PrawfsBlawg

Fulbright Scholars program now open for applications

This year's Fulbright Scholars program is now open for applications.

For those who do not know, Fulbright, named after late Senator J. William Fulbright, is a grant program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government. The Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), the scholar division of the Institute of International Education (IIE), administers the program for State. Selected Fulbright Scholars spend time abroad at a foreign host institution. Awards are for teaching, research, or some combination of teaching and research. There are awards both for U.S. scholars interested in traveling abroad as well as non-U.S. scholars interested in visiting an institution in the United States.

Law faculty should note there are always multiple award announcements seeking faculty with legal expertise, and this year is no different. There are 62 awards for which law is a designated discipline. Destinations range from Australia to Zimbabwe, including multi-country regional grants. Can't spare a full semester? There are now flex awards that permit multiple, short-term stays in the host country over a period of 1-2 years. You can search the awards here.

In 2017, I completed a Fulbright to Croatia (Hrvatska) where I taught at the University of Zagreb for 5 months. I made many professional contacts and dear friends. As a parent, one of the most rewarding aspects of the Fulbright was the chance to live abroad with children, which while occasionally soul stretching, was very good for them developmentally. And I enjoyed myself too as I explored a corner of the world that was previously unfamiliar to me.

You're Invited! AALS 2018 in America's Finest City

The 2018 AALS Annual Meeting is just around the corner. And it's happening here in San Diego. So I naturally should bring my hosting skills. I plan to post about top things to do in San Diego [here's something not to do: do not bring your winter coats even though the conference is Jan 3-6]. Whether you are coming with a family or on your own there is something here for everybody. Do you love beaches or cities? upscale or hole in the wall eateries? the desert or the mountains?  Here in San Diego, why choose? everything is close by. Below is a picture I snapped of one of my regular running trails (can you spot my running buddy?). Along with fellow prawfs I hope to also plan our traditional MarkelFest one of the conference evenings. 

I also want to share a few of the exciting events that I am taking part in and would absolutely love to have everyone attend. First -- You gotta come celebrate with me! On Friday Jan 5, 5:30-7 USD Law is holding a reception celebration for my book (and I will talk about it a bit) You Don't Own Me and everyone is invited. My colleague Roy Brooks also has a new book out about racial justice and will speak as well. We have a beautiful campus and it's close to Old Town if you feel like having fresh made tacos and margaritas afterwards.

Second event, in which I become evil: The IP Evil Twin Debate is an annual debate, serious in substance but lighthearted in tone, we all wait for (a highlight - we get to write up (a parody of) our evil twin's bio). Last year it was Mark Lemley v. his evil twin Rebecca Tushnet debating patent law and at the 2016 event Pamela Samuelson took on her evil twin Randy Picker on copyright. This year Michael Risch is pure evil while I stand for everything that's good in a debate about trade secrecy. Christopher Cotropia is our fierce moderator. It's at Thomas Jefferson Law School Friday 430 to 530 (and then we can go together to my campus for the book event) -  It will be fun! 

Third event, a timely serious panel moderated by Ed Rubin (Vanderbilt) with Robert Post (Yale), Will Forbath (Univ. of Texas), Jide Nzelibe (Northwestern), and myself speaking about the role of the scholar in the larger society, both in general and in response to Trump's election.  This will include questions about scholarly agendas and standards of objectivity as well as our normative obligations to our students and our ability to be neutral in highly political climates. Jan 3 at 1:30.

*** Update Will Forbath won't be making it to San Diego; Erwin Chemrinsky (Berkeley) has joined the panel instead.

Fourth event, not to neglect my employment law side -- I am part of the Employment and Labor law's section panel on The American Workplace in the Trump Era, Jan 5, 1:30. Hot-button issues - enforceability of class action waivers in arbitration agreements, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, joint employment doctrine, public employee speech, whistleblowing, NDAs and confidential settlements and more. 

 Other than that my dance card is completely empty - I look forward to seeing everyone!

 

 

The Long Journey Home

It's a pleasure to be back for another round of blogging. I'm excited to share some thoughts about copyright and trademark law this month. But right now, I have traveling on my mind - my family is finishing what my ten-year old calls "an epic road trip." We've driven through ten states already, and we'll drive through four more big (mid)western states, and recross several others, before we are done. In honor of the trip, I'll share one of my favorite traveling songs: The Long Journey Home by Rodney Crowell. Feel free to share songs that make you think of or yearn for travel in the comments. More substance to come in subsequent posts.

