Mad Kane confronts her past:

Must keep that meter on.
And never turn it off.
Yes even in the john,
Or they'll think you're going soft.

(Read more of her musical parody of the legal profession.)

Amy Heins writes Desiderata: "It's 1:11am on a school night...do you know what your 1L is doing?" [Via the Blawg Ring]

Well unfortunately, Kevin didn't get to do more on camera than just look clever, arching a well placed brow at opportune moments such as those below. (If I know the lad though, he's still working that room!)

From the pre-taped special:

• Nikki Hemming, Sharman Networks (Kazaa): "Vision isn't about waiting 'til all the lights go green before you take off."
• Hilary Rosen (on why the recording industry has never taken advantage of P2P file sharing networks): "Well first of all, they've never asked."
• Derek Broes, Altnet: "I think we are the solution to the industry's woes."
• Charlie Daniels: "I have thought for a long time that the record industry had to catch up. We're always behind in technology. We're always behind in technology, and then as far behind as we are, the people who make the laws of the land are even further behind."

From the 90-minute panel sessions/open mike:

• Bill Evans, Boycott-RIAA.com: "One of the things I've found out is across the board, and this really gets into a gray legal area, the radio stations in America are downloading back catalog off the Internet via file sharing programs because they can't get it any other way."
• No quote to go along with this, but David Lawrence's Legal MP3 Downloads blog scours the Web for free and legal music downloads (from sources like Amazon, artist Web sites, etc.). According to his comments on the show, some 2-3,000 tunes are listed.
• John Perry Barlow to Ted Cohen, EMI (on Cohen's response to an RIAA lawsuit defendant's question about why it's legal for her to tape songs from the radio but illegal for her to download them from the Internet): "Ted, are you actually saying that it's not stealing if it's low quality but it is stealing if it's high quality?"
• Michael Weiss, StreamCast (Morpheus): "I think that the recording industry is going after individuals because they lost their lawsuit to Morpheus."
• John Perry Barlow: "It's not a solution to have a system that causes your record collection to die when you sell your stereo and buy a new one. That is essentially what we've got now with Rhapsody, and for that matter with iTunes."
• Sean Ryan, Rhapsody: "One of the interesting things is we've been trying to license a band, mostly up in Marin, called the Grateful Dead, for about a year and a half to two years, and have been unable to ever actually get it successfully licensed."

This was all I took down, but I'd watch Kevin's space for the inside scoop. (There were other familiar faces in the crowd, so more blogged reports may be forthcoming.)

Hope you're watching that Music Wars special, folks, it's pretty great—made more so by the fact Kevin Marks is getting quite a bit of camera time. ;) Some quotage to come in a bit.

Neither Howard nor Gary could resist the monkey nut guy, which of course is among the many reasons they're each simply irresistible.

Again.

I can't be sure (there're a whole whopping lot of us), but I think I might be working on, among other things, the first Keynote presentation ever to sneak in the doors at Reed Smith. Big deal, it's just like PowerPoint, right? I wish I could better put my finger on why that's not right, but it's not. Keynote is easier, more flexible, prettier for sure, and more fun (both to put together and to watch). Highly subjective I know, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

You'll also have to make sure to catch Music Wars tonight on TechTV (5:00 PDT/8:00 EDT), and the 90-minute panel discussion/open mike session (6:00 PDT/9:00 EDT) to follow. Good related links are Erik Parke's pending lawsuit against the RIAA (which has to have been brought under the omnipresent Business & Professions Code Section 17200), and the EFF's petition (via the West Coast's own Donna Wentworth).

"I don't have kids or a life, but I do have tenure," writes UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge (more), in response to concerns about the 20 posts cranked out in his blog's first two days of existence. [Via the Volokh Conspiracy] If you're a lawyer or law student who has studied corporate law, odds are you're already familiar with Professor Bainbridge; it will be fantastic to come to know him more directly through his weblog. Professor Bainbridge blames his blog on Hugh Hewitt, who wants "less corp law, more politics;" I'll chime in with my own typical request for "more wine!" (And have you met Jeff Cooper?) It's great to see another law prof blog, welcome, and don't worry—you'll have a new dance partner before you know it.

