the road.

Other Nearby Attractions

On this trip, we also stopped at the following places:

• Avenue of the Giants. One of the most beautiful auto tours anywhere. The road runs along the river and weaves through wonderful redwood forests, dotted by quaint towns and quirky roadside attractions/tourist traps. Our favorite stops were the Founder’s Grove and the Gould Grove trail across from the visitor’s center, but all of the stops are great (though, if you think redwood groves are all the same, they may feel redundant). Although the groves are part of the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, access is free. The Humboldt Redwoods State Park has many other first-rate trails; it’s the world’s largest remaining old-growth redwood forest.
• Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Conveniently located off the 101, it’s easily overlooked. We hiked the Shorebird Loop Trail and, in less than an hour, saw bunnies, a skunk, a deer, and many birds, especially egrets on the hunt. We saw plenty of flowers in early August. This place would be awesome at sunrise and sunset, but it’s only open 9-5.
• Ferndale. A little touristy for my tastes, but the Victorian-era buildings are amazing.
• Downtown Fortuna. My 15 year old daughter loved seeing an old-school downtown like this. Perhaps it’s not as scenic as Ferndale, but it feels more authentic.
• Old Town Eureka. More Victorian gems, including the amazing Carson Mansion and the Pink Lady across the street. We enjoyed watching the harbor seals.

Though we didn’t visit them on this trip, I also love the Redwoods National Park and Prairie Creek State Park further north of Eureka. Gold Bluffs Beach (including the elk herd!) and Fern Canyon are stunning.

The post Hiking the Headwaters Forest Reserve appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Despite increasingly ominous news reports, work proceeded normally in January and February 2020. For example, in early February 2020, the law school held a major in-person conference called WIPIP with 80+ attendees.

Things changed dramatically by early March. On March 9, 2020, I nervously flew to Washington DC for a conference presentation. Only about 25% of the conference registrants attended, and attendees felt uncomfortable being in each other’s presence. I was so distraught about the contagion risks that, after flying home March 10, we immediately pulled our kids from in-person school (the schools transitioned to remote learning a few days later).

How the pandemic shutdown has affected me:

Working at Home. It took a few months to adjust to working exclusively at home. I needed better A/V equipment, a faster Internet connection, and a more ergonomic setup, and addressing those issues drained my productivity. Also, my kids and wife don’t respect my workspace boundaries, leading to multiple interruptions throughout the day. I save some commute time, but I have no clear division between work and personal time. As a result, I worked most waking hours for a year without a single day off (until a short vacation in early April 2021). It was exhausting.

Teaching. Transitioning to online teaching was hard. I spent dozens of hours during summer 2020 learning how to teach online, then dozens more hours adapting my class (which I had taught 23x before) for the online format. Actually teaching the class online took 2-3x as much time than an in-person class would have required. While teaching online, I constantly worry that some technology will critically fail mid-class/mid-lecture. Overall, online teaching is time-consuming and exhausting.

Conference Presentations/Traveling. Pre-pandemic, I gave about 40 talks/year and flew about 2x/month (about 75,000 air miles/year). I haven’t been on a plane since March 10, 2020, which has saved me a lot of travel time. Nevertheless, because I can easily make remote appearances, I’ve done more public talks than ever—30 in the first four months of 2021 (over 2x/week).

Personally. My family has been remarkably privileged during the pandemic. Our house is big enough to accommodate us all, no one got the virus, I have job security, I thrived professionally, and my kids have done well academically. Yet, my family and I have “lost” little things due to the shutdown—such as my daughter’s 8th grade graduation, my son’s tour of prospective colleges, in-person holiday celebrations (Zoom gatherings aren’t the same), and scheduled vacations to Bali, Kenya, Hawaii, and more. Collectively, these losses diminished our lives. Most of all, we miss the in-person interactions that remain so vital to building strong relationships.

The post Reflecting on a Pandemic Shutdown Year appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Ordinarily, United Airlines would respond to a customer experience like this with an apathetic shrug and an unconvincing declaration that it cares about customer service and will strive to do better. However, Israel has a mandatory compensation law for flights with long delays due to factors in the airline’s control, like maintenance. As a result, United owed us money for these delays.

Immediately after the flight, United sent us an email from “United Cares” (irony alert!) offering each of us a $200 travel voucher (expires in 1 year) or 10,000 bonus miles. This doesn’t sound too bad until you compare it to the statutory requirements, which makes this a low-ball and borderline-offensive offer. As negotiation theory counsels, you usually should not take the first offer, and I feel bad for anyone who took this deal instead of the mandatory compensation.

On January 12, I sent my four page letter to both the main United “Customer Care” portal and directly to Laura Mandile, United’s head of customer care, whose name I got from the Elliott Advocacy site. Impressively, within 24 hours, I heard back from Ms. Mandile’s office.

This time, if we were willing to forego the mandatory Israeli compensation, United offered each of us a $1,000 travel voucher (again, expiring in 1 year) or 30,000 bonus miles. As you can see, the travel voucher offer was 5x their initial offer. The voucher’s nominal dollar amount actually exceeded the mandatory compensation by a small amount. However, it was completely uninteresting because it meant we’d have to fly United Airlines enough to burn up $1,000 each, and we’re not masochists.

Alternatively, Ms. Mandile’s office promised to pay us the mandatory compensation in cash, which we chose. A couple of weeks later, we received three checks of $897 each.

