info.law @ NYU

This Wednesday, November 1st, ILISA is hosting its very first panel discussion on Careers in Technology and the Law, in Vanderbilt 206 at 6PM. It promises to be an enlightening experience for all involved, and of course food will be provided, because we take care our own (and we’re not picky about who that covers). Our most excellent speakers will be:

Carole Aciman
Ms. Aciman is a transactional intellectual property partner in Greenberg Traurig’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Department, and focuses her practice on media, technology, licensing, and outsourcing transactions. She also provides advice to businesses with global web activities on the US and international aspects of doing business online. Her media practice includes entertainment and media transactions for the television, motion picture and wireless industries, as well as transactions involving multimedia/convergence and other technologies. She is a frequent speaker, author and writer on a wide range of outsourcing, computer, electronic commerce and entertainment law topics and has taught E-Law as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

Ramsey Homsany
Mr. Homsany leads Google’s New York legal team, representing Google in intellectual property licensing and other commercial transactions, including negotiating new media agreements with global advertising agencies and Fortune 500 companies. He also advises Google on product development, technology strategy and emerging technology issues. He currently serves on several government and industry working groups in the areas of Internet policy and new media business issues and has lectured on technology transactions practice at national conferences and leading universities. Prior to joining Google, Mr. Homsany was an attorney in the Technology Transactions Group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, CA representing public and private companies.

Michael Mills
Mr. Mills, the Director of Professional Services & Systems for Davis Polk & Wardwell, has been called “the Bill Parcells of legal technology” and the “in-house equivalent of Vinton Cerf.” He is responsible for all of Davis Polk’s practice support technology, including knowledge management, practice management, client relationship management, intranet, extranet and internet services, and expert systems, as well as the firm’s libraries. While a partner at Mayer, Brown & Platt, he was founding chairman of that firm’s Technology Planning Committee and administrative partner for the New York office. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the American Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He is also vice-chairman of Pro Bono Net.

Gregory Pomerantz
Mr. Pomerantz is a 2002 graduate of the Law School, where he was a fellow of the Information Law Institute and studied the legal history of Unix operating systems. He is currently an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, practicing in the area of private equity and IP transactions. He also serves as general counsel to Software in the Public Interest, a New York-based not-for-profit corporation which provides legal and administrative assistance to major free software projects including the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and PostgreSQL.

We hope you can join us for this great event, and if you have any questions about it, contact us at ilisa@ilistudents.org. See you there!

Debating Eldred v. Ashcroft and other terrible decisions

The next reading group will be Tuesday, October 24th, at 7:30pm in Furman 324. Will there be food? Yes! Will there be laughs? Yes! Will there be discussion of con law, info law, and the effect of those things on our shared culture? Yes!

Be there! Or be even squarer!

Readings are here: http://www.eldred.cc/eldredvashcroft.html

The main decision in the Eldred case, which is not that long, is the “required” reading. Check out the other things on that page if you’d like more, including a speech by Posner, an Objectivist account of copyright policy, etc.

No, I’m not talking about running a turtle around in rectangles, though I’m sure Martin is happy to discuss that with any interested parties.

As a new organization, we are first and foremost in need of an identity. Thankfully we’ve settled on a name and our membership seems to be stable and growing, but the capstone is choosing a logo. We need to construct a brand, and with it a mark to assure the consumer that they’re getting the quality they’ve become accustomed to each and every time they pick an ILISA product off the shelf…OK, really we just need something to put on top of our flyers that doesn’t look silly. If we can do that, we’ll be a few steps ahead of most other organizations out there.

To kickstart the process, I’ve brainstormed some ideas. I wouldn’t say any of them are ready for primetime, but it’s good to get feedback as early in the process as possible:

a more traditional, law-y approach

more modern, not focused on the “ILISA” acronym

yes focused on the acronym

saying that we’re the less stoic wing of the big, serious ILI

yeah, I just had to do it. Sorry. Probably not even a very good fair use of the trademark.

Greetings! We are the students of Information Law. The Institute has given us an Association, and so we are all set and ready to go. Come join us as we embark on an exciting adventure through the vast and varied jungles of IT and telecommunications policy. It’s lot of territory, but if it’s all about the bits, then we’re all about it.

Like any good student organization with its feet on the ground but its eyes on the Phuture, we will blog. Perhaps, on occassion, we will even blawg. It’s gonna be a wide selection, so hopefully all can find something in their niche.
It won’t be like them other blogs, though. All respect due to fancier Centers and Projects, but we’ve got the heart. This is going to be the raw deal, straight from the mouth of the next generation. There may be no one here but us chickens, but there’s broadband in the coop. Watch out.