CrimFest! 2015

As many others have mentioned while reminiscing about Danny, one of his great qualities was how he brought other people together.  PrawfsBlawg was only one way he accomplished this.  He also made lots of introductions and organized workshops.  One of the workshops he organized is called CrimFest! (Yes, the exclamation point was Danny’s.)  It began as a shadow conference at the Law & Society Association’s Annual Meeting, and then eventually became a stand-alone event.

This year’s CrimFest will be held at Cardozo Law School from July 19^th-21^st.  Registration for the conference closes on Friday May 1^st.  More details about the conference and how to register follow after the break.

The conference will begin on Sunday, July 19th with the chance to socialize, but the panels will begin in earnest on Monday morning the 20th of July and will end in the late afternoon of Tuesday, July 21st.  Participants will be responsible for their own travel and lodging costs (discounted hotel information is included below), and we will also ask attendees to pay an $85 registration fee to help cover the costs of breakfasts, lunches, and (funds permitting) a Monday evening happy hour.  You may pay the registration fee via this website:  http://www.law.utah.edu/workshops/crimfest/ 

Please note that the registration fee is non-refundable.

As in past years, we will have a substantial number of paper panels for works in progress. Panelists will be required to read and share comments with the other panelists. And, as last year, we will ask panelists to share their drafts a week in advance with the other attendees, by posting their notes/drafts in a password-secured website, so that more people can offer more informed comments at the panels.

We have a preference for papers that are in early stages---specifically, papers that will not have been submitted for publication prior to the date of the conference.  We will also allow panelists to present papers that have already been submitted (or accepted) for publication.  But priority will be given to papers in earlier stages, and we will NOT permit presentations on papers that have been published or will be published before August 2015.

We are also limiting presentations to criminal law, criminal procedure, or criminal justice issues.  I know that many of us write in other, related fields.  But one of the strengths of this conference has always been the ability to get feedback from other experts in a particular area.  So please submit proposals only on topics that are in our core areas.

We will also hold some non-panel events during both lunch breaks---such as a discussion of particular teaching issues or other topics that may be of interest to the broader community. If you have an idea for such an event, please let me know ASAP. 

Participants may include tenured or tenure track professors of law at any accredited law school. VAPs and Fellows are welcome to present too. For all who are interested in attending, please email me no later than Friday, May 1st at [email protected]

 To reduce any likelihood of administrative error on my part, your email should have a subject heading that states "Proposal for 6th Annual CrimProf Conference," and the body of your email should include:

(a)        The title and abstract for the paper you wish to present;

(b)        Whether this is a true work-in-progress, or whether it will have been submitted for publication prior to July 20^th;

(c)         Whether you are willing to serve as chair or discussant for another panel; and

(d)         Any date restrictions you have.  (I cannot promise to accommodate date restrictions, but I will do my best.)

If you would simply like to attend the conference, please send me an email to that effect, and please let me know whether you are willing to serve as chair or discussant for a paper panel.

Finally, please do not submit a proposal or volunteer to serve as chair/discussant unless you know that you will be able to attend.  It can be very disruptive when folks drop out and we need to fill spots on various panels.

I hope that many of you who attended last year will be able to attend this summer, and I hope that we are joined by many new participants as well.   I can’t help but think that one of the best ways that we can honor Danny’s memory is to continue this conference, giving the best comments and writing the best scholarship that we can.

The Ebola "Czar"

In the wake of Craig Spencer’s decision to go bowling in Brooklyn, governors of three major states—Illinois, New Jersey, and New York—have imposed new Ebola quarantine rules that are inconsistent with national public health policy, are not likely to protect Americans from Ebola, and may compromise the response to Ebola in Africa, as health care providers may find it too burdensome to volunteer where they are needed overseas. Don’t we have an Ebola czar who is supposed to ensure that our country has a coherent and coordinated response to the threat from Ebola?