Two parties, one appeal—one lawyer? If you're X-Treme Advocate Blair Hoffman, you just might convince a court to make it happen. Blair, who is a judicial staff attorney with Justice Ming Chin of the California Supreme Court, has won the California Lawyer's X-Treme Advocacy contest, as selected by Judge Alex Kozinski. In introducing the winner, Judge Kozinski discussed the fine art of advocacy:

I decided that the winning entry would be the one that did the best job of making me doubt my initial negative reaction to the proposition it was advancing. We do see this in cases on occasion: An advocate will advance a point that seems wholly counterintuitive-one that has no apparent chance of success. And then, by skillful use of logic and authority, the advocate manages to turn the judges around and secure a victory for his client. Whenever that happens, it confirms once again that lawyers are not fungible and that great advocacy can make a big difference in the outcome of cases.

Myron Moskowitz provides yet more advocatorial inspiration in the same issue ("Get It Right the First Time: tips from an appellate lawyer").

"[A]s Adam and Eve discovered, self-awareness and sin often go hand in hand." Autonomic computing and four other technologies will change the world, says Scott Kirsner in Fast Company.

Congratulations to Larry Lessig and his wife, and welcome to their adorable son! Chris Locke has a timely suggestion that seemed worth passing along.

The New York Times: "Of the 135 candidates on the ballot running to replace Governor Gray Davis, scores have Web sites, and at least 14 have started blogs." Here are two not previously mentioned here: Arianna Huffington and Reva Renee Renz. (Note that xrlq, who has been profiling some of the candidates, issues an alliterative alert: "My gut instinct is never to trust any politician whose first and last names start with the same letter. Examples include David Duke, Edwin Edwards, Jesse Jackson, Lyndon LaRouche, and countless others.") Times article via Dave, who along with his aggregators has become my designated reader of that paper.

How Delightful: "While the distinction of being the first appellate judge to mention 'How Appealing' at an oral argument appears to have been claimed, the distinction of being the first judge to mention 'How Appealing' in a published appellate decision remains available." Vegas oddsmakers will have a field day with this one—congratulations Howard!

Baby Howell is back from his/her second prenatal appellate oral argument, and graciously saw fit to bring me along. I think BH was a tiny bit nervous until noticing Judge Wardlaw presides in the same sort of chair Mommy uses at the office. Having spent countless hours perched atop one of these, BH felt right at home.

Perhaps it's the recent sleep deprivation talking, but it occurs to me this clearly is the next revolution in in utero audio. Why settle for ho-hum Mozart when The Supremes and other topical favorites could be rocking your baby's world? I'd start right in on the business plan, but apparently there are laws against this sort of thing.

Dave Winer, on a new panel added to the BloggerCon lineup, to be moderated by Howard Dean's chief blogger Mathew Gross: "As with everything at BloggerCon, the focus is on users — in this case the users are the electorate of the United States."

Today's Los Angeles Times is packed with coverage of the RIAA's lawsuits and their implications:

• (Front page) Song Sharers Face The Music: "One quirk in the process, though, is that the defendants named aren't necessarily the people using file-sharing networks. That's because the Recording Industry Assn. of America's investigation identified only the people whose Internet access accounts were being used to share files. They might be the parents, roommates or spouses of the alleged pirates."
• (Business section) Piracy Gets Mixed Reviews in Industry: "[T]he bootlegging of songs online isn't universally reviled by the thousands of people who make their living in the $14-billion U.S. recording industry."
• (Business section) Legal Effort May Slow but Not Stop Music Revolution, quoting Jim Griffin of Cherry Lane Digital: "Every time we exercise control, we lose. Every time we let go, the thing we fought becomes the thing that feeds us."

The indefatigable Rick Klau (more) has been blogging the Dean campaign on the one hand, and helping the Dean campaign blog on the other. Rick's Dean campaign blog is far from new though. It's been more than a year since Rick started wondering whether Dean might become the next U.S. President, and I'm sure Rick's post was the first I heard of the fellow whose name now routinely is preceded by the moniker "democratic frontrunner."

RB on the Blawg Patrol? You bet, he brought in the Serious Law Student, a 1L at Columbia who probably is too busy to notice. I understand Señor Locke will be presenting at BloggerCon, as will Halley. I won't be there unfortunately, but Bob Ambrogi will. Bob also is looking for recommendations for the 10 best legal sites of the decade, and has a nice write-up in the American Lawyer about my firm's involvement with this 50 State HIPAA Privacy Study.

Yoss at RealityChecker.org offers some interesting thoughts on how Web discussions—and he links to a bunch—about the behavior of Fox's attorneys in the Al Franken lawsuit might serve as both consumer advisory and an indirect but effective form of discipline. In email, Yoss writes, "The Internet, and Google in particular, have become a de facto national reputation management system." There's no denying he has a point, or that visibility and accountability will continue to go hand in hand as members the public (and professional colleagues) make their opinions known in a persistent, indexed, and searchable way.