Ms. Mandile’s office also unilaterally refunded the amounts we had paid to upgrade from cattle-car economy to economy “plus.” We did end up flying economy plus on the return flights. However, we had initially obtained bulkhead seating on the return flight, which had special value to Lisa due to her health. United was not able to provide bulkhead seating on one of the return segments. Despite that, we didn’t ask for the refunds, so (to its credit) United unilaterally offered that. Bizarrely, initially they only initiated refunds on two of the three tickets; I had to go back and ask them to process the third ticket’s refund, which they then did without further hassle. The total value of these refunds was about $550.

So, within a month of my request, United paid/refunded us a total of about $3,250 for canceling its TLV>SFO flight. The glitch on the initially incomplete upgrade refunds was another unforced SNAFU, but in all other respects, United was appropriately responsive to my complaint, both in terms of substance and timeliness.

While the money is nice, it doesn’t adequately compensate us for the lost day of our lives. Still, I derive some satisfaction from knowing that United got feedback–in hard, cold cash–about its dubious maintenance practices. Perhaps that will help encourage them to invest properly in maintenance in the future. As a result, I am now a proponent of mandatory compensation laws for airline delays. It’s a feature in Europe but not here in the US. Maybe we should evaluate that further.

The response from Ms. Mandile’s office also had some flowery language apologizing for our experience and promising to send our feedback up the chain. I imagine the letter’s author actually meant all of that, but United as an entity is quite impervious to customer feedback. So, despite the satisfactory resolution to my complaints, I’ve decided that I will try to avoid flying United again, even when it’s the only game in town. IMO, flying United only makes sense if you’re a global services customer; and even they are vulnerable to United’s suboptimal maintenance program. Everyone else gets rough treatment that degrades with (lack of) status.

As I mentioned in my United letter, I have consolidated my travel on Alaska Airlines, a decision that has worked well for me. The one hitch is that Alaska currently has weak international programs (hence my initial decision to fly United to Israel). However, Alaska just announced that next year they will join the OneWorld alliance, including American Airlines, which will give me much of the international reach I’ve been missing.

The post How United Airlines Handled My Complaint About a Terrible Flight Experience appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Jan. 23-24: UCLA conference on algorithmic criminal justice

Feb. 6: Developed/The App Economy Tour, Oakland. I’ll be discussing the CCPA.

Feb. 7-8: WIPIP at SCU

Feb. 11-12: Faculty workshop at University of San Diego on my Content Moderation Remedies paper on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I’ll be on a panel regarding Herrick v. Grindr for their Pride Law student organization

Feb. 19: I’m expecting to participate in the USDOJ’s Section 230 roundtable in DC

Feb. 19: guest lecture at Tulane Law (by videoconference)

[UPDATED FROM HERE FEB. 22, 2020]

Feb. 24: workshop at Berkeley Law on my Content Moderation Remedies paper

Feb. 25: talk at Evergreen Valley High School about technology law

Feb. 28-29: Trademark Roundtable at Stanford Law

March 6: Technology at Society’s Frontier: Framing the Big Legal Issues, San Francisco

March 6: Consumer Law Scholars Conference at Berkeley Law. I’ll be a discussant on Ahmed Taha’s paper.

March 10: Cato “Return of the Gatekeepers” conference in DC. I’ll speak against censorship of social media (apparently a controversial position nowadays).

March 14: Internet Law Works-in-Progress conference at New York Law School. I’ll present my next major project, currently entitled “Validating Transparency Reports.”

March 16: SXSW, “FOSTA and the Future of Internet Censorship,” Austin

March 18: Santa Clara Law Faculty Workshop, Validating Transparency Reports

March 25: California Lawyers Association, Emojis and the Law (webinar)

March 27-28: Texas A&M Law, “Smart Law and Intelligent Machines,” Ft. Worth, Validating Transparency Reports

Week of April 6: I will have a multi-island speaking tour of Hawaii to talk about emojis and the law. Yes, I literally get paid to do this. The exact schedule is being developed, but so far I’m scheduled to be in Oahu April 6 and 7.

April 16: University of Oregon lecture, Eugene, Why The Internet Will Soon Look More Like Netflix (based off this paper)

April 22: Greenberg Traurig San Francisco, Platform Liability Updates

April 23: Greenberg Traurig Palo Alto, Platform Liability Updates

April 25-26: Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference, Yale Law School, Content Moderation Remedies

May 4: PLI, “Twenty-First Annual Institute on Privacy and Cybersecurity Law,” SF. I’ll be on a CCPA panel.

May 6-7: Privacy & Security Conference, Washington DC, CCPA (tentative)

May 12: KnowIt conference in Las Vegas on “Back to the Future of Online Data Privacy.”

May 18-20: I’ll attend the ALI meeting in San Francisco

June 7-10: I’m currently scheduled to be in Tel Aviv for some business

June 23: PLI conference in NYC on CCPA

July 29: Ninth Circuit Judges’ Conference, Portland, intermediary liability (tentative)

August 6-7: IPSC at Stanford (tentative)

August 6-8: Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions, San Francisco, Emojis and the Law (tentative)

Sometime around August 9: Lisa is giving a talk in Singapore, and we are going to extend the trip with a stop in Bali

October 21-22: Customer Technology World, Amsterdam, CCPA

The post Spring 2020 Speaking and Travel Schedule appeared first on Goldman's Observations.