Author Archives: Harold O'Grady

Israeli Court Rules on Kafka Papers

In a major victory for libraries and public access to great literature, the Israeli Supreme Court this week issued a ruling concluding an eight-year legal battle about ownership of the literary works and letters of Franz Kafka. The series of court cases between Israel and the heirs of Max Brod, executor of the estate of Prague-born writer Franz Kafka began in 2009. Kafka’s last will and testament transferred all of his manuscripts to Brod after his death in 1924. A March 2015 article The Betrayed(?) Wills of Kafka and Brod by Nili Cohen, 27 (1) Law & Literature 1 (available to Brooklyn Law School Library users through a subscription to the Taylor & Francis Online Journal Library) relates that Kafka in separate letters entrusted his manuscripts and works to Brod instructing him to burn them after his passing. Brod did not honor Kafka’s request and took the papers with him when he fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 and emigrated to Palestine. After the 1968 death of Brod, his will bequeathed the papers to his secretary Esther Hoffe with instructions to give them to the “Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the municipal library in Tel Aviv or another organization in Israel or abroad”. Instead Hoffe kept the papers and shared them with her two daughters and even began to sell them.  In 1988, Hoffe sold an original copy of Kafka’s The Trial for $2 million. The 2007 death of Hoffe, more than 80 years after Kafka’s death, touched off a lengthy court fight between Israel and Hoffe’s daughters who claimed the papers were given to their mother by Brod so she could dispose of them as she wanted.

The WSJ Law Blog reports that Hoffe’s daughters refused the Israeli government’s demands to hand over the documents. The case turned on questions of inheritance law and whether Hoffe was entitled to give instructions about Brod’s literary legacy in her will. “Max Brod did not want his property to be sold at the best price, but for them to find an appropriate place in a literary and cultural institution” Israel’s high court stated in its opinion in which it directed that the papers should belong to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

The TrialBoth Kafka and Brod studied law in Prague’s Karl University and Kafka devoted much of his literary work to the law. His letters to Brod to destroy his manuscripts was not a binding legal document as they included neither the title “Will” nor a date, suggesting that Kafka intended to ask his friend to honor a moral, not a legal, obligation. Kafka’s uncertain attitude towards law is expressed in his greatest novel, The Trial, which he wrote from 1914 to 1915. The novel was published in 1925 after Kafka’s death. Years later, Orson Welles wrote a screenplay based on the novel and directed the 1962 masterpiece The Trial (Call No. PT2621.A26 T75 1998) which the BLS Library has in its video collection. The story centers on the main character, Josef K, who wakes up one morning to find the police in his room. They tell him that he is on trial but no one tells him what the charges are. His efforts to learn the details of the charges and to protest his innocence remain fruitless. As he tries to look behind the facade of the judicial system, he finds he has no way to escape his nightmare.

Impeachment in Cross-Examination

Each year, the American Bar Association, Section of Litigation publishes thousands of books to enhance trial practice skills of lawyers and law students on subjects from evidence to discovery to client privilege and skills for the examination of witnesses at trial and in discovery. The Brooklyn Law School Library collection has many of these titles that aspiring trial lawyimpeachers can review before starting the practice of law. The latest acquisition, MacCarthy on Impeachment: How to Find and Use These Weapons of Mass Destruction (Call No. KF8950 .M33 2016) by Terence F. MacCarthy, Executive Director of the Federal Defender Program in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and his two sons, is a relatively short 172 page volume that explores in detail impeachment of witnesses, which the author defines as cross-examination on “matters affecting the credibility of the witness” or “that which challenges veracity”. Impeachment is often used to show that the witness is, at worst, a liar, a difficult task that requires the cross examiner to go for the jugular. An easier goal of impeachment is to show that a witness is mistaken. Another type of impeachment discussed in the book is motivation or bias impeachment the constitutional dimension of which was firmly recognized in Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974).

