SBOT Computer & Technology Section

As many have noticed, several prominent websites (Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and many other) have gone “black” today in protest of certain legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. There are two pieces of legislation: the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) H.R. 3261 and the very similar but more tailored Protect IP Act (“PIPA”) S. 968. Both of the acts are promoted by the Music and Movie industries (among other large content providers). Essentially, the closed-content industries are trying to preclude access to websites that they content holds/links/streams their content. In order to preclude that access, however, the law will affect some of the Internet’s fundamental infrastructure, particularly the Domain Name System (“DNS”). DNS is the technology that translates http://www.google.com (that humans understand) into http://209.85.229.104 (that the Internet routers understand). Both SOPA and PIPA would impose a duty on those organizations that run their own DNS servers (which includes large law firms, companies, state and local government agencies and many others) to blacklist sites identified by court order. Many of these companies do not like the idea of being held responsible for the policing of some other company’s business model. Worse, the law is written vaguely, and is thus ripe for abuse — hence the protests by companies large and small, as well as by many other civil groups and individuals.

At the moment, SOPA appears stalled because of the protests. However, the sponsor of PIPA is trying to get a vote on the legislation early next week.

There is a good paper, entitled “Don’t Break the Internet” by Mark A. Lemley (Stanford Law School), David S. Levine (Elon University School of Law; Stanford University – Center for Internet and Society), & David G. Post (Temple University School of Law). The article was published in the Stanford Law Review Online, Vol. 64, p. 34, December 2011. Here is the Abstract:

Two bills now pending in Congress – the “Protect IP Act” (“Protect IP”) in the Senate, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (“SOPA”) in the House – represent the latest legislative attempts to address online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.

Our Section’s legal apps were featured in this month’s Texas Bar Journal.

First of all, we should give a big hat tip to Ms. Sharon Nelson of the RideTheLightning blog. She has a link to an posting by a Mr. Ben Schorr on the Canadian technology blog SLAW.

If you have not yet heard about Siri (a new feature for the iPhone 4S), then Mr. Schorr’s posting is a great place to start. For attorneys who have it, and think that their iPhone is protected by a PIN, then they should definitely read the post. For attorneys who want to find additional ways to get electronically stored information off of custodian’s iPhones (or are worried about what their opponents could learn), they should absolutely read the post.

Sobering.

This presentation was by Mr. David A. Chaumette (De la Rosa & Chaumette), who is only one of two presenters at this conference who have TWO aerospace engineering degrees. He got his undergrad at Princeton and MS at Stanford. Evidently, he went to law school quickly thereafter because he worked at NASA (Ames) for a short period of time.

After a few technical glitches, the presentation got going.

The presentation is focused on discovering information on social media, but was useful for e-discovery in general. David made a point of how Charlie Sheen “has really lit the fire of social media” and was put forward as someone who has really capitalized on this relatively new form of media.

If you were fortunate enough to sign up for this course, you would have received in the printed materials a long and well-written article on this topic that can be a good first-resource. You may (I suspect) be able to find this article on the Internet at a later date (not now) so don’t feel too left out.

After a lengthy introduction to some of the ins-and-outs of social media, Mr. Chaumette put up a list of 10 myths of the Internet/social media system — and then systematically dispelled (“torpedoed”) each myth. It was an effective presentation technique. The list is not in the materials, and is an example of presentation *adding* to the total package.

One good (reminder) tip on the authentication of electronic evidence is Texas RCP 193.7, which establishes a presumption of authenticity for a document that is produced in the course of discovery. If you don’t get that, then there is the old-fashioned form of authentication — with a witness.

The next speaker is Mr. Robert B. Dubose (Alexander Dubose & Townsend LLP). His presentation is called “Tales of Technology and Terror: How to Prevent Technology from Harming Your Law Practice”). However, a better title would include “Tyranny” rather than “Terror”. Robert went over the pschological reasons why multi-tasking reduces substantially a human’s ability to do anything right.

