Internet Legal Research Weekly

Welcome to Issue #341 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!

Blawgs of the Week
Here are some of the great law-related weblogs featured on Inter Alia this past week:

Are you a YouTube fanatic? If you use the video site on a regular basis, you may find that the lower-quality videos are not all that great to watch. Did you know that you can now upload videos of higher quality? YouTube has increased the maximum allowable size from 100MB to 1GB, and because you are still limited to a 10-minute video you can probably upload a high-quality version without hitting the file size limit. Here's how to do it.

The basic idea is that you have to upload video at a resolution of 480x360 or higher. If you're a video-editing guru, this means you should encode at 480x360 at 30fps using the H.264 codec if available, or Windows Media or MPEG-4 if it's not available. You can encode at around 6Mbps and still get a good quality video, but you can probably encode up to 13Mbps and not hit the 1GB limit. When setting your audio, make sure you're using the higher-quality 96-Kbps setting.

If you're clueless about video editing, see if your editing software (whatever you're using) has a preset for producing iPod videos - that usually produces a 640x480 resolution. But don't just count on pushing a button and having it produce the video in the higher resolution - some iPod presets only encode at the basic 320x240 resolution. You'll need to go in and manually make sure that all the settings are right -- see the paragraph above for the basic settings.

On YouTube, you can also configure your personal settings to make sure that it automatically plays high-quality video whenever it's available. If you have a fast connection, go into Video Playback Quality and select the option you prefer.

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!

Caught in the 'Net

SMADD (Social Media Attention Deficit Disorder)
It isn't often that I go on a rant, so I hope you'll pardon this interruption from your daily supply of law-related blogs. I struggled with the title for this post; I thought of A Good Headline is More Important than the Truth, or The Internet Makes Us Lazy, but in the end they sounded a little too inflammatory. But these headlines definitely describe my thinking on how people are beginning to use social media these days. Over the past few months I've seen how social media tools - blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the like - make it incredibly easy to publicize yourself, report the news, and become an authoritative voice in any of several online communities. But our attention seems to be wandering, and I wonder whether this attention deficit will lead to problems down the road. Two examples to make my point.

Those of you familiar with the podcast I record with Dennis Kennedy may recall an episode we recorded a few weeks ago, entitled The State of the Blawgosphere. In it, I discussed the results of my rather neurotic research project I've been conducting over the past 6-7 years: my cataloging of more than 2,300 law-related blogs on the Internet. I was surprised by the basic results of my research - that just over 48% of those law blogs are still active. I was also shocked to learn that of those blogs that don't survive, the average life span is around one year and ten months.

A couple of weeks later, I read a post on another law blog, where the blogger stated that as a result of his "tiny little, unscientific survey" (he looked at 7 law blogs in total), he came to the conclusion that "Legal Blogs are like small businesses: half of 'em fail in the first year, and 90 percent of 'em fail in the next five." When I read that, I left a comment below his blog post explaining my stats, and why his conclusion was incorrect. However, his post had one sentence in it that would prove irresistible to other bloggers, Twitterers, and even journalists. By saying "Legal blogs don't last,", the blogger ensured his post would spread across the Internet.

And spread it did. Bloggers picked it up, and soon it was being tweeted and re-tweeted on Twitter. Last night the ABA Journal reported these "findings" as news, and TechnoLawyer called it Blawgworld's "Post of the Week." Apparently, nobody took the time to read the comments below the post. Actually, I rarely read comments myself, and I turned them off on this blog a long time ago because the spam problem had gotten so bad. Even so, if you're going to report the news, doesn't it behoove you to know the whole story? Maybe it's true that the whole story isn't quite as interesting as only a very small part.

Second example: a couple of months ago, a person I follow on Twitter posted the following (edited): "RT @_____ Big Law Firm lays off 134 lawyers," with a link to the story. I immediately clicked on that link, thinking this was a huge story. What the story actually said was that 20 lawyers had been laid off in a big firm's 134-lawyer satellite office. When I pointed this out to the person who Re-Tweeted the article, her response was simply, "oops!"

Now, this kind of mistake won't lead to any lawsuits or shouts of "libel!" from the law firm in question, as the article immediately corrected by mistaken impression. But it illustrates something I'll wager happens hundreds (or thousands) of times every day on sites like Twitter: a person sees a juicy headline, and clicks "Re-Tweet" (republishing that headline, for those of you who don't speak Twitter) without even bothering to figure out whether the headline is factually accurate. I see it all the time, and completely understand the urge - the more you tweet, the more people respect you as an authority and begin to follow you on Twitter. But, Twitter or not, if it's a defamatory statement that's being tweeted, anyone who republishes that statement may also be liable for libel.

To me, these two examples demonstrate one of the downsides of social media: that while "click to publish" technology makes it amazingly simple for anyone to have a voice on the Internet, its very simplicity almost encourages publishers to post content without paying attention to what's actually being said. Do I have the answers? Not any good ones - this is still an evolving area. I guess my best advice is: Pay Attention! By following only a part of the online conversation you may be missing out on the bigger picture.

State of Virginia
Another week, another state government portal. And compared to last week's selection, Virginia's home page is fully embracing Web 2.0 and interactivity. There's a box on the right called Stay Connected, which offers links to RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook pages, a number of podcasts, YouTube videos, and even a widget you can share at your site. There's also a prominent link to Online Services, a fantastic calendar with listings of Executive and Legislative branch meetings, and links to the basic state services for Citizens, Students, Businesses, and State Employees.

American Civil Liberties Union
Love it or hate it, the ACLU provides a wealth of information on important civil rights, issues, from Criminal Justice to Women's Rights, and over a dozen other topics in between. There are over 25 (wow!) RSS news feeds, and they have podcasts as well - although it looks like they are a bit behind in posting them. The Supreme Court page covers civil rights cases of interest during the current term as well as an archive of past terms, and the Legislative Update page provides information on what Congress is doing - although interestingly, that page is outdated as well. Odd for such an active organization.

American Cancer Society
The ACS is one of the major cancer organizations in the country, so as you might imagine there's a lot of information to find here. For researchers, you can learn more about cancer, managing a patient's cancer experience, find cancer statistics, and read about the latest news. Of course, there are also resources for volunteers, and support programs and services. And I'm just barely scratching the surface here.

Canada Gazette
The Canada Gazette is the official newspaper of the Government of Canada, and is "one of the vehicles Canadianscan use to access the laws and regulations that govern their daily lives." You can read the latest publications, as well as archives going back to 1841! There's also Consultations area where proposed legislation is published, giving the public the right to review and comment on the bills. There are also some great educational resources, including RSS feeds and curricula for teachers.

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
We spoke about civil rights issues above, let's talk about litigation now. Maintained by Washington University School of Law, the Clearinghouse is a collection of documents about civil rights cases in 23 categories, from Child Welfare to Religious Freedom. The site is dedicated to cases that seek policy and operational change, and not damages. For most cases, you find the docket sheets, complaint, and any decrees or published opinions. You'll also get a pretty good summary of the individual Case Details, as well as all of the people involved in the case, including judges and attorneys.

Do you have a blog, AND an iPhone? Here are four great apps that can help you post to your blog from it.

Galactrix is a little like Bejeweled, in Space, with Bombs. So of course it's totally addictive.