Do they really update the digital copy on the fly though? Somehow I find that unlikely. I suspect that the edition coincides with the print edition and does not change throughout the year.
I hadn't even thought about on-the-fly updating, to be honest - I was happy enough with a change with print edition, although, since that is largely predicated on the need for printed publication deadlines and the like, it would seem to be maintaining an old tradition for the sake of it.
But, as long as it remained a textbook, and not a blog, I'd be even happier!
I have copies of a number of textbooks from my degree - although some I've ditched. However, given how fast my particular subject - and many others - moves, I could be quite happy "renting" a textbook, where I always had access to the latest version. I don't need to buy / store every copy of a book, but to have access to the latest copy - in digital form - when I needed it, would be something I'd pay for.
With virtually zero cost of reproduction, and an ongoing payment stream to authors (and their publishers etc.), I wonder if this could be a viable model.
The approach outlined here seems very reasonable to me. Personal data breach legislation was rushed into the reform package for telecommunications services in Europe, because it was better than waiting for the review of the data protection directive, where it properly sits. However, it means that regulation is vertical - affecting only telecoms service provision - rather than horizontal, which would affect all providers. Since directive 95/46/EC - on data protection - is horizontal, it would make sense to insert the provisions into that directive, and remove them from directive 2002/58/EC - the directive of privacy and electronic communications..
For those who care, the measures are contained within directive 2009/136/EC (the relevant measures here are in Art. 2), but are amendments to Art. 4 of ePrivacy directive (above). However, as befits a directive forming part of the telecommunications package, the subject of the regulation are "provider[s] of a publicly available electronic communications service".
"Electronic communications service" is defined in Art. 2 of directive 2002/18/EC, as:
"a service normally provided for remuneration which consists wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks, including telecommunications services and transmission services in networks used for broadcasting, but exclude services providing, or exercising editorial control over, content transmitted using electronic communications networks and services; it does not include information society services, as defined in Article 1 of Directive 98/34/EC, which do not consist wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks"
I highlighted the reference to information society services, since this represents a substantial carve-out - this means that websites on online services which gather personal data, and which might suffer from data breaches, are not within the scope of the breach notification. When play.com suffered a breach, for example, it was not obliged under the breach notification to make any statement. It strikes me as odd - although understandable, given the context - that website operators, which are likely to generate huge swathes of personal data, should not be within scope. Something which a change from vertical regulation to horizontal regulation would hopefully remedy.
I have not RTFA to know whether it is adopting a strict definition or not, but non-copyrightable facts are not examples of fair use - they are examples of something which falls outside the copyright regime. In other words, they are unencumbered, and exist in the public domain.
Fair use relates to the use of works which are subject to copyright, but where the usage is considered to be outside the scope of the reserved rights which copyright grants.
In the UK copyright law does not even allow recording TV shows to watch later, it is merely tolerated
This is incorrect.
s70, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, entitled "Recording for the purposes of time-shifting", provides that:
The making in domestic premises for private and domestic use of a recording of a broadcast... solely for the purpose of enabling it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time does not infringe any copyright in the broadcast... or in any work included in it.
People who walk in the door and say "I'm ready to make a purchase, right now, no questions asked, please" are a retailer's dream
I suspect that such a person is also less likely to be "up-sold", or else take more employee time to make up "up-sale" - although perhaps that's just my personal experience, since I tend to do my research first, and simply pick the most convenient / efficient / economic place to make the purchase. If there's considerable money to be made on upselling, then perhaps someone who knows exactly what they want is not the dream, but rather someone who wants to spend money, but is not yet sure as to product(s) or price?
I guess it would depend on whether you needed access to certain resources which were only available from within the domain, and you couldn't VPN in, but could you and fellow students not build an alternative to the "official" network?
I remember at Uni (Southampton) there was an alternative wireless network, not run by the University, which had pretty good coverage across the campus ("SOWN" was the SSID, I believe) - this might or might not have been run by students (I cannot remember), but it was not an official university network.