There are many books on evidence and trial advocacy, including MacCarthy on Cross Examination (Call No. KF8920 .M326 2007) by the same author, but little specifically on impeachment. It is one of the most confusing and misunderstood parts of the trial for both trial lawyers and judges. Just as cross examination is the most difficult of trial skills, impeachment, usually a part of cross examination, is even more difficult. Many trial lawyers do not know what they can or cannot do to impeach. This new title offers trial lawyers “weapons of mass destruction” with instruction on how to use them. This groundbreaking work is an indispensable resource for trial attorneys seeking to improve their skills and better serve their clients.

The book discusses sixteen ways to impeach a witness in sixteen chapters, the last two of which deal with expert witnesses. Some chapters include citations to the Federal Rules of Evidence in parentheses. The chapter are:

  • Chapter One: Inconsistent Statements (FRE 613)
  • Chapter Two: Contradictions – Contradictory Evidence
  • Chapter Three: Motivation
  • Chapter Four: Truthfulness (FRE 608)
  • Chapter Five: Convictions (FRE 609)
  • Chapter Six: What the Witness Could Have Done but Did Not Do
  • Chapter Seven: Capacity
  • Chapter Eight: Bad Acts, Crimes, and Wrongs (FRE 404(b))
  • Chapter Nine: Habit (FRE 406)
  • Chapter Ten: Writing Used to Refresh Memory (FRE 612)
  • Chapter Eleven: Admissions (FRE 801(d)(2))
  • Chapter Twelve: The Hearsay Declarant (FRE 806)
  • Chapter Thirteen: Character Witnesses
  • Chapter Fourteen: Sex Offense or Sexual Assault Cases (FRE 412 to 415)
  • Chapter Fifteen: Expert’s Résumé (FRE 702)
  • Chapter Sixteen: Learned Treatises (FRE 803(18))

At the end of the volume is a useful list of MacCarthy’s Rules of Trial Advocacy including these sample admonitions:

  • “The lectern is for putting things on not for standing behind.”
  • “Speak in a courtroom the way you would speak in a bar. You speak in a bar to practice speaking in a courtroom.”
  • “Do not legalize.”
  • “The importance of eye contact and a smile.”
  • “Do not use fillers – i.e. “and”, “like”, “ah”.
  • “Your stories should paint pictures.”

Sedition Act of 1798: Political Speech as Crime

July 14 is famous as Bastille Day in English-speaking countries. In France, the day is called La Fête Nationale (the National Holiday) and was originally called Fête de la Fédération (“federation feast”) to celebrate the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the end of the French Revolution. The French celebrate the day each year, referring to it as Le Quatorze Juillet (the fourteenth of July). Like Independence Day in the United States, it is a national holiday in France. The day celebrates the fall of the Bastille when just under a thousand Parisians attacked the prison releasing its seven inmates. Like the 4th of July, it marks the beginning of republican democracy and the end of tyrannical rule. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, which originates from the revolution, does not commemorate the storming of the Bastille. Rather it celebrates the three tenets of the republican national motto: “liberty, equality and fraternity”.

In United States history, July 14 is the date when one of the most egregious breaches of the U.S. Constitution was enacted by Congress, the Sedition Act of 1798. In direct violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech, the Sedition Act permitted the prosecution of individuals who voiced or printed what the government deemed to be malicious remarks about the president or government of the United States. The infamous Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by the Federalist controlled Congress stemming from fears of the French revolution, specifically the Reign of Terror, and an undeclared naval war with France. The Federalists were fearful of revolutionary support growing in the United States among Irish and French immigrants and from Democratic-Republicans, sympathetic to the French cause, who wished to oust the Federalists from office. Fourteen Republicans, mainly journalists, were prosecuted, and some imprisoned, under the act. Among the prosecutions were the following:

