A Roomful of Lawyers

For lunch, we went to Erie Cafe, where there was a forum? Roundtable? Discussion? focusign on Fair Use (and the Internet, loosely). We were, I must say, the only people in the room who didn’t have suits on. Pretty damn funny.

Most everyone else was a lawyer, and somewhat older I might add. At lunch was me, Jill, Rey, Ben and Justin. After the meal, there was a panel of about 4-5 lawyers, who presented their opinions on a handful of "hypothetical" scenarios. There were some slightly interesting discussions, but the bulk of what people talked about revolved around the interpretation of the hypotheticals. I guess I learned about a few laws and a few precidents, but overall… nothing terribly new.

I guess I should clarify and say that the event was sponsored by lawyers specializing in copyright law (although a nice guy named Mark, I think, sat down at our table – he was a patent lawyer).

There’s a lot to copyright law that I don’t know. But after hearing these folks, there’s a hell of a lot about the Internet that they don’t know. Phrases like "deep linking" made me queasy. In one hypothetical, a question of fair use was raised, trying to determine if it was acceptable to scan in legal briefs and "upload them on the database in Microsoft Word fomat."

In another scenario, streaming 30-second audio clips was questioned. One of the presenters stated that, since songs were about a minute thirty in length, a 30-second clip was a substantial portion of the song. Rey and I both looked at one another, and cocked an eyebrow in unison. Perhaps the first indicator that something was a bit off was when I heard the word Cyberspace used in a sentence.

Dayam.

Here’s a plus that I took from the afternoon: for a good hour and a half I was surrounded by lawyers. And during that time, I felt like one of the smartest guys in the room.