Law X.0

Pew Study Finds that 36% of American Adult Internet Users Consult Wikipedia

New Report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project:

"More than a third of American adult internet users (36%) consult the citizen-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia, according to a new nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And on a typical day in the winter of 2007, 8% of online Americans consulted Wikipedia. There has been ongoing controversy about the reliability of articles on Wikipedia. Still, the Pew Internet Project survey shows that Wikipedia is far more popular among the well-educated than it is among those with lower levels of education. For instance, 50% of those with at least a college degree consult the site, compared with 22% of those with a high school diploma. And 46% of those age 18 and older who are current full- or part-time students have used Wikipedia, compared with 36% of the overall internet population."  [RJ]

A Case Study in Bloggership

Wisconsin law prof D. Gordon Smith's A Case Study in Bloggership is about to be published in the Washington University Law Review. 

Abstract: This brief essay, prepared for a symposium on Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship, held at Harvard Law School on April 27-28, 2006, uses blogging about The Walt Disney Company Derivative Litigation at the Conglomerate blog to illustrate the potential of blogging as a scholarly medium. Blogging encourages individual research and reflection, and its public nature provides an opportunity for scholarly activity that is similar in many ways to presenting at an academic conference or publishing an editorial article. Bloggership is a useful neologism that distinguishes this sort of scholarship from traditional, long-form scholarship and it distinguishes blogging that has scholarly aspirations from other forms of blogging. If scholarship is about making a contribution to knowledge, and the receptacle for that contribution is a scholarly community, then blogs seem well positioned to serve as delivery mechanisms.

Here's the SSRN version (revised March 27, 2007). [JH]

What Are the Rules When Bloggers Use Video Excerpts and Photographs Without Permission?

FindLaw columnistJulie Hilden discusses two high-profile recent disputes concerning the "fair use" exception to copyright law. In the first, music company UMG challenged pundit and blogger Michelle Malkin's unauthorized use of excerpts from videos by and of its rap-music artist, Akon, in a podcast critical of Akon's behavior. Ultimately, UMG withdrew its request that YouTube, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), de-post the Malkin podcast. In the second, photo agency X17 challenged blogger Perez Hilton's unauthorized use of its photos. X17 has sued; Hilton defends his use of the photos -- which he marks up with comments and drawings in white pen -- as satire, but Hilden explains why this defense is unlikely to persuade a court.

Hat tip to Mitchell H. Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

On legal ethical issues that face lawyers who blog

In Ethics of Blawging, Mercer law prof David Hricik addresses the legal ethical issues that face lawyers who blog (or blawg), including the potential for disclosure of client confidences, inadvertent formation of attorney-client relationships, and the unauthorized practice of law. Available on SSRN. [JH]

Ambrogi on Legal Wikis

Interesting article from Law.com:

"The engine driving collaboration on the Web is a site known as a wiki, from the Hawaiian word for fast. Attorney Robert Ambrogi tracks innovative and intriguing ways that wikis are wowing the legal profession -- from collaboratively written Web books to virtual volumes of legal research."

Includes a list of legal wikis. [RJ]