Jason Schultz Weighs in on Apple’s Patent Lawsuit against HTC

-CNET, March 4, 2010 by Marguerite Reardon
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/04/cnet.apple.patent/

“If Apple just wants to push one competitor out of the way, then it may not implicate Google or Microsoft at all,” said Jason Schultz…. “But if they are staking out their turf and letting everyone know that they own the whole touchscreen smartphone market, then there will be a showdown.”

-San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2010 by Ryan Kim
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/08/BUD11CBFSR.DTL&type=printable

“It’s economics. There’s a ton of money flowing into the mobile space; it’s the new platform,” said Jason Schultz…. “Laptops, many think, are a thing of the past. Anytime you have a platform shift, you’re going to have a lot of lawsuits over who owns the platform.”

Pamela Samuelson Urges Publishers to Change Focus of Copyright Debate

Publisher’s Weekly, March 4, 2010 by Jim Milliot
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/451848-Publishers_Urged_to_Change_the_Focus_of_the_Copyright_Debate.php

Pamela Samuelson, director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at UC Berkeley, while agreeing that publishers need to do a better job explaining the importance of copyright, disagreed that framing the issue as a war was the correct approach, saying that would turn customers into enemies. She said publishers should experiment with pricing and different business models to meet the changing expectations of consumers.

Chris Kutz and Stephen Rosenbaum Expect University Policies to Comply with Law

Campus Progress, March 3, 2010 by Rebecca Green
http://www.campusprogress.org/fieldreport/5135/above-the-law

“There’s a specialized set of case law regulating what a university can do,” explains Christopher Kutz, chair of the UC–Berkeley academic senate. “It’s not a criminal process.… It’s a different kind of entity.” Kutz says the academic senate has been following the student conduct cases and will be sitting down with the Center for Student Conduct to ensure that university policies comply with both the law and fairness.

Rosenbaum, who is taking on Bowin and other students’ cases pro bono, helped revise the code of student conduct 30 years ago when he was attending Berkeley’s law school…. “These students were guinea pigs,” Rosenbaum says. “It’s going to make them think twice before participating in any kind of lawful protest, and I think that’s part of the message the university was trying to send.”

John Yoo Answers Questions about National Security and Executive Power

The Washington Post Live Q&As, March 3, 2010 by John Yoo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/03/03/DI2010030301148.html

I think men such as Washington, Lincoln or FDR broadly exercised their executive power because they genuinely saw terrible threats to American national security. They often did so knowing that their actions would be controversial and that they would provoke severe political reactions against them. They went forward anyway, giving presidential power, I argue in my book, a somewhat tragic quality.

Roxanna Altholz Discusses New Report on Extradited Colombian Paramilitaries

Just the Facts Podcast, March 2, 2010 Host Adam Isacson
http://justf.org/blog/2010/03/02/just-facts-podcast-extradited-colombian-paramilitaries

“The report, Truth Behind Bars, provides an update on the status of US drug prosecutions that involve these 30 paramilitary leaders.  It also evaluates what the impact of the extraditions has been on the Colombian accountability measures; the ongoing human rights and corruption investigations in Colombia.”

Aarti Kohli Thinks Police Misuse Public Intoxication Law to Harass Hispanics

Mother Jones, March/April 2010 by Adam Weinstein
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/texas-racist-laws-drinking-while-brown

“They were clearly choosing to bring more Hispanics into jail,” says Aarti Kohli, coauthor of the Berkeley study. But the feds and local officials hailed the PI sweeps as a victory. Immigration “is expanding this program, saying, ‘Isn’t this great?'” Kohli says. “But the question they’re not asking is: How are these people getting put into jail?”

Jesse Choper Explains Nuance of First Amendment Rights

Parade, February 28, 2010 by George Vernadakis
http://www.parade.com/news/intelligence-report/archive/100228-can-campus-religious-groups-exclude-non-believers.html

Jesse Choper, a law professor at UC Berkeley, says that conflicting legal precedents are at work. In 2000, the Supreme Court decided that the Boy Scouts were within their rights to deny membership to homosexuals. However, Choper notes, “even if you have a First Amendment right to do something, it does not entitle you to funding to exercise your right.”

Barry Krisberg Comments on Decline of Prison-Guards’ Union

The Economist, February 25, 2010 Editorial
http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580530&fsrc=rss

Barry Krisberg at Berkeley’s law school says that the guards “have priced themselves out of the market.” They can’t push for even tougher laws, he says, at a time when prisons are so overcrowded that a federal court is threatening mandatory inmate releases. And they can’t demand even more generous benefits during a fiscal catastrophe. The iron triangle—union, prison builders and Republican lawmakers—is coming apart, he thinks.