  • James Thomson Callender, in his book “The Prospect Before Us” called the Adams administration a “continual tempest of malignant passions” and the President a “repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor”. He was indicted and convicted in 1800, fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in jail.
  • Matthew Lyon wrote an essay in the Vermont Journal accusing the administration of “ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice”. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in jail.
  • Benjamin Franklin Bache accused George Washington of incompetence and financial irregularities, and charged the “the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous Adams” with nepotism and monarchical ambition in his newspaper “The Aurora”. He was arrested in 1798 but he died of yellow fever before trial.
  • David Brown set up a liberty pole in Dedham, Massachusetts with the words, “No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President”. He was arrested and tried, fined $480, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
  • Luther Baldwin of Newark, New Jersey, who, following the adjournment of Congress in July 1798, when President Adams and his wife were traveling through Newark past a local tavern, heard one of the patrons say, “There goes the President and they are firing at his ass.” Baldwin said “he did not care if they fired thro’ his ass.” He was arrested and later convicted of speaking seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States. He was fined $150, assessed court costs and expenses, and sent to jail until he paid the fine and fees.

seditionReaders interested in this dark time in American history can Halperinlearn more by reviewing two titles recently added to the Brooklyn Law School Library collection. The first is Press and Speech Under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent by Wendell Bird (Call No. KF9397.A3281798 B57 2016). The other is The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution by Terri Diane Halperin (Call No. KF9397.A3281798 H35 2016). Interestingly, the U.S. Supreme Court never heard a case to decide whether the Alien and Sedition Acts were constitutional. The Sedition Act expired on March 3, 1801, the last day of the first and only presidential term of John Adams.

Judicial Review and Alexander Hamilton

Independence Day 2016 marks the 240th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This milestone in US history is observed by Americans, young and old, as a national holiday on the same calendar date each year. If July 4 is a Saturday, it is observed on Friday, July 3. If July 4 is a Sunday, it is observed on Monday, July 5. This year government offices and schools are closed on Monday, July 4. See 5 U.S. Code § 6103. The library at Brooklyn Law School has reduced hours on Monday and will be open from 9am to 5pm so law students can study for the bar exam scheduled at the end of July.

RutgersIn Constitutional Law courses law students at BLS and throughout the country learn that the decision by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) is arguably the most important case in American law. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court case to apply the principle of “judicial review”, the power of federal courts to void acts of Congress in conflict with the Constitution. However, a newly acquired title in the BLS Library collection, Rutgers v. Waddington: Alexander Hamilton, the End of the War for Independence, and the Origins of Judicial Review by historian Peter Charles Hoffer (Call No. KF228.R877 H64 2016) makes clear that Marbury was not the first court in the new American Republic that considered the argument that a legislative enactment in conflict with a state or federal constitutional provision is void. One of the first decisions to address the question was Rutgers v. Waddington, decided in the Mayor’s Court in the City of New York on August 7, 1786. The case is important to American constitutional law because defendants’ primary attorney who argued for an expansive notion of judicial power was Alexander Hamilton, who advocated for the principal of judicial review in Federalist Paper No. 78.

The case was presented on June 29, 1784 with Chief Justice James Duane presiding. The facts showed that Plaintiff Elizabeth Rutgers owned a large brewery and alehouse on the northern side of Maiden Lane near where Gold Street now enters it. The brewery extended from Smith (now William) Street on the west, to Queen (now Pearl) Street, on the east; and from Maiden Lane, on the south, to John Street on the north. It was one of the most notable features in what is now the Financial District.  Plaintiff was forced to abandon the brewery during the British occupation of New York City. Under the Trespass Act of 1783, which permitted patriots to sue loyalists for damages to property in occupied areas of the state, Rutgers demanded rent from Joshua Waddington who had been running the brewery since it was abandoned. Alexander Hamilton, attorney for the defense, argued that the Trespass Act violated the 1783 peace treaty ratified earlier by Congress. Chief Justice Duane delivered a split verdict awarding Rutgers rent only from the time before the British occupation. The case was ultimately settled by the two parties. Importantly the case set a precedent for Congress’s legal authority over the states. In his ruling, Chief Justice James Duane wrote that “no state in this union can alter or abridge, in a single point, the federal articles or the treaty.”

