Clio and the Clouds

Clouds


I’m writing this as I wait for the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice Legal Technology Seminar in South San Francisco to start. (So, if you’re here, wave to me.)

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love-hate — but mostly love — relationship with technology. As I sit here, I’m working on my MacBook Air, having set aside my iPad 2. I don’t need to connect using the AT&T Mi-Fi hub I always carry with me, because the technology seminar facilities are providing my Internet connection today. My wi-fi/3G Apple-endowed cellphone is on vibrate, so as not to disturb.

I won’t rehash my tech background: I’ve done that before.

But there’s one area of tech I find overwhelmingly disturbing.

[Read more...]


SOPA (Temporarily?) Washes Out Blogs

Download pirate


This is a criminal defense law blog. For a criminal defense  law office. As a criminal defense lawyer, I usually write about things that are of interest to those looking for criminal defense attorneys, or for other criminal defense attorneys, or just people who are interested in criminal defense.

But what someone has — or, rather, a few very rich someones have — been trying to do is a crime.

So today, I’m writing about SOPA/PIPA. Sounds like some kind of disease, doesn’t it? Soh’-pah pih’-pah. Maybe a virus.

And it is, actually. It’s the most powerful Internet virus yet.

[Read more...]


Possible Cause

Possible


A story this morning at CBSnews.com is titled “Unprotected Wi-fi getting owners in trouble”.

What the story doesn’t do is explain the real reason the Wi-Fi owners are “unprotected.”

[Read more...]


The More Things Change: Why the U.S. Constitution Should Not Survive the Internet


Adrianos Facchetti, a California “Internet Defamation Attorney,” writing the California Defamation Law Blog asks, among other things, if governments should regulate the Internet to control defamatory speech — however that might be accomplished.

I could only think of one response….

[Read more...]


No Expectation of Privacy on the Internet?


A concept near and dear to my heart for years now has re-surfaced in the news. For many years, I made my living working with computers. Prior to being an attorney, I worked with the first two Internet Service Provider companies in the Fresno area. This was immediately after the first Internet web browser (Mosaic) was developed and the Internet “went commercial.”

Being of a philosophical bent and also with a strong interest in Anthropology, I couldn’t help but ponder some the impact the Internet was having on our world. And, of course, privacy issues were quickly becoming paramount.

[Read more...]