Does this mean that customers can rely on this decision and not worry about signing the Terms of Use agreement online? What kind of provision should be included in Terms and Conditions agreement to protect the business from being found unenforceable by the Courts?

Blockbuster’s agreement had the problem that it could change its Terms and Conditions in the click-wrap agreement at its sole discretion, and the changed provisions would become effective immediately upon posting. The Circuit Court in the case stated that the right to modify provision concerned them since it leaves no room for the other party – the customers, to respond to the terms, and thus putting them at an unfair disadvantage in the event of a dispute.

What should the business do? The Court in Blockbuster pointed to a Texas Supreme Court case from 2002, In re Halliburton Co., 80 S.W. 3d 566, which found an electronic agreement enforceable because it included a provision like: “notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, no amendment shall apply to a dispute of which the amending party had actual notice on the date of amendment.”

So there should be a provision stating that parties should be subjected to the provisions that were effective at the time when the dispute arose, but not to the amendment made thereafter.

It’s pretty much a list scarfed from Lifehacker posts over the years. Only a few of them cater specifically to legal work. But nonetheless it’s a decent summary for people who are too busy to read through Lifehacker archives.

Instead of merely criticizing, here’s me putting my money where my mouth is and starting my own list of law hacks, some replicative of the ABA, others not. (You can read a snippet of my criticisms at the end of the list.)

1. Google Desktop Search (“GDS”) (or Spotlight in Mac OS). This is essential. Whenever I use a case, I save the PDF version in a folder for each client/project. And I allow GDS to catalog the contents. Then if I know I ran across a case about something, I don’t have to dig around—all I do is search. It’s that easy.
2. Name your files usefully. So I have a folder for every client/project. But files often float around independently. If I have a motion to dismiss document for client Smith, then it doesn’t help if the filename is “mot dismiss.doc,” especially if I e-mail it to someone or to myself to work on remotely. Name it usefully. I’ll use “Smith.MtD pers juris.111707.doc.” I won’t even explain what my abbreviations are for. It should be that easy.
3. Add short descriptions to case filenames. Even with GDS, sometimes you do find yourself digging around in folders and files looking for cases. When you’re reading cases, you’re usually looking for one main point of law from each one. So when you read through a case, name the file with the point it’s useful for. For example, “Smith v. Kim (1st Cir. 1992) neg op turn signals.pdf.”
4. Use a wiki or blog as a to-do list and notepad. I use a wiki to keep a running to-do list of short- and long-term tasks. I also have a list of “notepads” linked from the home page of long-term projects or just places to jot down important numbers and passwords, etc. Blogs are sometimes better for to-do lists because every day is a new to-do list and you can track your progress (or lack thereof) by replicating your existing to-do list every day. And keep them password-protected for security.
5. Use del.icio.us (or another bookmark manager). Organize and store all your bookmarks remotely so you can access them from any computer. Check out my bookmarks on rules: http://del.icio.us/pham/rules. Enough said.
6. Keep track of your time daily. Each summer, I had a small notebook for my to-do list that I would check off of and re-create at the end of each day—planning the next day’s work. I would have another small notebook where I’d write down the current project name, the time I started, and the time I stopped. Then at the end of the day or first thing the next day, I’d enter my time. I actually “experimented” by trying to account for time at the end of a week—it was impossible. And I didn’t feel right “fudging” the time, and in the end I’m sure I lost minutes which added up to hours, etc.
7. Use paper wisely—print double-sided and purge or re-use paper. It takes a few seconds to set your default printer to print double-sided. It just makes sense to do it. You’ll cut your paper usage approximately in half. I also think it’s easier to read; it’s more natural, like reading a book. Then, when you’re done with a project, purge as much paper as you can. Get it out of your office and into the recycling bin. Also, if you have to print on one-side, re-use it as scrap paper, put a staple into it and use it as a notebook, or take it home and use it in your inkjet. If you hand-write important annotations on cases, consider using something like Skim (Mac OS) to electronically annotate PDFs.
8. Keep your inbox slim. I talk about this below. You don’t need to empty your inbox every day; just keep it slim. It’s satisfying—or at least not overwhelming—to have a slim inbox. It doesn’t take much. When you get an e-mail, read it immediately and then file it away. If something needs to be taken care of, take care of it ASAP. If you can’t, then keep it in your inbox until you can, but make sure you get to it.
9. Practice voice mail etiquette—keep your greeting short, leave informative messages, use e-mail, text, or IM. Voice mail greetings don’t have to say much—hey, know you’re number, that’s why they’re calling you. “You’re reached [name]. Please leave a message.” And then when you’re leaving a message, don’t just say, “Call me back.” Tell me why. Compel me. Otherwise, you’ve wasted everybody’s time. Or just e-mail me or IM me. Voice mails are passive communications (just like e-mail or IM) that I can’t skim, that I have to work to get to.
10. Use IM. I think IM can be so useful in a work environment. It’s a quick, passive, unobtrusive way to get in touch with people. There’s also the fantastically helpful status message—you can, at a glance, tell if the person is available or not, and if they have informative statuses, what they’re up. (For example: “out to lunch until 1:30,” “working on Smith case,” “anyone know anything about suing a cop,” “afk” (away from keyboard), “working from home,” etc.) And if you use IM for work, don’t use your “BCEaglesROXNUMoneShoRTy” screen name from your foolish youth. Create a just-for-work screen name that’s professional and descriptive, like “johnsmithatXYZ.” And don’t give it out to your friends.

