Next Mob: Monday, November 14, 2005

Next Monday, November 14^th, we will start our next version of the Picker MobBlog (located at picker.typepad.com) . When we did our first version of this last June in connection with the release of the Supreme Court’s opinions in Grokster and Brand X, I described what we were doing:

Think of this as a “smart mob” blog (or not so smart, you tell me). The idea is to bring together a group of interested people to blog on a particular topic, do so, and disband. I will post on the blog intermittently between mobs, but the mobs will be the heart of the blog. I think of this as an online reading group or an online workshop.

On Monday, Julie Cohen of Georgetown Law School will present her new paper “The Place of the User in Copyright Law.” Julie will do an initial post on the paper and then participants in the mob will comment on it. The mobblog will run Monday through Wednesday or so.

This mob will consist of Ed Felten (Princeton, Freedom to Tinker blog); Wendy Gordon (Boston University); Doug Lichtman (Chicago); Jessica Litman (Wayne State); Joseph Liu (Boston College); Lydia Loren (Lewis & Clark); Michael Madison (Pittsburgh, madisonian.net blog); Bill Patry (Thelen Reid, The Patry Copyright blog); Larry Solum (Illinois, Legal Theory blog); Jim Speta (Northwestern); Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown, her blog); Fred Von Lohmann (Electronic Frontier Foundation); and Phil Weiser (Colorado).

 

We hope that readers of this blog may find the focused discussion interesting and we invite readers and comments.

Comments

[anon]

Good...just add Lessig.

[Probatio Viva]

There is no need whatever for Prof. Lessig in next Monday's pickermob. The eye-poppingly great list of scholars is more than sufficient to generate engaging and insightful discussion.

[anon]

Ahh...I didn't realize we were aiming just about "sufficient". When did Chicago's marketplace of ideas reach capacity? Or, is there some other reason Prof. Lessig should be excluded?

While he may have gone off the deep end on a few foolhardy crusades as of late, the good Professor has earned his invitation to any party where copyright and the Internet are to be discussed.

[Randy Picker]

As this seems to be a point of interest, Larry would obviously be welcome (one of my former colleagues here at Chicago, but of course welcome even without that); he is exceedingly busy, so I had not invited him, but did so in response to these comments. He confirmed that he just couldn't do the mob right now; perhaps some other time.

If you have others that you believe would be good additions, please let me know in the comments or via email. Thanks.