The PlayStation Security Breach and the Law

Sony Corporation suffered a huge security breach in its video game online network with names, addresses and credit card numbers of 100 million PlayStation and PC game network users stolen by hackers. This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the legal obligations of companies to protect consumer data and the rights of consumers when that data is compromised. Helping us do that are two guests:

• Justin Brookman, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy in Washington, D.C.
• John H. Lacey, attorney with the McCormack Firm in Boston and author of Massachusetts Data Privacy Law Blog.

Listen to or download this week's program at the Legal Talk Network.

Judge Alex Kozinski is our Guest on Lawyer2Lawyer

Has technology rendered the First Amendment obsolete? Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, made that case in a recent speech at Golden Gate University School of Law. This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, Judge Kozinski joins us to discuss his views on technology, bloggers, the First Amendment, constraints on judicial speech, and a lot more.

Listen to the show or download the MP3 from the Legal Talk Network.

Podcast: F. Lee Bailey on the Clemens Indictment

Legendary criminal defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey and New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt join us to discuss the indictment of Roger Clemens on this week's installment of the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

You can listen to the program in your browser or download the MP3 file from the Legal Talk Network.

Never miss an episode of Lawyer2Lawyer by subscribing to the show’s RSS feed or by subscribing on iTunes.

Podcast: Justice Denied in the Markoff Case?

Three great guests join us on this week's Lawyer2Lawyer podcast to discuss the prison suicide of accused Craigslist killer Philip Markoff and what it means for the case, the victims' families and the criminal justice system.

Our guests are:

• Douglas Berman, professor of law at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University and author of the blog Sentencing Law and Policy.
  
• Elie Mystal, an editor of Above the Law.
• Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services in Massachusetts.

You can stream the show or download the MP3 file from the Legal Talk Network.

Never miss an episode of Lawyer2Lawyer by subscribing to the show’s RSS feed or by subscribing on iTunes.

NYT Reporter on Blogs, Attribution and Fair Use

Bloggers rely heavily on maintstream news sources for topics. What obligation does a blogger have to give attribution to an original source? To what extent can a blogger use the content of a news story?

We explore these and related issues with New York Times sports reporter Alan Schwarz this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer. Click the link to download or stream this week's show.

Podcast: The Right to Counsel in Civil Cases

The Supreme Court's 1963 decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, guaranteed that criminal defendants unable to afford their own lawyer would have one appointed at the public's expense. Should there be a corollary right in certain types of civil cases that involve basic human needs, such as when a person faces eviction from a home or the loss of parental rights? California recently made history by enacting a pilot program to appoint lawyers in certain civil cases and other pilot programs are underway elsewhere in the country.

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we look at the Civil Gideon movement. Joining us as guests to discuss this topic are two lawyers who have been deeply involved in promoting Civil Gideon: Robert L. Rothman, partner of the Atlanta firm Arnall Golden Gregory and former chair of the Section of Litigation of the American Bar Association, and James J. Brosnahan, senior partner with Morrison & Foerster and member of the California Commission on Access to Justice.

Listen to or download the program from the Legal Talk Network.
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Podcast: The FTC’s Blogger Guidelines

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we try to sort fact from fiction regarding the Federal Trade Commission's new guidelines on product endorsements and reviews by bloggers. The FTC wants bloggers to disclose free products or payments they receive from companies for reviewing their products. How far do the guidelines reach, what sorts of disclaimers do they require, and how will the FTC enforce them?

To help us sort through these questions, we are joined by two guests with expertise in this area: Eric P. Robinson, staff attorney at the Media Law Resource Center, a nonprofit information clearinghouse that monitors and promotes First Amendment rights in libel, privacy and related fields; and Barry J. Reingold, head of the marketing and advertising practice for the law firm Perkins Coie.

Listen to or download the show from the Legal Talk Network.

Podcast: 'Crowdsourcing' Patent Reviews

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is understaffed and overwhelmed. Could the answer to its problems lie in crowdsourcing the patent-review process? Could crowdsourcing result in better patents?

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we look at the Peer-to-Patent system, an innovative pilot project run jointly by the USPTO and the Center for Patent Innovations, a research and development arm of New York Law School's Institute for Information Law & Property. The project just completed its second year of operation and its future is now under review. It uses crowdsourcing and the power of the Internet at large to help vet applications for business-methods and software patents.

Joining us to discuss this experiment in crowdsourcing of patent review are two guests:

• Prof. Mark Webbink, executive director of the Center for Patent Innovations and the former senior vice president and general counsel at Red Hat, the premier Linux and open source vendor.
  
• Stephanie Scruggs, an intellectual-property partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Hanify & King, where she focuses on patent litigation, patent prosecution, and product clearance and patent validity opinions.
  

Listen to or download this week's program at the Legal Talk Network.

L2L: College Athletes vs. EA Sports and NCAA

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we consider the class-action lawsuit filed by college football and basketball players against EA Sports and the NCAA. The lawsuit claims that electronic games unlawfully appropriate the likenesses of these student athletes.