For learning about working around problems, and solving things, uni can be great, whether as part of your course of study or not.
Put more succintly: copyright is a legal entitlement, not a moral one
That may be part of the issue here, but it's rather different to the point which I was making, which was explaining that personalty does not necessarily mean absolute control.
Copyright may indeed be a moral entitlement, merely embodied in statute law - from an historical point of view, it's rather uncertain (at least, under English law, the position prior to the Copyright Act 1709 is not clear, given, primarily, the poor reporting of certain critical cases), although the existence of "moral rights" within the current regime, as opposed to "economic rights", perhaps strengthens the pro-moral argument of copyright. Personally, I am more inclined towards the view that copyright is a positivist act towards the ascertainment of a particular public benefit, and so it is (or, at least, was) utilitarian and pragmatic, rather than grounded in morals.
its theirs to do with as they please and restrict how they see fit.
To an extent, perhaps. In terms of the code comprising the software, their rights exist today solely because of copyright; it is the rights granted to them by the law of copyright which establishes what they have. Indeed, copyright works by establishing a right over a fixed expression, and making that right a property right - a right of personalty. However, unlike the majority of the personalty rights, a property right of copyright is for a temporary (if legislatively extensible) period, and only reserves the performance of certain acts to the holder. Acts which do not fall within these reserved rights are outside the scope of the copyright limitations, although an owner might attempt to increase the scope of restrictions by virtue of contract - although this is only effective in the situation where the person in question agrees to be bound by those additional limitations.
Personalty through copyright, then, is not absolute - it is a restricted, time-limited right. Within the scope of the reserved rights, they are, subject to the below, free to do with it what they wish. If they wish to restrict things more widely than their rights under copyright, they need to establish a basis for those restrictions, with contract being the most likely option. Alternatively, they might look to other forms of intellectual property right, to gain additional coverage - for example, a patent covering certain aspects of functionality - or quasi rights, such as trade secret.
Not only are the ownership rights not absolute, one might also view them as Swiss cheese - full of holes, with the cheese representing the rights reserved to the owner, and the holes acts which can still be undertaken. (One could view carve-outs to reserved rights as simply areas not covered by the reserved rights in the first place, but, that's rather an academic issue here.) Under European law, for example, there is a right to study the operation of the computer program for the purpose of determining the ideas and principles which underlie the program (Art. 5(3), directive 2009/24/EC). Similarly, a licensor of a computer program has a right to reproduce and translate (acts which are otherwise reserved) relevant parts of that computer program, where such actions are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs - Art. 6(1), dir. 2009/24/EC.*
Whether there is the equivalent of these rights under US law, I am not sure, although I'm sure someone with greater knowledge of US copyright law could assist here. Similarly, I've not paid much attention to the subject of the piece, in terms of determining which jurisdictions might be applicable...
Outside the scope of copyright law, one might also look into the regulatory framework of communications services, to determine that, whilst a network might be created by someone, it does not mean that their rights are unlimited, nor that they can not be mandated to provide interoperability. Again within Europe, see, for example, Art. 12(1)(e) of directive 2002/19/EC, which provides that, amongst other things, a national regulatory authority may require an operator to grant open access to technical interfaces, protocols or other key technologies that are indispensable for the interoperability of services, or, by virtue of Art. 12(1)(g), to mandate an operator to provide specified services needed to ensure interoperability, thus taking the obligation further than merely provision of interface information.
There's nothing to suggest that a regulator has imposed such obligations on Skype**, nor that it is obligations of this nature at issue here, but it supports the point that, whilst intellectual property might grant some rights, they are not limitless, and, whilst, by definition, the rights are exclusionary, the scope of the exclusionary effect is regulated. Intellectual property exists as a matter of public benef
If this is indeed the case (I am not a Netflix customer either), then the situation is very much like prohibiting someone from lending a DVD to a friend. In other words, the prohibition is on consecutive, rather than concurrent, watching.