World Refugee Day 2016

UNHCRThis week, Brooklyn Law School Library Associate Librarian Linda Holmes created a display of library material marking World Refugee Day. In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution, A/RES/55/76, designating June 20 as World Refugee Day to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Among the titles in the display case located on the first floor of the BLS Library opposite the elevator is The UNHCR and the Supervision of International Refugee Law edited by James C. Simeon (Call No. K3230.R45 U54 2013). The 384 page book is an in-depth analysis of the UNHCR’s supervisory role in the international refugee protection regime. It examines the part played by key institutions, organizations and actors in the supervision of international refugee law and provides suggestions and recommendations on Green Card Storieshow the UNHCR’s supervisory role can be strengthened to ensure greater State Parties’ compliance to their obligations under these international refugee rights treaties. Another title in the display is Green Card Stories by Saundra Amrhein and Ariana Lindquist (Call No. JV6455 .A826 2011), a coffee table style book that depicts 50 recent U.S. immigrants—each with permanent residence or citizenship—in powerfully written short narratives and compelling portraits.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2016, 65.3 million people are considered refugees, the largest count since WWII. Due to rising conflict in the Middle East and ISIS’ intent to destroy Christians and non-Muslims, the world now has a record number of people who have been displaced from their homes and have nowhere to go. Unfortunately, many countries have no desire to help them, especially displaced Christians from the Middle East. One reason is because many fear that ISIS members are disguising themselves. The UNHCR estimates that 24 persons are displaced from their home every minute due to conflict and persecution with 16 million qualifying as refugees due to persecution. It released its latest analysis of global displacement trends in a 68-page report. To help understand its key findings, see this 90-second video:

Artificial Intelligence in Law and Education

robot lawAn intriguing new title in the Brooklyn Law School Library collection is Robot Law by Law Professors Ryan Calo, A. Michael Froomkin, and Ian Kerr (K564.C6 R63 2016). The 402 page book brings together research on robotics law and policy written by scholars from law, engineering, computer science and philosophy on topics such as liability, warfare, domestic law enforcement, personhood, and other cutting-edge issues in robotics and artificial intelligence. The book is an in-depth look at an area of law that is growing in importance. Like the Internet before it, robotics is a technology that will transform the social and economic landscape of legal research and practice. Robot Law looks at the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread use in hospitals, public spaces, and battlefields requiring rethinking philosophical and public policy issues, including how AI interacts with existing legal regimes and changes in policy and in law.

Whether artificial intelligence will one day displace human lawyers has become so important that, this past April, Vanderbilt Law School hosted the first legal conference on the topic, “Watson, Esq.: Will Your Next Lawyer Be a Machine”. Speakers included Richard Susskind, author of “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” and “The Future of the Professions,” and Andrew Arruda, whose firm ROSS Intelligence helped build ROSS (which does not stand for anything), the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney, on top of IBM Watson.  Designed by students at the  University of Toronto, ROSS is meant for use by lawyers. Asking it a legal question will yeild an “instant answer with citations and suggested readings from a variety of content sources.” ROSS reads and understands language, postulates hypotheses when asked questions, researches, and then generates responses (along with references and citations) to back up its conclusions. It learns from experience, gaining speed and knowledge the more users interact with it.

A recent Washington Post news piece reports that the law firm Baker & Hostetler announced that it is employing ROSS to handle its bankruptcy practice of nearly 50 lawyers. CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda, says that other firms have also signed licenses with ROSS and expects more announcements soon. Although still in the prototype stage, ROSS shows great promise as an innovative legal research tool. Tasks that ROSS can do include:

  1. Giving relevant answers – not a list of results – to natural language questions;
  2. Learning from user’s questions – it learns and improves the more it is used;
  3. Providing a consistent, easy-to-use experience on any devices used to access it.

