The University of South Africa is holding an International Property Law Conference in Pretoria on 28-29 October 2010. The organizers invite abstracts for papers to be presented at the conference. Conference proceedings will be published in a peer-reviewed conference publication. The deadline to submit abstracts of up to 350 words is 15 February 2010. More

The American Bar Association (ABA) Section of International Law invites proposals for its Fall Meeting in Paris, France on 2-6 November 2010. Preferred topics include: Europe, crossborder transactions, corporate counsel, dispute resolution, international trade and its regulation, and the rule of law. Preference will be given to panels with four speakers and one moderator. Interactive and new formats to facilitate audience participation are encouraged. The deadline for submissions of abstracts has been extended until January 20, 2010. More

Submissions are invited for the 4th Biennial Conference European Society of International Law (ESIL) in Cambridge, England on 2-4 September 2010. This year's theme is "International Law 1989-2010: A Performance Appraisal." The working languages of the conference are English and French. The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 22 January 2010. More

Call for nominations for the Frank Carrington Crime Victim Attorney Award. The nominee must be a U.S. attorney, legal service provider, or organization who either: (1) represented victims in criminal, juvenile, or appellate courts, or (2) worked to promote the rights of victims in the criminal justice system. The late attorney Frank Carrington worked to bring attention to victims' rights. Among his contributions, Carrington served as the Director of the National Organization for Victims Assistance, the Chairman of the ABA's Criminal Justice Section's Victims Committee, and on the President Reagan's Task Force on Victims of Crime. The award is bestowed annually by the ABA Criminal Justice Section. Nominations are due by December 15, 2009. 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