Consider the following unattributed sage words of wisdom as special "gifts" to your 2010 team from last year's competitors. They asked me not to mention their names, saying that their highest reward will be watching you benefit from their advice. The list was originally circulated in 2009. Still wondering what to say in court, what types of questions judges will ask, what to do if you don't know the answer, or which advocacy strategies will sway the judges? Here, I offer commentary to accompany the Top 21 Reverse Tips for Moot Court Competitions. More

Nearly five years after the Grokster case transformed the freewheeling world of free online music sharing into the fee-based business model of iTunes, newspapers are arguing for similar legal enforcement of their intellectual property rights online. The enemy is no longer peer-to-peer (P2P) software. Rather, the new alleged enemy is "news aggregators," such as Google News. At last week's FTC Workshop on Journalism and the Internet, a panel of nine industry experts addressed, "Emerging Business Models for Journalism." The 9-person panel included two lawyers: Srinandan Kasi, General Counsel for the Associated Press and Steven Brill, a graduate of Yale Law School and co-founder of Journalism Online, Inc. Update: the archived webcast is now available. More

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a two-day "Workshop on Journalism and the Internet" in Washington, D.C. The workshop serves as a forum for industry leaders, consumer advocates, academics, and lawyers to advise the FTC on possible changes to copyright law, antitrust law, and tax policy. The FTC convened the workshop in response to concerns that investigative journalism and coverage of public affairs news is on the decline due to financial difficulties by news agencies and new online competition from citizen journalists, bloggers, and aggregate content providers. The FTC asked workshop participants for proposals related to: (a) new tax treatments of news organizations, (b) changes in copyright, including the "fair use" doctrine as applied to news stories, (c) antitrust exemptions as applied to certain conduct of news organizations, and (d) greater public funding for public affairs news. The Workshop continues today and is open to the public. For those unable to attend, the Workshop is available as a live webcast. More

Two weeks ago, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a death penalty appeal. The defendant's legal arguments included, in part, that the death sentence must be vacated because the death penalty violates international law and that international law is binding on the California state court. Specifically, the defendant contends that the California death penalty statute violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and evolving global norms against capital punishment. The Court has not yet ruled on the case and will be hearing similar legal arguments in another death penalty appeal before the Court on November 4, 2009. Should international human rights instruments and customary international law influence the Court's analysis of the death penalty statute, the defendant's due process rights, and what constitutes "cruel and unusual" punishment? More