I don’t quite agree with the e-mail tips. I tend to think that you should keep your inbox small, but it doesn’t need to be cleared every day. My inbox is more of my mid- to long-term to-do list. Anything short-term I read and then archive or accomplish and then archive. Generally, I think once you file an e-mail away, it disappears unless you search for it. So if it’s not addressed or done, it can’t get filed away. But to keep your inbox slim, you have to address e-mails which gives you a satisfying incentive to get things done quick.

The PC hacks are a bit too technical. Plus, the recommendation of Quicksilver–which I use and love and couldn’t live without–is Mac-specific. (Launchy is the not-up-to-snuff PC variant.) But I’m totally on-board with the Google Desktop Search–or just Spotlight on the Mac OS–to search through documents, especially PDF files of cases.

Make a pair of noise-canceling headphones from a pair of sound-proof earmuffs (~ $20) and some old headphones.

The gist is you get the sound-proof earmuffs—think what people wear at shooting ranges—that are small and fold nice and compact, pop off the foam padding, then break apart your old, on-the-ear headphones, and pop the speakers right under the foam padding of the earmuffs. From the video, it looks great.

Problem is that it’s not “noise-canceling,” but it’s noise-reducing. The top noise-canceling headphones block out external noise but also use white noise to cancel out the noise that filters through. Furthermore, the quality of sound you get from your “new” headphones is limited to the sound of the old headphones you just tore apart. So, while it may fit the bill, you still might only get the bang for your buck.

But don’t we have enough coasters in this world? And coasters that essential that we have to keep on making more? Can’t we just think a little harder and figure out other ways of recycling(or upcycling) our used materials than… Coasters?

Here’s a better idea, for saving paper: Reduce the margins in your word processor to save paper.

I was talking with a Yale graduate student in archeology about his work in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. From my own experiences in East Africa, I always wondered about how people go about and research ancient history in places so unexplored such as East Africa.

He basically confirmed my suspicions and said, “You just go into towns and talk to people and ask about their grandparents.”

And so I believe that in developing reforms such as rule of law (and especially IP-related law in terms of corporate investment) you really need to go in and figure out what’s been going on per a cultural basis–and that needs to happen not by asking theorists or by positing your own assumptions as to how things should be, but rather talking to the people and seeing what their thoughts are first.

In my experience, the thickest barrier between this type of anthropological and humanistic work and the work desired of the “development set” is that you have to get “down and dirty” with the culture. Unfortunately, many of the “development set” find it difficult to sit in a mud hut sitting on seasons of cow shit and work through the culture into understanding what has happened before their Nikes have touched the ground.

But to develop legal systems it takes time to figure out what has happened before–socially, culturally, and psychologically–for modern patterns and practices to take hold.

OK, so here’s another one of my posting that seems to have *nothing* to do with IP or technology and law… But I know that Australia has a history of entertaining claims about indigenous rights–the ones off the top of my head being about copyright and indigenous art and patents and indigenous medicines.