However, part of me wonders if this is the case, since if, by giving my password to five people, I was competing with five others as to whether I could watch something (since the first person to start a stream locks all others out the service until they have finished), I would be rather less inclined to hand out my password, unless I was retreating to an Internet-free environment for a fixed period. Most people, I'd guess, pay for Netflix for the convenience of the service, which would seem to be undermined if one was not able, by virtue of operation of a technical lockout, to watch at any given point.
I'm not a Netflix customer, but various people have posted online that you can register 6 devices, but can only stream to one IP at any one time.
If this is indeed the case (I am not a Netflix customer either), then the situation is very much like prohibiting someone from lending a DVD to a friend. In other words, the prohibition is on consecutive, rather than concurrent, watching.
However, part of me wonders if this is the case, since if, by giving my password to five people, I was competing with five others as to whether I could watch something (since the first person to start a stream locks all others out the service until they have finished), I would be rather less inclined to hand out my password, unless I was retreating to an Internet-free environment for a fixed period. Most people, I'd guess, pay for Netflix for the convenience of the service, which would seem to be undermined if one was not able, by virtue of operation of a technical lockout, to watch at any given point.
I know in Europe at least on rentals there is always a disclaimer to the effect that only you are allowed to watch it (with your family) but can't use it to share with friends or show in a public setting.
In this situation, if a user were to show it to friends, and the contract prohibited it, then the user might be subject to action for breach of contract, or else infringement of copyright. Here, the summary indicates that sharing a password would be a crime, rather than an act giving rise to a civil (contractual or tortious) liability.
Whilst copyright infringement is, in some circumstances, a crime, this legislation would increase those circumstances to an act which is not, in itself, an infringement, but which enables an infringement.
If this was of concern to Netflix (which, I presume, faces pressure from the studios which license their content to Netflix), I wonder why Netflix would not place a limit on the number of simultaneous connections / streams delivered to any given account, or else the number of simultaneous IP addresses to which a stream is delivered for any given account?
Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
I'd see a good degree (and conversion course, where applicable), with relevant subjects, presented on a well-constructed CV as very much the starting point*, rather than a determining factor. But, I agree with you - my point was rather to say that simply getting a law degree is unlikely to guarantee employment over here, and your response emphasises this.
However, the people to whom I was referring had good academics, a range of relevant work experience and came across well on paper - no stupid typos., badly-phrased paragraphs or the like. Of course, a paper-based judgment has its limitations, and, in interview phases, I'd expect to be disappointed with at least a few candidates who looked good on paper, but I was surprised that these individuals were not getting interviews, as, five years ago, I'd have expected them to have received many, based on the same CV.
* Perhaps to contradict myself, someone with a relevant / interesting but less conventional background is likely also to catch my eye. One of my personal bugbears is the lack of lawyers working in the technology / communications space who understand the technological and societal impacts, for example - yet another indication that a degree is, in itself, insufficient.
Pass the bar, and be assured of employment (real employment, as in a career instead of a job) for the rest of your life.
I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but, here in England, we have far more prospective lawyers (students with their degrees, conversion course where necessary, and vocational courses completed) looking for jobs than there are jobs available.
Even after securing the first job - the training contract - there are more qualified solicitors (I do not know about the situation for barristers) than there are roles available.
I've read a huge number of application forms, covering letters and CVs for friends and relations, for different levels of legal work, and, within that, there have been some great candidates - people who would make great lawyers in practice, in my opinion, but the work just is not there. On one level, of course, it just means that they are not good enough, if the assessment for "good enough" is one of whether they managed to get the job or not, but it does, perhaps, demonstrate that simply having the qualifications is insufficient, and no guarantee of employment.
I count myself very fortunate to have qualified when I did; it might not have been easy to secure a training contract back then, but it was considerably easier than it is today.
If it's made clear before I parted with money for a drink that something non-obvious is prohibited, then I've no problem at all - I can simply take my patronage elsewhere.
If it's only after I've bought a drink and sat down to read that I'm told, then I'm likely to be less impressed, but, at the end of the day, it's not really something I'm going to worry too much about - at worst, if I really do need to read something, I can walk out.
Since I tend to get a bottle of water, and maybe something to eat, I probably haven't lost much either, since I'll take them with me, but I could understand why someone who's not using a takeaway cup might be loathe to leave their (often expensive) coffee behind, but, I do try not to get riled over a few pounds if I can avoid it. Life is too short.
There are a number of us who happily chip into gpl-violations.org - hopefully, it sometimes leads to resolutions of GPL-based legal issues, but fascinating for discussion too.
Education: I enjoy talking / lecturing about issues related to open source / Free software, problems I perceive with copyright, issues around the commons and the public domain etc. - education activities, helping both lawyers and interested members of the general public. I also like writing about open source topics, from a legal point of view - dispelling FUD, or highlighting areas of actual risk, can be beneficial. Even contributing to your local LUG might be helpful.
Contributing to project documentation - perhaps not strictly legal-related, but, as a lawyer, I hope I can communicate clearly. Since documentation is often considered secondary to code in open source projects, yet is important, I felt I could contribute.
Pro bono work - very occasionally, a pro bono project comes up which needs open source advice, and I'll happily take on those. If you have a local pro bono centre, which has a wider remit than housing / family / private client issues, then, you might be able to register there and offer guidance. I would not hold out any hope of it being a regular source of projects, but perhaps worth a try.
Slashdot Mirror
... does it run Linux?
Do they really update the digital copy on the fly though? Somehow I find that unlikely. I suspect that the edition coincides with the print edition and does not change throughout the year.
I hadn't even thought about on-the-fly updating, to be honest - I was happy enough with a change with print edition, although, since that is largely predicated on the need for printed publication deadlines and the like, it would seem to be maintaining an old tradition for the sake of it.
But, as long as it remained a textbook, and not a blog, I'd be even happier!
I have copies of a number of textbooks from my degree - although some I've ditched. However, given how fast my particular subject - and many others - moves, I could be quite happy "renting" a textbook, where I always had access to the latest version. I don't need to buy / store every copy of a book, but to have access to the latest copy - in digital form - when I needed it, would be something I'd pay for.
With virtually zero cost of reproduction, and an ongoing payment stream to authors (and their publishers etc.), I wonder if this could be a viable model.
The approach outlined here seems very reasonable to me. Personal data breach legislation was rushed into the reform package for telecommunications services in Europe, because it was better than waiting for the review of the data protection directive, where it properly sits. However, it means that regulation is vertical - affecting only telecoms service provision - rather than horizontal, which would affect all providers. Since directive 95/46/EC - on data protection - is horizontal, it would make sense to insert the provisions into that directive, and remove them from directive 2002/58/EC - the directive of privacy and electronic communications..
For those who care, the measures are contained within directive 2009/136/EC (the relevant measures here are in Art. 2), but are amendments to Art. 4 of ePrivacy directive (above). However, as befits a directive forming part of the telecommunications package, the subject of the regulation are "provider[s] of a publicly available electronic communications service".
"Electronic communications service" is defined in Art. 2 of directive 2002/18/EC, as:
"a service normally provided for remuneration which consists wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks, including telecommunications services and transmission services in networks used for broadcasting, but exclude services providing, or exercising editorial control over, content transmitted using electronic communications networks and services; it does not include information society services, as defined in Article 1 of Directive 98/34/EC, which do not consist wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks"
I highlighted the reference to information society services, since this represents a substantial carve-out - this means that websites on online services which gather personal data, and which might suffer from data breaches, are not within the scope of the breach notification. When play.com suffered a breach, for example, it was not obliged under the breach notification to make any statement. It strikes me as odd - although understandable, given the context - that website operators, which are likely to generate huge swathes of personal data, should not be within scope. Something which a change from vertical regulation to horizontal regulation would hopefully remedy.
It's talking about fair use related industries that rely on provisions like the above.
Appreciated - thank you.
I think you can see how Google and others benefit from the protection under cache copies to a very large degree.
Absolutely - as well as the not-related-to-fair-use-but-also-vital shields of liability of online intermediaries.
non-copyrightable facts online
I have not RTFA to know whether it is adopting a strict definition or not, but non-copyrightable facts are not examples of fair use - they are examples of something which falls outside the copyright regime. In other words, they are unencumbered, and exist in the public domain.
Fair use relates to the use of works which are subject to copyright, but where the usage is considered to be outside the scope of the reserved rights which copyright grants.
It's even Online [jenkins.eu]
Even better than that - try legislation.gov.uk for legislation, and bailii.org for case law.
Why would I want to do that? Do bracelets abscond that often?
In the UK copyright law does not even allow recording TV shows to watch later, it is merely tolerated
This is incorrect.
s70, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, entitled "Recording for the purposes of time-shifting", provides that:
The making in domestic premises for private and domestic use of a recording of a broadcast ... solely for the purpose of enabling it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time does not infringe any copyright in the broadcast ... or in any work included in it.
People who walk in the door and say "I'm ready to make a purchase, right now, no questions asked, please" are a retailer's dream
I suspect that such a person is also less likely to be "up-sold", or else take more employee time to make up "up-sale" - although perhaps that's just my personal experience, since I tend to do my research first, and simply pick the most convenient / efficient / economic place to make the purchase. If there's considerable money to be made on upselling, then perhaps someone who knows exactly what they want is not the dream, but rather someone who wants to spend money, but is not yet sure as to product(s) or price?
Any chance you hire out your book scanning equipment? Or does it only work on bound books, rather than stacks of paper?
I guess it would depend on whether you needed access to certain resources which were only available from within the domain, and you couldn't VPN in, but could you and fellow students not build an alternative to the "official" network?
I remember at Uni (Southampton) there was an alternative wireless network, not run by the University, which had pretty good coverage across the campus ("SOWN" was the SSID, I believe) - this might or might not have been run by students (I cannot remember), but it was not an official university network.
For learning about working around problems, and solving things, uni can be great, whether as part of your course of study or not.
Put more succintly: copyright is a legal entitlement, not a moral one
That may be part of the issue here, but it's rather different to the point which I was making, which was explaining that personalty does not necessarily mean absolute control.
Copyright may indeed be a moral entitlement, merely embodied in statute law - from an historical point of view, it's rather uncertain (at least, under English law, the position prior to the Copyright Act 1709 is not clear, given, primarily, the poor reporting of certain critical cases), although the existence of "moral rights" within the current regime, as opposed to "economic rights", perhaps strengthens the pro-moral argument of copyright. Personally, I am more inclined towards the view that copyright is a positivist act towards the ascertainment of a particular public benefit, and so it is (or, at least, was) utilitarian and pragmatic, rather than grounded in morals.
I took a quick look, and saw several that appealed to me - indeed, appealed enough to convince me that it was worth registering.
Heck, if even one person reads something which they would not otherwise have read, I'd consider this a success.
its theirs to do with as they please and restrict how they see fit.
To an extent, perhaps. In terms of the code comprising the software, their rights exist today solely because of copyright; it is the rights granted to them by the law of copyright which establishes what they have. Indeed, copyright works by establishing a right over a fixed expression, and making that right a property right - a right of personalty. However, unlike the majority of the personalty rights, a property right of copyright is for a temporary (if legislatively extensible) period, and only reserves the performance of certain acts to the holder. Acts which do not fall within these reserved rights are outside the scope of the copyright limitations, although an owner might attempt to increase the scope of restrictions by virtue of contract - although this is only effective in the situation where the person in question agrees to be bound by those additional limitations.
Personalty through copyright, then, is not absolute - it is a restricted, time-limited right. Within the scope of the reserved rights, they are, subject to the below, free to do with it what they wish. If they wish to restrict things more widely than their rights under copyright, they need to establish a basis for those restrictions, with contract being the most likely option. Alternatively, they might look to other forms of intellectual property right, to gain additional coverage - for example, a patent covering certain aspects of functionality - or quasi rights, such as trade secret.
Not only are the ownership rights not absolute, one might also view them as Swiss cheese - full of holes, with the cheese representing the rights reserved to the owner, and the holes acts which can still be undertaken. (One could view carve-outs to reserved rights as simply areas not covered by the reserved rights in the first place, but, that's rather an academic issue here.) Under European law, for example, there is a right to study the operation of the computer program for the purpose of determining the ideas and principles which underlie the program (Art. 5(3), directive 2009/24/EC). Similarly, a licensor of a computer program has a right to reproduce and translate (acts which are otherwise reserved) relevant parts of that computer program, where such actions are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs - Art. 6(1), dir. 2009/24/EC.*
Whether there is the equivalent of these rights under US law, I am not sure, although I'm sure someone with greater knowledge of US copyright law could assist here. Similarly, I've not paid much attention to the subject of the piece, in terms of determining which jurisdictions might be applicable...
Outside the scope of copyright law, one might also look into the regulatory framework of communications services, to determine that, whilst a network might be created by someone, it does not mean that their rights are unlimited, nor that they can not be mandated to provide interoperability. Again within Europe, see, for example, Art. 12(1)(e) of directive 2002/19/EC, which provides that, amongst other things, a national regulatory authority may require an operator to grant open access to technical interfaces, protocols or other key technologies that are indispensable for the interoperability of services, or, by virtue of Art. 12(1)(g), to mandate an operator to provide specified services needed to ensure interoperability, thus taking the obligation further than merely provision of interface information.
There's nothing to suggest that a regulator has imposed such obligations on Skype**, nor that it is obligations of this nature at issue here, but it supports the point that, whilst intellectual property might grant some rights, they are not limitless, and, whilst, by definition, the rights are exclusionary, the scope of the exclusionary effect is regulated. Intellectual property exists as a matter of public benef
This isn't about simultaneous connections. This is about people sharing the account _regardless_ of whether someone else is actively using it.
My response to a comment above might be well-placed here, too:
If this is indeed the case (I am not a Netflix customer either), then the situation is very much like prohibiting someone from lending a DVD to a friend. In other words, the prohibition is on consecutive, rather than concurrent, watching.
However, part of me wonders if this is the case, since if, by giving my password to five people, I was competing with five others as to whether I could watch something (since the first person to start a stream locks all others out the service until they have finished), I would be rather less inclined to hand out my password, unless I was retreating to an Internet-free environment for a fixed period. Most people, I'd guess, pay for Netflix for the convenience of the service, which would seem to be undermined if one was not able, by virtue of operation of a technical lockout, to watch at any given point.
I'm not a Netflix customer, but various people have posted online that you can register 6 devices, but can only stream to one IP at any one time.
If this is indeed the case (I am not a Netflix customer either), then the situation is very much like prohibiting someone from lending a DVD to a friend. In other words, the prohibition is on consecutive, rather than concurrent, watching.
However, part of me wonders if this is the case, since if, by giving my password to five people, I was competing with five others as to whether I could watch something (since the first person to start a stream locks all others out the service until they have finished), I would be rather less inclined to hand out my password, unless I was retreating to an Internet-free environment for a fixed period. Most people, I'd guess, pay for Netflix for the convenience of the service, which would seem to be undermined if one was not able, by virtue of operation of a technical lockout, to watch at any given point.
I know in Europe at least on rentals there is always a disclaimer to the effect that only you are allowed to watch it (with your family) but can't use it to share with friends or show in a public setting.
In this situation, if a user were to show it to friends, and the contract prohibited it, then the user might be subject to action for breach of contract, or else infringement of copyright. Here, the summary indicates that sharing a password would be a crime, rather than an act giving rise to a civil (contractual or tortious) liability.
Whilst copyright infringement is, in some circumstances, a crime, this legislation would increase those circumstances to an act which is not, in itself, an infringement, but which enables an infringement.
If this was of concern to Netflix (which, I presume, faces pressure from the studios which license their content to Netflix), I wonder why Netflix would not place a limit on the number of simultaneous connections / streams delivered to any given account, or else the number of simultaneous IP addresses to which a stream is delivered for any given account?
Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
I'd see a good degree (and conversion course, where applicable), with relevant subjects, presented on a well-constructed CV as very much the starting point*, rather than a determining factor. But, I agree with you - my point was rather to say that simply getting a law degree is unlikely to guarantee employment over here, and your response emphasises this.
However, the people to whom I was referring had good academics, a range of relevant work experience and came across well on paper - no stupid typos., badly-phrased paragraphs or the like. Of course, a paper-based judgment has its limitations, and, in interview phases, I'd expect to be disappointed with at least a few candidates who looked good on paper, but I was surprised that these individuals were not getting interviews, as, five years ago, I'd have expected them to have received many, based on the same CV.
* Perhaps to contradict myself, someone with a relevant / interesting but less conventional background is likely also to catch my eye. One of my personal bugbears is the lack of lawyers working in the technology / communications space who understand the technological and societal impacts, for example - yet another indication that a degree is, in itself, insufficient.
Pass the bar, and be assured of employment (real employment, as in a career instead of a job) for the rest of your life.
I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but, here in England, we have far more prospective lawyers (students with their degrees, conversion course where necessary, and vocational courses completed) looking for jobs than there are jobs available.
Even after securing the first job - the training contract - there are more qualified solicitors (I do not know about the situation for barristers) than there are roles available.
I've read a huge number of application forms, covering letters and CVs for friends and relations, for different levels of legal work, and, within that, there have been some great candidates - people who would make great lawyers in practice, in my opinion, but the work just is not there. On one level, of course, it just means that they are not good enough, if the assessment for "good enough" is one of whether they managed to get the job or not, but it does, perhaps, demonstrate that simply having the qualifications is insufficient, and no guarantee of employment.
I count myself very fortunate to have qualified when I did; it might not have been easy to secure a training contract back then, but it was considerably easier than it is today.
From mainframe to client-server to "cloud". From hat to roof to cloud too, it seems.
If it's made clear before I parted with money for a drink that something non-obvious is prohibited, then I've no problem at all - I can simply take my patronage elsewhere.
If it's only after I've bought a drink and sat down to read that I'm told, then I'm likely to be less impressed, but, at the end of the day, it's not really something I'm going to worry too much about - at worst, if I really do need to read something, I can walk out.
Since I tend to get a bottle of water, and maybe something to eat, I probably haven't lost much either, since I'll take them with me, but I could understand why someone who's not using a takeaway cup might be loathe to leave their (often expensive) coffee behind, but, I do try not to get riled over a few pounds if I can avoid it. Life is too short.
There are a number of us who happily chip into gpl-violations.org - hopefully, it sometimes leads to resolutions of GPL-based legal issues, but fascinating for discussion too.
Education: I enjoy talking / lecturing about issues related to open source / Free software, problems I perceive with copyright, issues around the commons and the public domain etc. - education activities, helping both lawyers and interested members of the general public. I also like writing about open source topics, from a legal point of view - dispelling FUD, or highlighting areas of actual risk, can be beneficial. Even contributing to your local LUG might be helpful.
Contributing to project documentation - perhaps not strictly legal-related, but, as a lawyer, I hope I can communicate clearly. Since documentation is often considered secondary to code in open source projects, yet is important, I felt I could contribute.
Pro bono work - very occasionally, a pro bono project comes up which needs open source advice, and I'll happily take on those. If you have a local pro bono centre, which has a wider remit than housing / family / private client issues, then, you might be able to register there and offer guidance. I would not hold out any hope of it being a regular source of projects, but perhaps worth a try.