Is Google violating a California privacy law? Sites need to link to their privacy policy “located on the homepage or first significant page after entering the Web site.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/is-google-violating-a-california-privacy-law/index.html?ref=technology

The production of traditional books rose 1% in 2007, to 276,649 new titles and editions, but the output of on-demand, short run and unclassified titles soared from 21,936 in 2006 to 134,773 last year, according to preliminary figures released by R.R. Bowker. The combination of the two categories results in a 39% increase in output to 411,422.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6564566.html

110 Countries Agree to Cluster Bomb Ban, Despite U.S. PressureSource: Friends Committee on National Legislation
More than half the world’s governments agreed on May 28 to ban the production, use, stockpiling and export of all existing cluster munitions. Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, representatives of 110 nations completed negotiations on a new international treaty that commits their governments to stop using these weapons and to destroy their existing stockpiles within eight years.
The U.S. government did not attend the negotiations. But in the end all other major NATO countries joined with the majority in agreeing to ban these weapons, which are designed to kill or maim every living thing in an area as large as two football fields. The vast majority of victims of cluster bombs have been civilians.
Read more on the treaty negotiationsRead the final text of the treaty (PDF; 79 KB) Permalink


When is 'Under Seal' Not 'Under Seal'? GE Finds Out the Hard Way To say lawyers and technology mix like oil and water might be an overstatement. Still, from time to time we come across a tale in which a smallish technological problem leads to big headaches for lawyers. It always makes us wonder if life in the law weren’t a little less thorny back before the days of email and electronic discovery, back-up tapes and terabytes of data.
The latest saga comes courtesy of the class action sex-discrimination brought case against General Electric. (Click here for a previous post about the case). According to this story in the Connecticut Law Tribune, plaintiffs lawyers at Sanford, Wittels & Heisler in Washington, D.C. filed several documents with the court in which it had redacted certain passages about GE.
WSJ Law Blog May 29, 2008

Bodies: the Exhibition, on display South Street Seaport in Manhattan, contains room after room of preserved cadavers, cut up and stripped down so as to reveal practically every inch of the human body — muscles, blood vessels, lymph nodes, the whole deal.
While walking through the exhibit last spring, never did we give any thought to the provenance of the bodies themselves. But that’s the topic of a settlement unveiled Thursday between Premier Exhibitions, the owner of the the show, and New York AG Andrew Cuomo’s office. As part of the settlement, Premiere admitted that it could not prove the bodies used were not those of prisoners in China who may have been tortured or executed. The company promised refunds to those who paid to see the exhibit. Here are stories from the NYT and Bloomberg. The settlement came after an investigation into the origin of the cadavers and body parts used in the exhibit.
WSJ Law Blog May 30, 2008

Pity the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/opinion/30jacoby.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Along the same line:
A purist is what you call someone you disagree with.
A negative person is what you call someone you disagree with.
Irresponsible debate is language you disagree with.
Debate is language you agree with.
A gadfly is what you call someone you disagree with.
An activist judge is someone whose opinion you disagree with.
An injudicious judge is someone whose opinion you disagree with.
A judge who overreaches is someone whose opinion you disagree with.

Symptoms:
1. Send the same e-mail twice.
2. Send a blank e-mail.
3. Send e-mail to the wrong person.
4. Send it back to the person who sent it to you.
5. Forget to attach the attachment.
6. Hit 'SEND' before you've finished.
7. Hit 'DELETE' instead of 'SEND.'
8. Hit 'SEND' when you should 'DELETE.'
Causes: Haste? Mind wandering? Young and foolish? Old and foolish?