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A Law Show Set 25 Years from Now
aaron240 writes "CBS will be airing a pilot of a new show called 'Century City' tonight, Tuesday, March 16th. CNN has the story. The executive producer, Ed Zuckerman, had this to say about the future state of the law in America: 'Our future is a positive future. We assume that things are basically going to get better, progress will continue,' Zuckerman says. 'There will be problems -- new inventions, new technologies will bring with them difficulties -- but it's a bright future.' He also makes it clear that 'This is not a 'Blade Runner''. Is there any chance it will offer a decent treatment of the issues Open Source advocates worry about today? If he's so positive, could he possibly know anything about software patents to say nothing of SCO?"
here's the pilot info:
A young boy's father wants the right to use the boy's genetic embryo clone to develop a baby who could donate a portion of his liver to save him. The firm also takes on the case of a boy band that is suing its lead singer for not adhering to his contract to keep up his physical appearance.
It doesn't look like they are going to tbe dealing with technology very much/not at all.
moreover, it looks like the 2 issues they picked for their pilot are both things that don't require much foresight to envision, not to mention that the clone thing should happen alot sooner then 25 yrs..
I find the timeline a bit aggressive. Supposedly set in 2030, the issues at hand seem more in line for maybe 2070 or beyond. Not to belittle the advances of the last 25 years (all hail the microwave) but twenty five years ago was not that *radically* different from today.
Perhaps the date was chosen to avoid appearing to be "too much like science fiction", but I must express my doubts that LA will have maglev monorails and all cars will be fuel cell powered by then. The death of paper seems even more unlikely, as does robotic kitchens.
Aw, who am I kidding: 1950's scientific optimism plus the moral dilemmas of progress... I may actually watch this just to see if it is ham fisted or actually well thought out.
Sig under construction since 1998.
This is Wonderland is a new CBC show that is genuinely funny, and a great drama too. It is by far the best new Law show I've seen, and is better than Law and Order SVU, although it covers similar turf with some of it's cases.
One problem with legal shows, is that they are 95% of the time, based in the USA, and so don't have Crown Attourneys, and other Canadian twists.
I'm too young to remember the Street Legal days, but this is one series that I hope lasts as long, and catches on. It is very entertaining.
As someone who runs a business and technology law institute at Touro Law Center in Huntington, NY, I'm really looking forward to this show. Yes, it'll be soapy, and no, it won't go into the issues discussed on Slashdot, but I am tickled by the thought that someone is projecting out the other kinds of legal questions that may come up for my students, tomorrow's tech-savvy lawyers. But hey -- no law show ever showed licensing or similar lawyers; negotations over ownership provisions ("Work Made for Hire!" "No, Limited License!") or warranties and representations never make for good television. {Professor Jonathan}
Actually, I think if they made it a sci-fi show rather than a lawyer show it would be fantastic. When I say sci-fi I mean proper cautionary tale sci-fi. It would be a great way to explore future legal ideas and even some current legal issues should they not be overturned [or not implimented in some cases]. It won't be though I bet. It will be the same things that have been covered before and better by other sources. Only now it's in the prime time, and will be dumbed down to make sure nobody gets lost.
Boy, the writters really had to dig deep fot this idea. Then again, this might just be a way for Hollywood to make everyone think that all the laws that they are buying are really good for the average citizen.
I can see the episode already:
*Two lawyers sitting in a cafe*
Lawyer 1 : Well, looks like they finally broke up that piracy ring
Lawyer 2 : Wow, I would have thought that with all of the consumer protection laws that were passed in the early 2000's that people would have given up trying to steal music.
Lawyer 1: Nope, seems that some people never learn that piracy is bad. After all, its the reason the economy crahsed in 2010.
Lawyer 2: Its a good thing that the Digital Rights Act of 2013 was passed. It was only by allowing the record labels the right to raid homes, and confiscate pirates computers that we managed to end that black time.
Lawyer 1: Yes, and the extension of copyrights to 1000 years was just the right thing to do, afterall, the creators should be allowed to gain the benifits of thier work.
Laywer 2: And don't forget about clearing up the whole problem with analog copies, allowing that to continue could have had seroius side effects.
Lawyer 1: Yes, indeed. If only people had realized earlier that they have no right, or valid reason to make any copy, we might have avoided the whole crash of 2010.
*break for commercial*
Or maybe I'm just being cyical today.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
The thing I like about this, more than the premise of the show or its upbeat, Pollyanna tone, is that science fiction is now so mainstream that a lawyer show, at least exploring possibilities of technology and the pros and cons of an imaginary future, can be pitched to a network.
