The directors of the law libraries at ten U.S. law schools have released an open letter titled the “Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.” The letter calls for all law schools to make the “legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print.” (H/t John Palfrey.)
Tech Daily Dose has a great run down on upcoming policy events for this week. Two particular events of note:
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers will join House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., for a Tuesday briefing on legislation they introduced to end a longstanding copyright royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio stations. The rally organized by the MusicFirst Coalition will feature appearances by artists and musicians from across genres and decades.
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The Property Rights Alliance will unveil its 2009 International Property Rights Index at the National Press Club on Tuesday. The event will be followed with a discussion by a panel of experts on what the rankings means for property rights in the 111th Congress and around the globe. The alliance’s annual study measures the significance of physical and intellectual property rights and their protection for economic well-being. The index includes data for 115 countries, representing 96 percent of world GDP.
David Hoffman comments on the New York Times article about making PACER free:
In my view, the real effect of costly public dockets is that sophisticated & wealthy parties are given a huge advantage in litigation: they can afford to purchase information about judges’ actual practices in resolving cases. Such trends are not readily discernible in unrepresentative opinions. By contrast, if PACER were free and easily searchable, everyone could see how cases are actually resolved, instead of the privileged few. The result: PACER permits lawyers to extract more rents.
Carolyn E. Wright discusses why Facebook’s old (now readopted) Terms of Use may be potentially worrisome for photographers.
Afro-IP discusses the IIPA’s inclusion of Egypt and Nigeria on their list of countries that they suggest the United States Trade Representative should place on their Special 301 Report.
Ray Beckerman issues a “call to action” for people to urge President Obama not to intervene on behalf of the RIAA in Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud.
Ben Sheffner reports that the C.D. Cal. has declined to dismiss a suit filed by Jackson Browne over the Ohio Republican Party’s use of the song “Running on Empty” in a web video.
And finally, Kotaku reports on Pecover vs. Electronic Arts, a case alleging that Electronic Arts has engaged in anti-competitive behavior in violation of the Sherman Act, in conjunction with securing an exclusive deal with the NFL-NFLPA. Says Kotaku, the “deal []basically makes it impossible for 2KGames to keep making games like NFL2K.” Court transcripts feature Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California discussing the possibility of playing the games at trial:
THE COURT: I know absolutely nothing about video games, but how in the world would the quality of a video game be affected in this fashion?
MR. PAYNTER: Well, in the same way that, any time, Your Honor, a market becomes uncompetitive, there’s not the same incentive by the entity that’s monopolized the market to continue to invest in that product. And you know, I’m not a video game player, either, Your Honor… But my understanding is, you know, there are websites out there that review these games. And you know, we have alleged that, at the time, that the Take-Two game was widely viewed as a higher-quality game, presumably, Your Honor, in terms of the graphics.
THE COURT: Maybe that would be fun, a fun issue for us to decide or allow a jury to decide that. We could have a lot of fun in this case….
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THE COURT: So that means we wouldn’t have a jury trial. We would have a bench trial. It would be a lot easier to play the games.
MR. WALL: It would be, yeah. We would only need one machine. It would be much better. But we would have a bench trial where what? Your Honor is going to assess the relative quality of games before and after exclusivity contracts? That should be interesting.
THE COURT: I’m up for any challenge.
Recent scholarship from the 
