INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
November 2, 2003
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #131 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!
And away we go…..
Spammers slammed
In what is hopefully only the first victory against spammers, a California court fined a marketing firm $2 million for sending out unsolicited e-mail.With Liberty and E-Government for All
Darrell West, the director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy, has published Achieving E-Government for All: Highlights from a National Survey. The survey provides results on how governments are responding to the serious challenge of making their online services accessible and relevant to all people, regardless of their abilities, skills or economic situation.Fool Spammers with Digital Chaff
Yahoo e-mail users now have additional tools to fight the rising tide of spam. Yahoo AddressGuard will allow users to create a fictitious "base name" and up to 500 variations on that name, that can be used while surfing or shopping on the Internet. When that address begins to receive spam, the user can discard that address and move on to the next one.Search Inside the Book
Amazon has introduced a new feature with interesting research implications -- Search Inside the Book allows you to search the full text of more than 120,000 books -- that's over 33 million pages, folks. Of course, there are always skeptics. Although Amazon states the main purpose of this feature is to sell books, there's no harm in doing a little free research, is there?...with Google close behind
It seems that whenever some new service is introduced on the Internet, Google comes right behind offering a similar (and sometimes better) offering. Following closely on the heels of Amazon's Search Inside the Book, Google has announced plans to offer search results from books available through OCLC libraries. And Google is talking to independent publishers hoping to add more book content to its database.Making the Invisible Web Visible
In my seminars, I tell people that the best way to find resources on the Invisible Web is to "know where you need to go before you need to go there." A little counter-intuitive, but it's true. Now, researchers in England are developing a technology that will allow users to search for something without knowing where it resides. The new technology permits free-text searches of the contents of relational databases. This should be interesting.Google Goodies
The October Pandia Post offers up some hidden features of Google, many of which you may already know about from reading this newsletter. They are still good to know.Too strong for its own good
The New York Times profiled the Google Toolbar this week, specifically discussing the utility's pop-up blocker and its apparent super-strength. The article is right -- the pop-up blocker is very strong, blocking close to 100% of the popups I have encountered. In fact, the tracker tells me I have blocked 4,028 pop-ups since I installed the toolbar in July. Genie over at the Virtual Chase decided she didn't like the pop-up utility, so she disabled it after a day of using it. I think the utility is far too useful for that response -- I agree, the toolbar blocks legitimate pop-ups at some of the sites I visit, but I have learned to anticipate those sites, and simply turn off the blocker for a brief period of time. Genie is half right when she says the toolbar doesn't allow you to create exceptions. It does -- just hover your mouse over the "### blocked" counter, and you'll see the message "Click this button to always allow pop-ups from....", and "To Let an Individual Pop-up through, press the CTRL key while clicking on a link." However, these two features don't work very well. Creating an exception doesn't work at all for me -- Google needs to work on this feature. But if I press the CTRL key down and keep it pressed down even after I click on a link, the pop-up comes through just fine. That small amount of work is worth it to keep the other 4,028 pop-ups away.Blawgs of the Week
Here's the round-up of the week's law-related weblogs. First, a law student at Lewis & Clark Law School publishes Mellow-Drama. Alex Wellen is the voice behind Barman, as well as the author of the book of the same name. unSecure Privacy is written by Joshua L. Smith, a lawyer at Wildman Harrold. The MacLean Family Law Group of British Columbia is blogging on family law issues. Elaine Cassell brings us Civil Liberties Watch, where she invites us to "follow the war on civil liberties and watch the government rewrite our bill of rights."When you have trouble with your computer, sometimes you have to reboot. What if the problem lies with one of the programs that starts up with Windows? If there's a conflict with one of those problems, you will continue to have the problem. Fortunately, there's a way around this -- during boot-up, hold down the Shift key. Windows will skip loading the items in the Startup folder. If everything works without a problem, then you know that one of those programs is the problem.
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!
Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet
The Lawyer's Story
Part of the Law and Popular Culture Collection at the University of Texas School of Law, this very simple page is just a listing of e-texts on the art of lawyering, seen through movies, books, and other entertainment media. Here you can find narrative works by lawyers and critical essays on such topics as "Lawyers in Film," "Law and Love in the Merchant of Venice," "Lawyers as Superheroes," and more. There are a lot of fun links to explore here.Foreign Government Resources
This is a simple but helpful page from the UC-Berkeley library, providing links to information on foreign governments. Select from Comprehensive Sites, Sites Organized by Region, Rulers, Legislative Bodies, Constitution and Laws, National Libraries, and Reference Sources. A useful page.Library Research Guides
Yet *another* university page this week. Provided by the Harvard Law School Library, this page is intended to provide general information for Harvard Law students, but everyone can find something here. There are general library research guides, plus pathfinders to both Anglo-American and International Law. As with the pages above, the information presented here is very basic, but undeniably useful.Trademark Checklist
Designed primarily for journalists and authors with fact-checking, this page from the International Trademark Association contains listings for nearly 3,000 registered trademarks with their proper usage, including capitalization and punctuation. Interesting, but not necessarily useful to the legal researcher.Law School Video Lectures
Let's just call this my "selections from law school websites" issue. The University of Pittsburgh's School of Law has been videotaping major lectures, conferences, debates, and special events, and placing them online for you to view. Here you can find video in over 20 different legal subjects, from Administrative to Tort Law. There are videos dating back to 1996; there aren't any videos from the current school year, however.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to begin your week:
Did you ever find yourself wishing you made more money? Check out the Global Rich List and find out how you compare with the rest of the world.
If you want to polish up your office loafing skills, practice with Slackman.
Well, that’s it for Issue #131 – I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.
Tom Mighell
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