Television and film have really only scratched the surface of the deep field that is science fiction. The future of the genre will be a thing of beauty to behold.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
That's what you get when you take a ~45 page Philip K. Dick short story and try to turn it into a feature film. Same problem that you have with 'Paycheck', way to much filler for the producer to over-produce.
Perhaps:
/. to run an advertisement for your new [toy|show|website] by somehow linking in "Open Source".
Slashtroturfing
or
Slashbaiting
?
definition: getting
Remove the last S from OSS. Sure, whether I can construct my own OS or web browser in the future is completely boring. But start applying Open Source to hardware--can I construct my own robot? My own von Neuman machine robot? My own nanomachines? Can I genetically engineer my own pets? Can I synthesize my own medicine? My own drugs? Really, making it a legal drama kind of presupposes an answer to all of these questions: "only if the government says you can." Which is why Century City sounds boring to me--by dissing "Blade Runner", it cuts itself off from a vast world if illicit technology.
That's meant to be funny right?
Free exchange of information (free press)
Like embedded journalism?
Expansion of democratically elected governments
Ah yes, regime change.
Womens right to vote
Which has stopped so many wars in the past.
Better be ruled by lawyers than by police.
Don't expect any cool tech references or innovation from this. It seems like a pretty standard law show with just about enough standard sci-fi things to make network PHBs believe that they are innovating. Networks don't go for new concepts right now, they're just combining already proven elements from older shows.
/me waves hand jedi-like
See, the average consumer is already scared about "modern life", it's all sooo comlicated and confusing. People get the feeling that they're lost in everyday life, tech/scientific advancement scares them if it doesn't come disguised as something familiar. The last thing Joe Sixpack wants to see on TV right now is a freaky, complicated show with scary new ideas. Just give them LA Law and Melrose Place all over again, everything will be fine.
Shows that tried to do something different have all failed recently, because they were not suitable for the average consumer. Firefly went down pretty fast - and to stay with the Joss Wedon thing - Angel got cancelled right away when they made their first remotely intelligent season. Those examples may be shows you like or dislike a lot, doesn't matter, just as long as you can acknowledge (for the sake of argument) that they were radically different from the simplified, standardized and sanitized world people have come to expect.
By the way, from a geek point of view, the research team for Century City doesn't seem to bright anyway. There is a poll in the website:
Should bionic players be allowed to play professional baseball?
- Yes, they have as much right as anyone
- No, it's not fair to the other players
- It's hard to say
Obvious geek answer: if bionic extensions are superior to natural parts, just tune them down until they match average natural performance. (The example case was a bionic eye, it's really simple with that.) Yeah, so bionics can help you just enough to overcome a disability and it can make you a super athlete. But it doesn't have to be EITHER OR, does it? Can't it just be configured to make you "normal"? (OMG, I'm actually discussing a stupid TV show argument with myself, I must be pretty bored)
So, anyway... don't expect anything ground-breaking from this show. Speak after me: there *are* no new ideas.
-
What if USA PATRIOT, Software Patents, Closed Source, all of our hot button issues, all of it work out ok, and that humanity does get better and life does go on, and that, the chicken littles of today really turn out to be chicken littles?
This is my sig.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those enhancements already violations?
A better scenario would be.....when fetal manipulation is practiced, does that make the person who was manipulated/enhanced ineligible for sports? Particularly because it was done TO him/her instead of BY him/her.
Would there be a test for such?
Would there be a seperate division for enhanced athletes? Would the "pure" athletes lose viewership because of that? Could they sue?
And that's just chemical/bio enhancement. They're still thinking too small and focusing on individuals.
Not what we are doing. The progress we have made over the past 25 years is more about many things becoming easier to do or in some cases obsolete. I mean all Tivo is just an automated VCR. You hardly ever put disks or anything into your computer. Using internet banking just saves a trip to the bank or the mail box. It's now very simple to send messages to anyone anywhere in the world for almost free.
In 25 years from now it will be much more of the same. Tax preparation may become a thing of the past because computers have it nailed. Gas stations might be completely automated. Typing things into a computer could be fully optional, (But people still will). People will probably live longer. It will cost even more to live in New York. You get the idea.
I hope that we will have one or maybe even two OMG technologies. (Anti Gravity, Warp Drive, Sentient AI, you get the idea.) But these things tend to only come around once every hundred years. (Fire, Farming, The Wheel, The Gun, The Car, The Light Bulb, The Computer) so it might be asking for a bit much.
*Some of it may be good, but for every Star Trek or Babylon 5 there are 2 Milleniums or Space:Above and Beyonds
Can you really hold up Star Trek and Babylon 5 as examples of good science fiction? I admit that I enjoyed some Star Trek every now and then, but it was totally space opera, they so rarely had interesting, original science fiction concepts that when they did it was a cause for celebration. Maybe I never gave B5 a chance, but the few times I tried to watch it I had to change the channel because it was so formulaic.
