A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Chapter 38 of Title 43 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to private detectives and security agencies, so as to revise a definition;
HB 1259 is back, and if anything it is worse. If this bill becomes law it will be a felony for CompUSA to remove virsuses from infected computers without a PI licence and a law enforcement professional on staff. If you are computer consultant and you respond a computer breakin you could face a year in prison under this statute.
This matter requires national attention from the IT Industry. Now.
Skrivanek, a former engineer at Digital Equipment Corp., said he is used to long hours, having attended school at night to earn his law degree.
''But it was easier working full time and going to law school at night than it was being a first-year associate,'' he said. ''You have this expectation that when you get out of law school, things will be better. Sometimes it's not true.''
Of the 2,377 respondents who answered all or part of the survey, 84.2 percent indicated they would be willing to earn less money in exchange for lower billable-hour requirements....
“Partners will view this as further confirmation of the different affirmations of Generation Y,” he says, adding that incremental additional hours are where law firms make a profit, which is why billable-hour requirements shouldn’t be lowered.
Georgia Legislative Watch offers an inside look at the various legislation introduced in the Georgia General Assembly for the purpose of educating and informing individuals on the legislative process, as well as to offer readers the opportunity to comment and critique legislation.
A friend of mine has cofounded a website that tracks legislation in Georgia.
As much as I think engineering is a dysfunctional profession, I am often shocked at how other professions seem to work. As all of you know I've been interested in the law for a long time. So I took the LSAT. I got a good grade. So I applied to some schools. I got into a good school. And now, right now, I have to make a decision that will determine the rest of my life. I don't know if I can go through with this, inspite of how much I love the subject matter or what kind of difference I feel that I can make.
Its all about fear. Law firms pray on fear. Some of that fear is real. A lot of it is imaginary, and it is the imaginary fears that have created a system that appears to take really bright people and chew them up.
When I look at all the C&Ds that end up on Chilling Effects, I see fear. A lawyer has convinced a corporation that if they don't vigorously defend their trademarks by threatening every blogger who mentions them in passing they won't be successful at defending that trademark when they do have a real competitive threat. This fear isn't real. There is a substantive difference between a competitive threat and a blogger, and any lawyer worth his salt ought to be able to articulate that difference in a court room. But its in the interest of the firm to stoke that fear. That fear turns into billable hours. By telling corporate managers with a straight face they have to generate these C&Ds or toss their trademark away, the firm generates revenue.
Fear is the reason that a handful of lawschools have dominated the market. All the professors, all the judges, and most of the top lawyers all come from a handful of schools. Those schools are expensive. Astronomically expensive. Because they can be. Because every school in the country wants professors who went to the top schools, and every corporate manager is afraid that if he isn't getting defended by a student from a top school he is going to loose his shirt.
You don't see that in engineering. No one cares what school professors attended. They care whether or not they are engaging communicators and whether or not they are doing useful research. This is because engineering is about results. Law is not about results. Its about perceptions.
Law students have to assume hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to attend one of these top notch schools, and in fact many of the not so top notch schools are similarly expensive and offer the added benefit that its really difficult to get a job when you graduate because everyone is afraid to have you defending them. That debt becomes an indenture. You have to pay it off. The only way to pay it off is the get a job at a big firm. The big firms have to pay you $150,000, because a third of it is going to pay off your loans, and the rest of it is the minimum you'd really expect someone with that level of responsibility to be paid.
The firm can only afford to hire so many people at such a rate, and furthermore... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
The new Congress has barely begun, but the major record labels are already up to their old tricks.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has re-introduced the PERFORM Act, a backdoor assault on your right to record off the radio. Satellite and digital radio stations as well as Internet webcasters would have to adopt digital rights management (DRM) restrictions or lose the statutory license for broadcasting music.
Well, Congress is off to quite a start this year. In addition to killing off small webcasters they're talking writing a blank check for the DOJ to create ISP Data Retention requirements and they're back in to fining sites like MemeStreams hundreds of thousands of dollars if we fail to comply with an arcane reporting rule for child porn incidents.
They are also seeking to criminalize Internet use:
Another section of the draft bill says that anyone convicted of certain child exploitation-related offenses who also used the "Internet to commit the violation" will get an extra 10 years in prison.
Marv Johnson, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the extra 10 years in prison was an odd requirement because the Internet is not inherently dangerous like a firearm. Rather, he said, the bill proposes to punish someone for using a perfectly legal item or service in an illegal way.
"It would be like punishing someone additionally for driving a car in the commission of an offense," Johnson said.
Guantanamo remarks cost policy chief his job - CNN.com
Topic: Politics and Law
2:16 am EST, Feb 3, 2007
The Pentagon's man in charge of handling the department's policy on detainees from the war on terrorism has resigned, Defense Department officials said Friday.
Charles "Cully" Stimson resigned Thursday after making controversial remarks last month about law firms that represent terrorism suspects held by the U.S. military, Pentagon officials said.
I commented on the comments that cost him his job. No one recommended that post.
Apparently he tried apologizing in WaPo, but I missed it. Given that, the resignation was probably not needed.
The Volokh Conspiracy - Who claims that Textualism and Originalism lead to the Conclusion that the Air Force is Unconstitutional?
Topic: Politics and Law
2:26 pm EST, Jan 29, 2007
Are there any serious constitutional law scholars who use the supposed unconstitutionality of the Air Force as an argument against originalism. A quick (and by no means comprehensive) Westlaw search reveals several examples. The use of the Air Force as an argument against originalism and textualism is not just a straw man. It's actually quite common.
There is a really good discussion going on in this thread about what originalism means with solid (and not so solid) points being made on both sides. If you're interested in the big question of Constitutional interpretation you'll enjoy this thread. While the matter isn't a straw man, its wonderfully useful as a straw man argument against people who make straw man arguments about the Constitution. :) The kind of people who parrot that the "Constitution doesn't say nothn 'bout abortion" are typically strong supporters of the military. Pointing out that it also doesn't say nothn 'bout the Air Force may be a fun way to make their heads explode.
Leahy: "We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held and he'd be investigated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."
Slashdot | Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated
Topic: Politics and Law
12:43 pm EST, Jan 19, 2007
The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by MemeStreams has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats.