Of course, the term “czar” was poorly chosen precisely because Ron Klain does not have the powers of a czar. He will oversee the federal response to Ebola, but he cannot control the Ebola policies of each state. Unfortunately, on an issue that demands a clear national policy that reflects medical understanding, public anxieties will give us something much less desirable.

[cross posted at Bill of Health and Health Law Profs]

SEALS

Think about proposing programming for the annual meeting, or participating in a junior scholars workshop. And if you are ever interested in serving on a committee, let Russ Weaver (the executive director) know. The appointments usually happen in the summer, but he keeps track of volunteers all year long.

The Canadian ALPS

O Canada. O wordplay. For the title of this post refers not to the glorious snow-capped Canadian rockies (which are sometimes, though apparently not terribly often, referred to as the "Canadian Alps"), but rather the soon forthcoming Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society (hence, ALPS, get it?), which will be held this Friday and Saturday, May 2-3, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

ALPS had its origins as a small property scholarship workshop that I was fortunate to be invited to when it was first held down at Chapman Law School in early 2008. Since then, different iterations of the conference have been held more or less yearly and the event has ballooned into this year's major event, which will feature a couple hundred attendees, with around 150 presentations over the course of two action-packed (or at least property-scholarship-packed days). Keynotes to be given by Joe Singer and Andre van der Walt. Property-related field trips. Mixers. Canada. You get the picture.

Two points, one small and one more general, about ALPS.

First, for those who can't attend, I'll be live-tweeting the event here. I can't promise any Tushnet-level detailed play by play of the proceedings, but I'll assay to comment on the proceedings when and where relevant. 

Second, I have a particular interest in this edition of ALPS because I was part of the program committee. Along with Shelley Saxer of Pepperdine and Sally Richardson of LSU, we sorted the submissions, organized them substantively, and put them into an order that had to balance thematic coherence with everyone's scheduling preferences. 

This was a lot of work (especially because the conference was big this year--easily the most attendees ALPS has ever had), but it was interesting and fun too, and I'm glad I was part of the team effort. I hadn't served on a program committee before, and it turned out to be a great way to get a sense of what people in the field from all over the world are working on, and to get a satellite-level notion of the lines along which contemporary property scholarship breaks down.

Junior scholars in particular could benefit from serving on the program committee of a major conference in their field. I wish I'd had the chance to do this in the first couple of years I was teaching. Not only is it a good way to get an instant crash-course in what kind of scholarship is happening in your area, but it's also an ideal means for meeting and making connections with people with similar or related scholarly interests (not to mention being the kind of service to the academy that looks good on a tenure application). 

Off to Vancouver! I may see some of you property profs there. Otherwise, I'll blog at you all when I get back, unless I get eaten by a polar bear or decide to join a hockey team or some other Canadian cliche.

App Enables Users to File Complaints of Airport Profiling

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim in the United States have been subjected to public and private acts of discrimination and hate violence.  Sikhs -- members of a distinct monotheistic religion founded in 15th century India -- have suffered the "disproportionate brunt" of this post-9/11 backlash.  There generally are two reasons for this.  The first concerns appearance: Sikh males wear turbans and beards, and this visual similiarity to Osama bin Laden and his associates made Sikhs an accessible and superficial target for post-9/11 emotion and scrutiny.  The second relates to ignorance: many Americans are unaware of Sikhism and of Sikh identity in particular. 

Accordingly, after 9/11, Sikhs in the United States have been murdered, stabbed, assaulted, and harassed; they also have faced discrimination in various contexts, including airports, the physical space where post-9/11 sensitivities are likely and understandably most acute.  The Sikh Coalition, an organization founded in the hours after 9/11 to advocate on behalf of Sikh-Americans, reported that 64% of Sikh-Americans felt that they had been singled-out for additional screening in airports and, at one major airport (San Francisco International), nearly 100% of turbaned Sikhs received additional screening. (A t-shirt, modeled here by Sikh actor Waris Ahluwalia and created by a Sikh-owned company, makes light of this phenomenon.)

In response to such "airport profiling," the Sikh Coalition announced the launch of a new app (Apple, Android), which "allows users to report instances of airport profiling [to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)] in real time."  The Coalition states that the app, called "FlyRights," is the "first mobile app to combat racial profiling."  The TSA has indicated that grievances sent to the agency by way of the app will be treated as official complaints. 

News of the app's release has generated significant press coverage.  For example, the New York Times, ABC, Washington Post, and CNN picked up the app's announcement.  (Unfortunately, multiple outlets could not resist the predictable line, 'Profiled at the airport? There’s an app for that.')  Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund, tweeted, "#FlyRights is a vanguard in civil and human rights."

It will be interesting to see whether this app will increase TSA accountability, quell profiling in the airport setting, and, more broadly, trigger other technological advances in the civil rights arena.

 

On the Move

Jane Yakowitz and I have accepted offers from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. We're excited to join such a talented group! But, we'll miss our Brooklyn friends. Come visit us in Tucson!

Blankness at Conferences: Good for Graphics, Bad for Badges

I just finished attending Intellectual Property Scholars Conference 2011 – a wonderful event. But it reminded me that I have a couple of simple suggestions for all scholarly conferences that I'd like to pass along.

First, put a PowerPoint presentation consisting of a single blank black slide on every podium computer. That way, if someone doesn't have a slide show, the blank slide can be turned on for them. With the aid of a blank slide, nothing will be competing for the audience's visual attention while the presenter speaks. 

Mark Lemley of Stanford, for instance, seems to have a penchant for presenting slideless. That's fine, of course. But for Mark at this particular conference, that meant that during the first portion of his very interesting presentation, he was competing for attention with a rather sternly worded message reminding podium-computer users that ALL FILES ON THIS COMPUTER WILL BE DELETED. It only got worse when the screensaver came on. As if because of something Mark said, suddenly a hyperactive, menacing “DePaul University” in 3-D chrome lettering began furiously pivoting left and right, and pacing back and forth over Mark like it was getting ready to attack him. It was pretty hard to concentrate on what Mark was saying, if, like me, you were mentally trying to gauge whether the graphic was getting especially agitated when Mark mentioned overturned Federal Circuit precedent.

Second, flip-proof name badges on lanyards by making them double-sided. How many times has this been your internal monologue?

Who is this person I'm talking to? I recognize the face, but have I just seen it in some bulk-rate postcard law porn, or was this person actually in my Torts class in law school? Well, no problem,  I'll just casually look down at their name tag ... DANGIT!  It's spun around to its blank side! Hmmm. Maybe I should drop my pen and see if their name tag spins around when they try to pick it up for me. No, wait, that's even weirder than admiting I don't know their name. Or is it? OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, who am I fooling? If I wasn't so socially awkward, I would have gone to business school.

So, if you are organizing a conference, just print out the text for the name tag on two slips of paper, and then insert them both back-to-back into the plastic thing. (And congrats and thanks to the organizers of IPSC 2011!)

Who would be your graduation speaker ...

if you could have anyone do it? Here's Conan O'Brien giving the commencement address at Dartmouth:

 

Fear and culture

My first purpose in this post is to direct readers to a fascinating research endeavor headed by Yale law professor Dan Kahan and George Washington University law school professor Donald Braman - the Cultural Cognition Project. Here is a brief description of the project from its website:

The Cultural Cognition Project is a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities. Project members are using the methods of various disciplines -- including social psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science -- to chart the impact of this phenomenon and to identify the mechanisms through which it operates. The Project also has an explicit normative objective: to identify processes of democratic decisionmaking by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policymaking.

I've been doing some reading in recent months on the topics of fear and risk and find the topic very compelling, especially with regard to how it plays out in our day to day lives (sometimes on rather mundane matters). My second purpose in this post is to pose to you, dear readers, a quick question: Can you think of any fears that could be described as distinct to a country you are familiar with - this doesn't mean that it only occurs in a given country, but rather that it is much more prevalent or pronounced in that country. Alternatively we might think in terms of regions within the United States. Sunstein offers the example of European nations taking a much more precautionary approach to genetically modified food than the United States. I'm thinking more along the lines of individual fears - are there things that you have seen people fear greatly in this country that are largely ignored in others? Or vice versa?

My Devalued Marriage

I recently kissed my wife good-bye at the airport and took off for California, where, just days before, a federal district court had declared a ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional.

Many of those who support the ban on gay marriage argue that marriage between a man and a woman will be devalued if same-sex couples are allowed to marry. "Huh?" you may be thinking. "How could that possibly be the case?" 

I know, it sounds absurd. But amazingly enough, though it defies logic, I actually noticed the effect as soon as my plane crossed into California airspace. It was weird, but I could actually feel my marriage devaluing.

It doesn't seem like all that long ago that I married my wife Kit in Santa Monica, Calif. We had a caterer, a florist, a bunch of guests, a cake – all that stuff. Kit got her hair done and wore a special dress for the occasion. I wore a tux. At the time it seemed extremely special. But being back in California after Judge Walker's ruling, it all felt so ho-hum, so devalued. Riding the BART train from the airport, I found myself wondering if it would have helped if we had hired a live band for the reception. It was hard to know.

That night I actually had trouble sleeping because my wedding ring felt uncomfortable and foreign on my hand.

Here's the really weird thing – while I was experiencing all this marriage devalument, I wasn't even thinking about the court case! It didn't hit me until I was flipping around through the cable news channels. That’s when I figured it out: It was the Equal Protection Clause! That was why my marriage felt so dull and generally unspecial.

But how could this happen? How could two dudes (or dudettes) getting married to each other possibly affect my marriage?

Well, I was fortunate enough to see a person interviewed on one of the cable shows who explained it. This guy put it in language that I, as a law professor, could understand. He pointed out that counterfeit currency devalues regular currency. (I had to admit that was true.) So, he reasoned, gay marriage, as a kind of counterfeit marriage, devalues everybody's regular marriages.

The force of this argument is really undeniable. Tried though I have, I can not find even the tiniest hole in this guy’s analysis. In fact, the more deeply you think about what he was saying, the more sense it makes. It's really one of the smartest things I've ever heard anyone say. It shows an uncommonly strong grasp of economics, sociology, and some very basic rules of logical thinking. Wow.

Anyway, it got me to figuring, we should not only amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage, we should also take affirmative steps to strengthen the institution of traditional marriage.

Mmmmm, gold.
(Images courtesy U.S. Mint.)

U.S. currency was strongest back in the 1960s when we were still on the gold standard. Ergo, we should put marriage on a gold standard. Think about it: If every married heterosexual could, at any time, freely convert his or her spouse into a specified quantity of gold bullion, then every person who is married would value their marriage more. Divorce rates would plummet. That's just logic.

A lot of the same conservative talk show hosts who are opposed to same-sex marriage are also enthusiastic supporters of returning America to the gold standard. That’s why it’s such a public service for radio talk show hosts to tell us about important gold investment opportunities. It is my hope that thought leaders like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity will realize the synergy here and support the adoption of a marital gold standard.

My own personal story has a happy ending. I got through the whole trip without trying to hook up with any of the women around me. Now, that wasn't because my marriage felt like it was worth anything at the time. It's undoubtedly because I was attending a conference of law professors. That's its own libido kill. 

Most importantly, now that I am safe and sound back home – outside of the jurisdiction of California – my marriage once again feels like it is valuable. (Granted, not as valuable as it would be if I could take Kit down to a federal reserve bank and turn her in for gold, but, you know, still pretty valuable.)

Some musings ...

Returned recently from a road trip with la familia that included Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA. Both cities are great places to spend time with the kids, and we even got a beach day in Seattle. 

While in Seattle I also participated in a couple of interesting events of note. On June 17th the Washington State affiliate of the ACLU celebrated its 75th anniversary. The ACLU-WA has been a standard-bearer of ACLU affiliates for years, and the well-attended event at Sodo Park attested to the organization's support in its community. The event was particularly special, however, because it also honored the 30th anniversary of ACLU-WA's executive director, Kathleen Taylor, whom the Seattle Stranger has called "the most powerful woman you've never heard of." Kathleen has worked tirelessly for civil liberties in Washington State, and she well deserved the recognition she received at the anniversary event.

I also attended my initial meeting as a member of the Washington State Bar Association's Council on Public Defense. I am still getting up to speed on the Council's work, but I hope to post more later this week on some of the issues the Council will face, such as how states properly should standardize indigent defense services, and the challenging issue of "collateral consequences" to criminal conviction.

First, though, I must finish exploring my iPhone's pretty-cool new iOS 4 software. I may be most excited about being able to listen to San Francisco Giants games on MLB's app without interruption when I need to check my email ... 

Phones and Flying

A few months ago I was flying into National Airport in DC, and I noticed that the teenage boy next to me was texting.  I’m a wimpy flyer, and since September 11th the landings at National have become particularly harrowing because pilots are required to follow the Potomac River (an awfully twisty river) to the airport.

 

So while clutching my armrests and taking very deep breaths, I tell the kid next to me to stop texting.  To his credit (or perhaps because I didn’t look completely rational), the kid put his phone away, and after we landed he asked why I wanted him to stop texting.  I told him that they tell us to shut off our phones during flights for a reason, and so it must not be safe.  To which he responded “do you think that is really true?”

I’m not certain whether it is unsafe to text or make cell phone calls while flying.  I’ve occasionally seen news reports that some airline or another is going to allow cell phone use in flight.  But I’ve always interpreted the instructions from the pilot/crew to turn off phones for the flight as an implicit warning that their use is dangerous (maybe the warning has been explicit on some flights, I can’t remember).  But without clear information that such behavior *is* safe, shouldn’t we keep our phones off?  At least when flying next to someone as scared as me . . .?

Whither law firm prestige?

With the economic and law market downturn we are hearing a lot about shifts in the legal market paradigm - the end of the billable hour, changes in associate recruitment and training, etc.. I recently came to find out about a web entity that made me thing about potential changes in the way clients choose and manage their law firms. Traditionally, firm prestige has been very important in attracting clients, however as with many business situations it has historically been driven by word of mouth and other fairly informal measures of the quality of past work. In the information age we inhabit, many traditional paths to acclaim and reputation have been either supplanted or at least augmented by more direct and systemic measurements of perceived quality. 

For instance, consider Tripadvisor and similar hotel rating programs. They provide a good bit richer information than the traditional star rating, word of mouth, or travel book recommendations. Prior guests post numerical ratings on a number of dimensions, provide specific comments on their experience, and can even upload photos of their room and the rest of the hotel. In similar vein, professors now are subjected to online ratings for their classes. How long will it be before clients come to primarily use similar services to inform their choice among law firms? Granted, I am pretty sure that the NLJ 250 probably won't be displaced by small local firms completely. Further, there are the M-H peer review rankings to consider. 

Still, I am curious as to whether firms will be able to fend off these type of evaluation systems that have, at least to some degree, come to drive markets in other areas. Further, might clients also take note of sealed bid proposal systems that have become popular in e-commerce (similar to traditional construction firm practices) in deciding which law firm will represent them? Now, back to that web entity I had alluded to previously - Elance.com. This site allows clients seeking expertise (including legal expertise) to evaluate potential contractors with rich evaluation data and it incorporates a bid system for hiring. Is this the future of law firm hiring? Whither traditional notions and pathways of law firm prestige? I'm guessing that it's unlikely that such a system would largely supplant traditional firm prestige, but I would not be surprised if certain aspects of such a system became increasingly utilized in the law market. Below is a short video explaining how Elance works - rest assured, I have no stake in their success; it just started me thinking on these matters.

Jeff

Respect Copyright Law: Don't Print Your Own Canadian Money

Of all the reasons not to churn out banknotes in your own cellar, worries about liability for copyright infringement never occurred to me. 

Until my wife and I took our two boys up to Winnipeg for the weekend.

Although we could probably have made it through the weekend on credit cards, I was super psyched about getting a wad of Canadian currency out of an ATM machine. 

To experience the full excitement of traveling abroad, you've got to have a pocket full of unfamiliar money. Nevermind that their pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters look almost identical to U.S. coins. And put aside the fact that the exchange rate right now between the U.S. and Canada is almost exactly one-to-one. I was still excited to use different cash.

Inspecting the colorful bills, I got a delightful surprise: a copyright notice!

Aspiring counterfeiters be warned – the bills are copyrighted by the Bank of Canada! That will make you think twice before xeroxing off a sheaf of north-of-the-border moola. 

In the United States, we discourage that sort of thing with specially crafted counterfeiting laws. Under these laws, you can be arrested by Secret Service agents who, in proving their mettle to make the presidential security detail, will take you down in broad daylight in a swarm of dark suits and sunglasses while never ceasing to speak covertly into their earpieces. 