In the Federal court decision, the Noongar people were given a limited land title claim to the city of Perth, the capital of the Western Australia state. It grants native title to lands not usurped by freehold or leashold titles. At issue are the national parks and reserves and what rights this land title claim gives over these areas.

Part of the case hinges on whether the Noongar people had maintained their culture and customs since European settlement in 1829. Since this was decided, this may also provide them–and other similarly situation indigenous peoples–the grounding to make other claims over indigenous rights.

Perhaps such a claim may help with copyright battles over indigenous art–symbols and styles–or with claims over indigenous plants or medicinal traditions. Regardless, it shows the court’s willingness to accept that indigenous cultures have title over things they possessed centuries before European settling.

The Bartlett Diaries has a run-down on the many biases in reporting on this issue.

BennetonTalk provides a more sympathetic interpretation of the aboriginal plight.

But here’s a post off of Treehugger on the construction of a straw bale house. The construction references the Building with Awareness DVD on straw bale construction. Some of the ideas behind straw bale houses are to be solar passive (heated by facing certain sides and windows to the sun), well-insulated, reusing local materials, and to be overall energy-efficient.

I would love to bring some of these ideas into the construction of traditional, indigenous housing in developing countries. I know that some of the pushback, though, is the recommendations you can make aren’t “revolutionary.” For example, making a house solar passive doesn’t have the same “wow effect” as giving them a TV. Therefore, they look at you funny when you talk about things like insulation or longevity of building materials (see Tanzania).

The premise is there are thatch, roadside huts for passers-by to use as toilets. The free deposits then fertilize nearby agriculture.

I thought that human excrement was not useful for fertilization. Something to do with too many fats and sugars in our diet? I would also think that people in undeveloped, rural contexts don’t drink as much water, so the water content of our waste would not be worth the trouble of, “shoveling shit,” so to speak.

Add to that the diseases carried in human excrement and the foreign bodies that enjoy revelling in it possibly covering your harvested food, and the typically elegant ideas that Alexander, et. al., in “A Pattern Language” propose house at least one flawed one.

Article originally from newsfactor.com about Younis Tsouli, a Brit who is allegedly a prominent forum administrator and webmaster for al-Qaeda-related web sites.

I found it interesting how the US administration defends keeping alive terrorist-related web sites as useful information sources or honeypots instead of wondering if they can shut down foreign web sites on foreign servers.

I also find it interesting how people pu-pu online aggrivators for being “not as technical me.” I hearken back to the days when the Web was built by Geocities and other half-cocked WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) page builders. Or now with MySpace. LCD (lowest common denominator) technologies are adopted by people who need them and will use them to the limits of their functionality and beyond.

Sure, maybe Al-Qaeda should switch to Tor networks for anonymity (or rather “security through obscurity”) or FreeNet or WASTE, but that limits their main goal: information dispersal and recruitment. Anyways the anarchic structure of their online networks and web sites is also the inherent structure of their global organization.

Swarms work, especially when you have a high demand to feed and seed nodes. Trying to stop them is like swatting gnats away from your face. You sweep through, the gnats disperse, and then they instantly reform untouched by your heavy hand.

Much of the great creativity we’ve seen on the web has happened on the server side, not the client side. I think some users will move to less flexible devices than conventional PCs, but will contribute to the diversity of the Internet by creating original text, pictures, audio and video – so long as they’re able to create this content and share it online, I’m less worried about whether the devices they use to edit and upload it are arbitrarily programmable or not.

(Regarding Jonathan Zittrain’s recent article on generativity and securing the “grid”–summarized well on a Nicholas Carr blog post.)

I like the idea of streamlining the tools of “generativity” to a low common denominator. Thinking about creating content in a developing world context, an appliance that allows users to take pictures, write captions, and upload them to a blog–aggregated by something like Ethan’s Global Voices–is just enough to get important (if not at least flavorable) ideas and participation online.

And maybe that’s all you need to encourage greater generativity. If you lower the barriers to participation–and also increase the barriers to PC-destruction (see virii and malware)–then we’ll see more voices online. Think of an even more reduced Palm Pilot with a camera and microphone.

I shudder when I say this, but then think of a MySpace that accepts content from these Palm Pilots via e-mail. But then you can have children walking around, taking pictures or video, with audio or text narration, unpacking their daily experiences.

In much fewer words, that’d be dope.