At this week’s CALIcon 16 being held at the Georgia State University College of Law, BLS Reference Librarian Harold O’Grady and Technology Educator Lloyd Carew-Reid will present a session, The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education, Research and Practice. Also participating will be:

  • Professor Heidi Brown (Director of Legal Writing at Brooklyn Law School);
  • Mikhail Jacob (a Ph.D. student at the Georgia Institute of Technology); and
  • Dr. Mark Riedl (an Associate Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and Director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab).

Episode 097 – Conversation with Prof. Heidi Brown

Episode 097 – Conversation with Prof. Heidi Brown.mp3

Heidi BrownIn this podcast, Brooklyn Law School Professor Heidi Brown talks about her article, The Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor: A Lesson from the Breakfast Club, 36 University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review 273 (2014). The article examines the importance of teaching Emotional Intelligence (EI) as part of the law school curriculum and as a component of “professionalism.” In April 2016, Professor Brown joined the faculty at Brooklyn Law School as Director of the Legal Writing Program after serving as Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School, where she helped launch that school’s Legal Practice program. Before that, she was an Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California. A prolific scholar and author on the importance of legal writing, she has published four books on predictive and persuasive legal writing and federal litigation, and other scholarly articles for law journals. Prof. Brown is  working on a forthcoming book The Introverted Lawyer.

Court Ruling in Touro Synagogue Dispute

This week the NY Times published an intriguing article on the resolution of a four year legal battle over ownership of personal property, silver Torah ornaments called rimonim, used in worship services in the nation’s oldest existing synagogue, Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI.  Judge John J. McConnell, Jr of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island issued a 106 page opinion in favor of Congregation Jeshuat Israel, worshippers at the 252-year-old Touro Synagogue in Newport who have been battling Shearith Israel in New York City for control of the temple and the right to sell a pair of historic ceremonial ornaments worth millions of dollars. The suite was originally filed in Rhode Island Superior Court, Newport County, in November 2012 and later removed to federal court. Judge McConnell’s opinion begins;

Bricks and mortar of a temple, and silver and gold of religious ornaments, may appear to be at the center of the dispute between the two parties in this case, but such a conclusion would be myopic. The central issue here is the legacy of some of the earliest Jewish settlers in North America, who desired to make Newport a permanent haven for public Jewish worship. Fidelity to their purpose guides the Court in resolving the matters now before it.

torah bellsTouro Synagogue was established in 1763. During and after the Revolutionary War, most of the Newport’s Jewish residents moved away, many of them to New York. By the 1820s, no Jews were left in Newport, and Congregation Shearith Israel became Touro’s trustee. The two congregations began to feud when the Touro congregation tried in 2012 to sell the bells made by a noted 18th-century silversmith, Myer Myers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for $7.4 million to improve the synagogue’s fiscal health. The New York congregation protested and Congregation Jeshuat Israel filed the lawsuit. Since, the museum withdrew the offer leaving the dispute to be decided by the federal court.

Touro Synagogue has become a national historic site drawing visitors from all over the world every year. Its most famous visitor was the nation’s first president George Washington who in 1790, stopped at Touro. After his visit he sent the congregants a letter saying the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It is considered an important pledge of the new nation’s commitment to religious liberty. A search of Brooklyn Law School Library’s ProQuest Congressional database, available to members of the BLS community, will lead to 107 H. Con. Res. 62 dated July 17, 2001. The title of the resolution is “Expressing the Sense of Congress That the George Washington Letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, Which Is on Display at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, Is One of the Most Significant Early Statements Buttressing the Nascent American Constitutional Guarantee of Religious Freedom”.

Copyright and “We Shall Overcome”

Earlier this month, a class-action complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in the case of We Shall Overcome Foundation v. The Richmond Organization, Inc. (TRO Inc.) et al. addressing ownership of “We Shall Overcome,” the unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement and a song the Library of Congress called “the most powerful song of the 20th Century”.  According to the late folk singer Pete Seeger, the song became associated with the Civil Rights Movement in 1959, when Guy Carawan sang it  at Highlander, which was then focused on nonviolent civil rights activism. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez, sang the song at rallies.

The copyright dispute against the two music-publishing companies, Ludlow Music and the Richmond Organization, seeks a judgment from the court declaring that the defendants’ copyright claim is invalid and ordering the defendants to disgorge previously collected licensing fees. According to the complaint, defendant TRO filed copyrights for “We Shall Overcome” in 1960 and 1963 and has collected millions of dollars in fees over the decades. The law firm for the plaintiff is Wolf Haldenstein, which was involved in the recent successful challenge to Warner/Chappell Music’s claims that it owned the copyright to “Happy Birthday to You.”

The filing argues that TRO-Ludlow’s copyright claims were invalid for several reasons: because it had not been renewed (as required by United States copyright law at the time), the copyright of the 1948 People’s Songs publication containing “We Will Overcome” had expired in 1976. Additionally, it was argued that the registered copyrights only covered specific arrangements of the tune and “obscure alternate verses”, that the registered works “did not contain original works of authorship, except to the extent of the arrangements themselves”, and that the registered copyrights stated that the works were derivatives of a work entitled “I’ll Overcome” which did not exist in the database of the United States Copyright Office.

music businessThe Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection several items related to copyright and music. See for example All You Need to Know about the Music Business by Donald S. Passman (Call # ML3790 .P35 2015) which is on Course Reserve at the Circulation Desk. For more than twenty years, this book has been universally regarded as the definitive guide to the music industry. Now in its ninth edition, this latest edition leads novices and experts alike through the crucial, up-to-the-minute information on the industry’s major changes in response to today’s rapid technological advances and uncertain economy.

Prince’s Legacy of Music, Copyright Law and More

The artist Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) leaves behind, not only a legacy of music and pop culture, but also a legal legacy dealing with contract law, copyright litigation, and the law related to name changes. Prince’s famous name change in the 1990s during a contractual fight with Warner Brothers is legendary. He changed his name to a glyph that merged the symbols for man and woman and was also the title of his most recent album. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the fourth-boldest career move in rock history. Frustrated because Warner Bros. refused to accommodate his prolific ways, he took to appearing in public with the word slave written on his face. After the name change, he no longer considered himself a slave, and released the album Emancipation that he said was based on his studies “of the Egyptians, the building of the pyramids and how the pyramids were related to the constellations. They were a message from the Egyptians about how civilization really started.” The name change had Warner Brothers scrambling to send out font software so reporters could incorporate the symbol into stories. Many of those writing about the musician just found it easier to speak about him as “the artist formerly known as Prince.” Years later, Prince reclaimed his name and began a series of dealings with various record labels and in 2014 struck a landmark deal with Warner brothers regaining control over his back catalog. The effort was in large part aided by an aspect of copyright law that allows authors to grab back rights from publishers after 35 years.

Internet searches for classic recordings like Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day and Sign o’ the Times yield few results whether on top streaming venues like Spotify and Rhapsody or other outlets like Tidal that boast an extensive catalog. This scarcity is a testament to the fierce and independent nature of this musician. When Napster appeared on the scene and more recently, Prince was so protective of his music copyrights that he wanted to change the law to stop other artists from covering his songs. When another artist who uploaded to YouTube a 29-second clip of her infant dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” he directed Universal Music, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to send a takedown notice to YouTube, which led to a lawsuit in 2007. In 2015, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use when sending takedowns. See Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 801 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2015). In 2014, his efforts to protect his music copyrights led to his suing 22 Facebook users for linking to bootlegs of his recordings. The lawsuit was withdrawn as he later explained to the BBC, “Nobody sues their fans … I have some bootlegs of Lianne [La Havas] but I wouldn’t sell them. But fans sharing music with each other, that’s cool.”

DigitalSee the Brooklyn Law Library item Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet by Jessica Litman (Call # KF3030.1 .L58 2001) which tells how copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners’ control over individuals’ private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts. The author, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, argues that the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork and that there is a needfor reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.