He has some words of advice:

1. Get off of useless email lists (typically by companies) and be judicious about using “Reply to All”.

2. Schedule no more than four email review periods per day.”

3. Turn off automatic email alerts.

4. Try to limit the number of programs that you run at one time. Maybe that is why Windows is so popular. Since Windows (still) really sucks at multitasking, the machine tends to drag when you load up extra applications — creating an automatic penalty for using multiple applications. The Linux guys have had to contend with this problem much longer and so have had more time to graple with the problem and solved it by using multiple desktops. The Apple guys have this feature in OS X, but it is not as well implemented as it is in Linux because Apple only added it in the last few years. Windows, on the other hand, keeps you focused on a single desktop.

5. The most interesting (and useful) thing that Mr. Debose discussed was the differences between online-reading and paper-reading. People read online content differently than they do paper books. Part of it may be to eye fatigue, and another part may be the vast cornucopia of information that you *know* you can reach oh-so-easily when online is just too tempting. In short, screen-reading is addictive and it changes your ability (in a negative manner) to concentrate on complex content such as legal cases. The cure? Turn off the computers at a certain time at home, and read a book.

6. Beware of context. For those of us who are older, this is obvious, but it is something that needs reminder. Word searches miss the bigger picture (of the legal opinion, history, etc.). Having an understanding of the context yields a richer experience. Relying on quick-and-easy word searches strips a statement from its context — to the peril of the reader. This is a recurring problem in e-discovery. Indeed, the courts have picked up on this theme, and admonish attorneys who rely soley on keyword searches (as well as their choice of keywords and search structure).

The name of the first topic is “Ethically Using Social Media in Legal Practice”. There were supposed to be three speakers, but only Ms. Debra L. Bruce (Lawyer-Coach LLC) and Ms. Sophia Lisa Salazar (Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.) showed up.

Debra had given the same presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Texas Bar this last summer. She discussed how a local attorney (Thomas Fox) used Twitter to gain a following and become known as a “go to guy” on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). Retweating was the trick for him. Getting friends to retweat what one had tweeted promted a network-effect and garnered a disproportionate amount of media attention. In military terms, it can be a “force multiplier.”

As Ms. Salazar noted, “there are people to know, and people to follow” on the social networks. The cost of entry is low (free, after you’ve paid for the device and electricity). Debra also noted that newspaper reporters (including the Wall Street Journal) are monitoring the social network sites and call to get comments. In short, social networking can be a springboard to other media.

Ms. Bruce cautioned that twittering a potential client can run afoul of Texas Disciplinary Rule (“DR”) 7.03(a). Definitely something to consider in the interative character of Twitter and even Facebook.

Ms. Bruce also highlighted a website called “Avvo” which rates lawyers and other professionals. It seems (appears?) to Ms. Bruce that how active you are on Avvo has an effect on your rating. By posting articles on Avvo and participating in the discussions, you can get more points. Avvo has been sued by some professionals (but the subsequent media attention for a rating-based lawsuit may be unwelcome).

Ms. Salazar went over the newest major social network: Google+. She went over the “circle” feature in Google+ where you can make discussions among circle members discreet, and thus solve to some extent the problem of mixing business with extra-firm activities on the same social site such as Facebook.

Ms. Salazar also identified another social site called “Huddle” where you can post teaching presentations online (for free).

I’m at the “2011 Technology and the Practice of Law” Seminar in downtown Houston. The seminar is sponsored by the Houston Bar Association. Two of the Computer & Technology Section Councilmembers are speaking at this conference; namely myself (Ron Chichester) and Jason Smith, who are both speaking on cloud computing.

I hope to make a posting on each presentation. The first impression, however, was the incredible dearth of attendees. I think the count is a mere 14. It seems like a good program, but few took advantage of easy-to-get CLE for downtown Houston attorneys. This confirms the trend of consuming CLE via streaming downloads. That trend is great for reducing expenses, but you do lose something from not meeting new people face-to-face.

Check out the article on Texas Lawyer‘s Tex Parte Blog about our upcoming month-long free trial of the Section’s app.