Do you read science fiction?
For my money, Firefly was the best science fiction show ever. They tried to be fairly scientific at the same time as telling a story, and the characters and places were so much more real to me. The captain was a real man, who made hard decisions and sometimes may even have been a little unfair, manipulative, and vicious. The ship was not some federation of goodie goodies, but a crew of outcasts and criminals just trying to get by. There was a huge story arc that was slowly being revealed (two by two, the men in blue).
Sure, much of it was stuff that science fiction literature has seen before, but as far as tv goes, it was amazingly original, and they even had some nice little touches that I've never read (the "crazy Ivan" maneuver with the ship, the "reavers").
They never insulted my intelligence with loud explosions in space, or impossible physics (ships making crazy zig-zags as though through an atmosphere).
Thank goodness they're making a movie (although since the show got cancelled, I don't quite understand how this got funded).
My $0.02.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
My favorite sci-fi/fantasy series about a law firm is 'Angel'. But it's about an eeeevilllll law firm (is that redundant, or what) called 'Wolfram & Hart'. Apart from that, I'm tired of television's endless stream of doctor / lawyer / cop / reality shows. Probably why I don't watch much TV anymore.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I am curious. If everyone hates lawyers, why do so many people watch all the shows about them?
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
"(like how can his eyes still be authorized to the top secret area when he is most wanted)"
This is one of those things that may be hard to believe but is very realistic. The key to it is understanding that the top secret area was not connected to any of the rest of the systems and was essentially hard coded. The reason for this was to keep it from being compromised (compromising the exterior systems does not help compromise the interior systems).
It would have been very difficult to change that system to keep him from getting in, as it would have involved changing the hard coding. To make it worse, the person who would naturally have been in charge of seeing that that was done was him. Further, his replacement did *not* have authority to go into that area, much less change it.
This was actually very realistic. Separating the exterior and interior systems is the correct thing to do, but it also means that if one of the limited number of people authorized to change that system (the movie implies three people had access, including him; the precogs do not count, as they wouldn't have access to open the door) is compromised, one must make changes to that system as well as the exterior system. Easy to overlook.
The part of Minority Report that bothered me was the idea that if they couldn't send the people to jail, the system would fall apart. Who cares if they go to jail if they don't murder anyone? Particularly with the crimes of passion, like the guy with the scissors. The issue was subtly different in the short story, which I remember as being more realistic.
They also don't explain how they were going to expand the system with only three precogs with limited range.
That's future DRM of course. Everything is reference-counted.
To protect intellectual property, no data file can be copied without the original being deleted in the same step. Each digital file is bound to a small bit of plastic which serves both as your license to possess that file, and the transport medium to move it around (with a handy 2cm preview of the file's contents)
It might seem inconvenient to maintain the sneakernet in the face of so much tech, but it keeps officeworkers performing a minimum amount of exercise...
they're told to go stuff themselves.
No, they're given one episode per season where the permanent cast is allowed to temporarily become interesting. On one single day, one cop's wife gets cancer, the other's daughter is murdered, one lawyer is tried for ethics violations, and the other is voted out of office...
Minority Report (the Philip K. Dick short story) is an excellent story with some absolutely lame vision-of-the-future-tech bits. I think that's the hollywood formula though; s/story/action-FX/g. Read Philip K. Dick.
Actually this will probably be the only show to deal with today's most important legal issues.
The 'future' setting in television shows is always just a plot device to handle controversial modern issues without getting shot down by the network censors (the 'standards and practices' department).
Television in the USA is always a fine line between pissing off the commercial sponsers and attracting viewers. The material must be 'hot' enough to attact viewers from cable and internet but not to 'hot' to invoke the possiblility that the commercial sponsor will flip out.
However today since the media corporations own so much of the rest of the economy (or, more precisely, the media corporations are owned by giant conglamerates who own large chucks of the economy), it is more important not to piss off anyone in the government.
Television is stupid because there are very few types of progamming that meet those exact requirements, and all the possible plots and scenarios were already developed and aired twenty years ago.
Television would probably have to go off the air anyway by December 2006 without government decree. They simply have run out of things to show.
The stories should be fictional. The law shouldn't be. It's called deus ex machina, and it's the last resort of the unimaginative writer.
You mean like this? Sarah Chalke
Josh
Interesting idea with lots of potential but poorly executed. The show tried to do way too much. Instead of just doing the basic clone-importing case which they could have made good, they need to throw in a long series of surprises, plans to harvest organs, that the boy is already a clone and so on. It was too much to put in one show, especially with two cases to do.
Can't say I cared much for the overacting or dramatics either.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation