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Despite the endless advertising and generally consistent service, internet service providers are rarely liked by their customers. Additionally, in some markets, the costs of service can often be prohibitive for many, especially when there is no competition in the market to drive down prices. In recent years, some local governments have stepped up to the plate to provide internet services when competition was lacking. In markets with a lack of competition, if available, consumers can be even more likely to jump ship from a big ISP to a government owned local ISP, often referred to as municipal broadband....

“We close at 5.” Those four words have taken Texas Judge Sharon Keller for quite a ride. Keller uttered the words on September 25, 2007, to Ed Marty, general counsel for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Marty had called the Texas judge regarding a last minute appeal for Michael Richard, who was on death row and whose execution was to occur later that evening. Marty claims that the attorneys were having computer problems in their attempt to file a last-minute appeal....

Sure, fire fighters have to rush into burning buildings. Doctors occasionally, accidentally, kill their patients. High school students in Sunnydale must spend their nights fighting off the undead. Those are scary jobs. But lawyering? That’s scary, too. There’s plenty to be afraid of when you practice, whether it’s your murdering clients, your deadly billable hour requirements, or the nightmare of an ill-timed CLE audit. If your name isn’t J.D. Rockefeller, Esquire, you probably came out of school with some debt....

Tim Cook, CEO and leader of Apple, has drawn a line in the sand, declaring that his company does not have and ought not create a skeleton key that would give the company access to iPhones. There has been mounting pressure by law enforcement for the giant tech companies to create such a mechanism because smart phones are seen as enabling terrorist plots. The letter by Tim Cook is as much about marketing and political sabre-rattling as it is about taking a stand....

Can a whistleblower’s emails be monitored by an employer? Most general counsels will agree that the answer depends on several factors. One factor may be whether or not the emails were sent on a work or a private home computer. Many companies explicitly disclaim that activity on work consoles do not warrant an employee’s expectation of privacy. But you can still get sued. It’s a hard-earned lesson for even large government agencies like the FDA....

In plaintiffs’ wrongful death lawsuit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) arising from a deadly small plane crash, the district court’s judgment in favor of the United States is affirmed where: 1) given the lack of mandatory language in paragraph 5-5-9 of the FAA Air Traffic Control Manual (ATCM) on the issue of when to maintain the separation, the district court correctly understood the question posed by plaintiffs as one of what a reasonable controller would have done on these particular facts; 2) the court’s finding that the controller acted as a reasonable controller was not clear error; 3) plaintiffs failed to show clear error in court’s finding that, even if the defendant had owed and breached a duty under paragraph 5-5-9, there was no causal connection between any breach by him and the accident, or in the court’s finding that the accident was not foreseeable to the controller; and 4) district court did not clearly err in rejecting plaintiffs’ argument that the controller should have known the aircraft was in unsafe proximity to the terrain....

It was only a matter of time before it happened, and the day has come: computer scientists are now programming websites that have the potential to know the user’s feelings – in real-time. Researchers at Brigham Young University explained that “[u]sing this technology, website will no longer be dumb.” Not only will they be able to understand what you’re providing, “but what you’re feeling.” They later frustrated another 126 participants and tracked their performance on an E-Commerce site....

You don’t need a special occasion to appreciate women in the law, though International Women’s Day is just around the corner. And it’s a great time to be a woman in the law, as more and more female lawyers are making their way towards the top of the profession, as equity partners, academics, and even Supreme Court justices. In that spirit, here are FindLaw’s seven best posts on how and why to celebrate – and hire, support, or promote – women attorneys....

A federal appeals court reversed a trial court that said an internet publisher was protected from copyright infringement under the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said common law agency rules apply to copyright violations, and returned the case to the trial judge for more discovery. According to the circuit court, the safe harbor would apply if the infringing photos were posted by users, but not if the site’s moderators acted as agents for the publisher in Mavrix Photographs v....

Glassdoor, the job posting website that allows visitors to post reviews about employers, has just been ordered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal to hand over the names of some anonymous reviewers. Before you get too excited at the prospect of finally finding out which of your former admins talked trash about you, this case is a bit more compelling than the typical Yelp defamation matter. The federal government is seeking the names of former employees that left reviews implicating a business that was engaging in governmental fraud....

The Nutella settlement isn’t providing much for the consumers who purchased Nutella. The $2.5 million settlement against the U.S. branch of the Italian Ferrero Group is giving consumers a maximum of $20 each– that’s $4 for every jar of Nutella purchased up to a maximum of 5 jars. But as for the class action lawyers behind the lawsuit, they are getting the sweet end of the deal. The class counsel in the Nutella case filed an application for nearly $4 million in legal fees and related expenses....

For both new and experience lawyers, the question of whether it’s worth it to relocate for a job can be challenging. While the decision may be simpler for new or younger attorneys that haven’t laid down roots in a community, or those that don’t have partners or children, the decision to relocate takes courage and entails quite a bit of risk. This is particularly true if partners, children, or more are involved....

A few years back, when I was a wee intern for a family law firm in Sacramento, we noticed a growing body of potential clients: the in pro pers. As the economy worsened, the numbers of self-represented parties in family law cases increased. People couldn’t afford the high price of a decent attorney so they went to the Family Law Facilitator’s office or an online document mill to process their own uncontested divorces....

When it comes to jury selection, most attorneys rely on the tried-and-true method of sticky notes on a board and a pile of papers. JuryTracker for the iPad seeks to simplify the voir dire process for lawyers by bringing it to the 21st century. The app is just one of the growing number of jury selection apps on the market geared toward attorneys. JuryTracker has the distinction of being developed by John Cleaves, lawyer and supervisor of trial technology consulting at Latham & Watkins....

When we think about legal technology tools, we often think about tools to help us solve complicated problems, such as needing to tame the terra-bytes of data associated with a law practice. Judd Kessler, Esq., founder of Abacus Data Systems, Inc. and creator of AbacusLaw software knows a thing or two about that. However, in his book, Dangerous Law Practice: Myths, Lies and Stupidity, Kessler uses humor and insight to show us how technology can help combat not only new and complex problems, but also the many myths and pieces of bad advice plaguing those just starting out or trying to grow a legal practice....

While YouTube may be the most popular free online video platform, advertisers are jumping ship and suspending their ads because it has been discovered that pedophiles have been exploiting the platform to exploit videos of children. In response, YouTube has announced that it has already taken some action to combat the problem and will continue to monitor, investigate, and take further actions, to stop the exploitation of their platform by pedophiles....

If you work in an IP-heavy industry, you know just how important a role litigation can play in protecting (or abusing) intellectual property rights. Now, Lex Machina, the IP litigation research company, has conducted one of the first, wide-ranging overviews of copyright litigation trends over the past years. Lex Machina put its big-data-crunching skills to work for its first ever Copyright Litigation Report. The report surveyed almost 15,000 copyright cases from 2009 through mid 2015 to find IP litigation patterns, trends, and insights....

Though many of us would have liked to see the nation’s High Court tackle the issue, the National Security Agency’s domestic spying activities will have to wait for another day before reaching the Supreme Court. Earlier today, the Court declined to hear the case. While it was a bit of a disappointing outcome, it was foreseeable. The case, brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, was seeking a writ of mandamus, a remedy rarely granted....

Sometimes, a criminal case falls through the cracks. It shouldn’t happen, and everybody knows that – especially when it’s a terrible crime. That’s what a federal judge had to deal with in Georgia. A white supremacist had been charged with possession of ricin – a biological toxin that can kill you just by inhaling it. But the judge dismissed the case because lawmakers “inexplicably” took it off the dangerous toxin list....

A Florida Bar applicant’s petition to have the state’s Supreme Court superseded by the Eleventh Circuit failed a couple of days ago. The Eleventh Circuit declared that it had no authority to compel Florida’s Supreme Court to do anything. This is another bar applicant incident that has implicated the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Barbara Uberoi’s application to become a member of the Florida Bar was denied by the state’s Supreme Court after it found that she was less than candid about her Chapter 13 and refusal to pay back creditors....