The Goodson Blogson

Today’s issue of the Federal Register contains a new final rule from the Copyright Office, “ Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies ”( background and supplemental documents ). The new rule outlines six situations which are now exempted from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition against “circumvention” of copyright law. The news was welcomed by a wide audience, including smartphone users (it’s now considered “fair use” to “jailbreak” your iPhone; see analysis at Ars Technica ), computer programmers (“good faith testing” of computer and video game security is no longer punishable), and e-book fans who require accessibility software (it’s OK to “crack” your e-book reader for the purpose of enabling read-aloud software, if the reader software or e-book title does not already offer this feature) (sorry e-book fans; this recommendation from the Librarian of Congress actually didn't make it into the final ...

On Sunday, the government transparency site Wikileaks released 75,000 U.S. military reports concerning the ongoing war in Afghanistan. The Kabul War Diary archive includes reports from 2004-2010 and can be found at http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/ as raw data files. Prior to release on the web, the reports were also shared with the New York Times , Germany’s Der Spiegel , and the UK’s Guardian . These news outlets are in the process of analyzing and organizing the reports in order to make them more accessible. For example, the Guardian has prepared a spreadsheet timeline of “key incidents” , and has asked its readers to share mash-ups of the raw data on its website. Wikileaks has not revealed the source for these reports (although a U.S. army private currently stands accused of the security breach ). But as the New York Times observed in its Note to Readers , the U.S. government does not dispute any of the reports’ authenticity. Most of the reports were classified as “ secret ”, whic...

Here at Goodson Blogson HQ, we love to learn more about the lives behind the law. We’ve previously written about Foundation Press’s popular “Law Stories” series , which explores notable U.S. cases in a historical and biographical context. There are a number of other books which sketch the “biography” of a particular case, like Wiegand and Wiegand’s Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland or Garrett Epps’s To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial . Duke Law professor Tom Metzloff takes a more visual approach to the genre, with his Voices of American Law documentary project (formerly known as Distinctive Aspects of American Law ), which features interviews with the major players of important Supreme Court cases. It seems our friends across the pond have gotten into the law story spirit, judging by one of our latest acquisitions, The Snail and the Ginger Beer: The Singular Case of Donoghue v. Stevenson (KDC188 D66 C48 2010). Barrister Matthew Chapman recreates the history behi...

The Goodson Blogson does not wish to scare you, but there are just a few weeks left until the July bar exam. If you are one of the thousands who will sit for the exam at the end of this month, you may be interested in some additional study resources at the Goodson Law Library. In our online catalog, try a subject keyword search for “ Bar examinations—United States—Study guides ”. This will retrieve some helpful resources for any bar exam, including an updated 2010 edition of Strategies & Tactics for the MBE (on Reserve) and other titles like The Essential Rules for Bar Exam Success (KF303 .F75 2008). If you’re interested in seeing past exams from North Carolina, start at the NC Board of Law Examiners site. This site offers past exams from 2005-2007 free for download, for those who would like a peek at the structure of state-specific essay questions. (Even older essay questions are available in the library at the call number KFN7476 .N671, but the latest exam available in print i...