OpenLaw to Support Open Source Community

ralphclark writes "Some of you may already know of the OpenLaw project, hosted by the Harvard Law School-based Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The OpenLaw group is, in their own words "an experiment in crafting legal argument in an open forum". In other words: legal cases built, like open source, according to the principle that many eyeballs make bugs shallow." They are looking at taking it to a bigger level - click below to hear more from ralphclark. "

From ralphclark: I recently contacted Wendy Seltzer at OpenLaw to ask if they could assist the open source community in its struggle with the forces of evil (the MPAA and the DMCA and UCITA). After a brief dialogue she finally wrote back:

" I have been thinking more about this project and the tools we'll need for it, since I haven't gotten a negative response, indeed several positive ones, from people at the Berkman Center.

I think it's probably best to start low-maintenance, with a mailing list and a Web page, then to add components such as Web-based discussion and a collection of links and documents.

If you have suggestions for links to the key documents/Web pages, that would be a great help."

I think this is our clarion call: I've seen plenty of good quality debate on these issues here on Slashdot, and the most unsupportable viewpoints have been flamed to death by now so I'm sure there are lots of people reading this who have something valuable to contribute. You should e-mail your (sensible) suggestions to Open Law Feedback and she'll pick them up from there. One suggestion: When you mail, write your idea below in comments - than people can avoid duplication of effort.

Comments

This is not a stupid idea, *except* . . .

[Venomous Louse]

The word of the day is "pro bono". Lawyers have been doing voluntary community service for a long, long time. The eyes of many lawyers probably will make "bugs" shallow.

However.

As far as law is concerned, the eyes of a million SlashBots are worth about, oh, golly . . . I don't think they make numbers that small. How's this: That and a dollar will get you a 50-cent cup of coffee. Just barely.

I can see it now: "IT"5 ALL ABOU7 THE SEC0ND AM3NDM3N7!"

God help whoever as to wade through the email on this one.

Yes!!!

[JustShootMe]

Now this is a good idea.

It's obvious that the Open-Source (free-software) community is under attack from those who don't understand it and would like to kill it. This is probably the best way for us to meet this challenge - leveraging the one thing that makes us different (and arguably nimbler and better) than our closed-source nemeses.

Not all of us are lawyers, and that's OK. When it comes to technical issues, you have the techies to make the cases, and the lawyers to put them into formats that the courts will accept and that could possibly win.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this marks a turning point for free software. Maybe now we can mount competent defenses/offenses against the large corporations who would stifle/censor us.

Kudos.

If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.

Open Government

[The Man]

How long until a new nation is founded, which has openness as its first principle? Much like Open Source, it'd be populated by people who take good government seriously, and are willing to dedicate the time and effort to it. Despite what anyone may say, it's never actually been done before. Most people even in democratic nations believe they have more important things to do than try to improve the government, and just accept that it will be seriously flawed. Just like most computer users don't want to dedicate time and effort to improving software, and instead just accept that it will be seriously flawed.

So, who's interested? :)

This would be greatly appreciated

[Bruce Perens]

I've asked quite a few attorneys to do pro-bono assistance for the free software community, advising on the legal issues of copyright, licensing, patents, etc. Not one of them have come through so far. They cite:

• It's a conflict of interest with my proprietary software customers.
• The liability issues are too large. I don't want to consult for nothing and then find a malpractice suit or some other liability suit is the reward for my efforts.

The only attorney that I know of who is helping pro-bono is working on the DVD lawsuits.

We want to file our own patents and then license them for blanket use by free software. We need attorneys for that. Sometimes we want to go to court to fight things like the DVD lawsuit or patents that are being enforced against free software. That's more than just consulting, but it would be great if we could get some more pro-bono help with that, too. That one pro-bono attorney, and the staff attorney at EFF who is working on DVD, are pretty overwhelmed and could use some help.

Someday, we might have to be the agressor, too. Enforcing our licenses, or attacking something like the DVD Copy Control Consortium in the courts. I'm not expecting all of this to be pro-bono. We need more money to do this than we have so far.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:suggestion

[gargle]

Ah, but software companies are claiming more than copyright protection. They're claiming that through the device of the shrink wrap license, you have entered into a contract with them where you agree not to reverse engineer the software.

But what about the opposing lawyers?

[Booker]

How do you keep the other side from following all of your discussions? Do you really want the lawyer on the other side to know exactly what arguments you'll make in court?

I think this is a great idea, but I'm wondering about this aspect. How do you keep your best arguments a secret? Or do you just hope that they're so good, it doesn't matter WHO knows them?
----