The Secret Service is all business. To my knowledge, they've never waterboarded anyone, but if they did, you can be sure they would do it without taking off their ties or unbuttoning their collars. 

If you counterfeit money in Canada, you could, apparently, get sued for copyright infringement. Don't think just because Canadians say "sorry" a lot that they will go easy on you. They will be all over you like the RIAA on a mother of two who downloaded a couple dozen songs from the internet.

But honestly speaking, of all the absurd and hyperactive claims of copyright, I think this has got to take the cake. Now, I have no doubt about the law. I am not a student of Canadian copyright law, but I am quite sure the Bank of Canada is entitled to the copyright in their currency designs. But under the Berne Convention, Canada does not need to use a copyright notice to have copyright protection. And to the extent the copyright notice is designed to have evidentiary value in a lawsuit, it's just funny.

And more to the point, why would Canada care to assert a copyright claim over their bills anyway? What possible copying of Canadian banknotes could there be that does not constitute protected fair use or criminally prosecutable counterfeiting? 

The only thing I can think of that might fall between the cracks would be if some lazy foreign government decided to rip off Canadian currency designs to avoid the the annoyance of having to come up with their own. But there are two glaring problems with this argument. 

Princess Joan, one-third the population of Sealand, on her principality's coinage.

First, the smaller a country is, the more fired-up it gets about designing its own money. 

For instance, the dubiously sovereign Principality of Sealand – perched on an abandoned gun platform in the English channel, population three – has far more coin denominations and stamp issues than people. 

Second, to be blunt, no third-world nation out there wants to put an engraving of pond hockey on their banknotes. 

(Sorry.)

[Cross-posted on Pixelization.]

Disneyland and property rights in tickets

Due to a family matter, I had to head down to Los Angeles last week, so naturally my wife and I took our two little boys to Disneyland as well.  While there, the following two possibly analogous incidents occurred that got me thinking about property rights in tickets.

The first was that we decided to go on California Soarin' (in California Adventures), which is kind of a flight simulator ride with a big curved screen and suspended roller coaster-like seats that tilt with the picture to enhance the feeling of motion.  It's a popular ride, so the line gets long, and it's also one of the rides that Disney offers "Fastpass" to mitigate lines for those willing to work.  The way Fastpass works is that you insert your park entry card into a machine near the ride, and the machine gives you back your entry card and a ride ticket.  The catch is that the ride ticket lets you bypass the "standby" line only for a one-hour period, and that one-hour period is in the future.  So, if you visited the Fastpass machine at 10 am, you might be given a return window of 12 noon to 1 pm.

Anyway, we decided to brave the approximately 45 minute stand-by line, but as we were walking up to the end of the line, a woman approached us, asked if we were going to ride Soarin', and when we said we were, she gave us her Fastpass tickets, which we about to become valid.  Woo hoo!  So instead of having to wait 45-55 minutes, we bypassed the long line and had about a 5 minute wait (basically for the designated simulator to clear out).  I'll get to the potential issues involved in a moment.

The second incident occurred later that same day.  As we were exiting the park (well before closing time), a young woman approached us and asked if we were leaving.  When we said we were, she asked, "Can I have your tickets?"  Naturally, we refused.  It would have been pointless, since the regular Disneyland tickets require a valid hand-stamp for re-entry that day, and you can only get a hand-stamp if you've already been in a park, which of course requires that you already have had a ticket.

Nevertheless, the woman's request struck me as quite wrong for reasons beyond the pragmatic.  It would represent revenue loss to Disneyland, since the only other way she could get in would be to buy a ticket.  But then I started wondering about how I was able to Fastpass the Soarin' ride.  The lawyerly side of me could respond that there was no revenue loss to Disneyland, since the Fastpasses are free (but you essentially can only have one active at a time).  Therefore the situations are completely different.  And from Disneyland's perspective, I would think that is right.  On the other hand, I suppose the other customers waiting in the stand-by line might have had a complaint, since we (marginally) extended their wait, which would not have happened had we gone through the stand-by line.  Then again, the customers were no worse off than if the original Fastpassing woman had used her Fastpass instead of giving it to us, and one can wonder why those customers would care who imposed the marginal increase in wait time. . . .