The U.S. Supreme Court, for the first time, took note of social media last week, observing that “soon … it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues.” This landmark event occurred in  Citizens United v. FEC, a case ...

It is hard to understand how “conference reports” from Congress on pending legislation can have fallen from 200 per year to just 11 over the past three decades. Secret Bill Writing On the Rise [Washington Post]. But it indicates, sadly, that laws in America are increasingly being made in back rooms, not the public forums ...

There has been much discussion recently about the movie industry’s efforts to maintain its product release “windows,” so that theatrical performances precede pay-per-view, followed by DVD sales, pay TV (HBO, etc.) and finally advertiser-supported television. My view is that these folks are shooting themselves in the foot, because DVD sales actually declined in 2009 for ...

It is hardly surprising that as digital video recorders (DVRs) become more ubiquitous, their basic function (i.e., automatic time shifting of television shows) is rapidly becoming commoditized. When TiVO was introduced in 1999 it revolutionized TV by giving users control of what they watched, when they want to watch. So as that feature spread to ...

I was honored this week to become the 50th lawyer interviewed via Twitter by Lance Godard of 22 Tweets. The edited transcript is below – for the unedited transcript, see my personal blog. Today we’re tweeting with @glennm, biglaw antitrust / telecom / technology litigator turned Web 2.0 legal guru. Glen, thank you for joining ...

This is a video clip from the panel on Law and Policy for Social Media which I moderated at last week’s 140 Characters Conference in Los Angeles. On the panel were Adrian T Dayton (@adriandayton), Brett Trout (@BrettTrout), and myself (@glennm), all working lawyers dealing with various aspects of technology in our practices regularly. We ...