Our guests to discuss this issue are Peter Goplerud, dean and professor of law at Florida Coastal School of Law, who is widely recognized for his expertise in the field of sports law, and Clay Travis, an attorney and sports writer who formerly was editor at Deadspin.com and now writes for FanHouse.com.

You can listen to the show at the Legal Talk Network or download the MP3 file.

Time Almost Up: Help Us Win Best Podcast

Voting ends tomorrow, Jan. 2, for best legal podcast in the ABA Journal Blawg 100. Our podcast, Lawyer2Lawyer, was in the lead, but has fallen into second place in these waning hours, behind the LexisNexis Legal News and Litigation Report. Voting is easy -- all you have to do is click on a box. Do it today (or tomorrow) and forward this on to your friends.

Vote here.

Our Podcast Named Best for Lawyers

For the third year running, Dennis Kennedy's Blawggie Awards have named Lawyer2Lawyer as the best legal podcast. This year, we tied for best with Denise Howell's This Week in Law. Lawyer2Lawyer also won the Blawggie in 2007 and 2006.

Lawyer2Lawyer was recently selected as a top legal podcast by the editors of the ABA Journal and is currently in a neck and neck competition for first place in the ABA Journal's readers' poll. (Please vote if you haven't already.)

Here is what Dennis Kennedy said about L2L:

Bob Ambrogi's and Craig Williams' Lawyer2Lawyer Podcast is the longest-running weekly legal podcast and has more than 100 episodes. They cover many legal topics, which is both a plus and a minus, since an episode might stray outside your area of interest. But they generally do a great job of finding broad enough topics and getting excellent guests on leading edge topics.

Podcast: Ike's Impact on Texas Lawyers

When Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, lawyers were not spared. Many lawyers were hard hit in both their profesisonal and personal lives. On this week's episode of the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, my cohost J. Craig Williams and I interview Bill Livesay, executive director of Andrews Kurth LLP in Houston, and Miriam Rozen, staff reporter for Texas Lawyer newspaper. They share their accounts of Hurricane Ike and discuss its impact on the broader legal community.

Listen to or download this week's program from this page.

Podcast: MBTA v. Anderson

It all started when three MIT students put together a presentation for their network security class at MIT about their findings regarding the security vulnerabilities of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's CharlieCard fare-pass system. Just as the students were about to present their findings at DEFCON, the MBTA went to federal court and won a gag order preventing them from speaking.

The case raises many issues of free speech and computer law. On this week's installment of our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss these issues with our guests Tuna Chaterjee, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet Law and Society and a staff attorney with the Citizen Media Law Project, and Marc Randazza, First Amendment attorney with the Florida law Weston, Garrou, Walters & Mooney and author of the blog The Legal Satyricon.

Listen to our download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Looking for Lawyer2Lawyer Listeners

Are you a listener to our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer? If so, we'd like to have you as a guest on a special program to mark our third anniversary later this month. We know you're out there -- our podcast last month had more than 40,000 downloads. For our anniversary show, we'd like to learn more about the people who listen, whatever their backgrounds and wherever in the world they reside. If you're interested, drop us a note at lawyer2lawyer-AT-legaltalknetwork.com. (Feel free to copy me at ambrogi-AT-gmail.com.)

Podcast: Legendary Lawyer Gerry Spence

Legendary trial lawyer Gerry Spence is our special guest this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer. Spence came to national prominence for handling the Karen Silkwood case and was most recently in the news for winning an acquittal for Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. He has never lost a criminal case and has not lost a civil case since 1969. Recently, Spence launched his own blog. Join my cohost J. Craig Williams and me as we speak with Spence about his career, his cases and his blogging.

Listen to our download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Podcast: Viacom v. YouTube v. Privacy

A $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom accuses Google's video-sharing Web site, YouTube, of violating its copyrights. Last week, Google and Viacom reached an agreement to allow Google to mask user information from records before handing them over to Viacom. On this week's legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, my co-host J. Craig Williams and I discuss the case with guests Kevin A. Thompson, an attorney with the Chicago firm Davis McGrath LLC, and Lauren Gelman, executive director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. We discuss questions of privacy and piracy raised by the case and look at the lawsuit's broader implications.

You can listen to or download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Podcast: Zittrain on the Future of the Internet

Unless something is done to change its course, the future of the Internet, as Jonathan Zittrain sees it, is one of far less innovation and far more -- and far more ominous -- control. Zittrain, who just became a tenured professor at Harvard Law School, discusses his book, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, on this week's episode of the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

Zittrain discusses his book, the field of Cyberlaw and his post at Harvard. You can listen to or download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Podcast: Judge Gertner on Blogging, Speech

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who attracted the attention of bloggers and the news media earlier this year when she joined the roster of contributors to the new Slate legal blog, Convictions, shares her thoughts on judicial blogging and judicial speech in this week's episode of our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

Judge Gertner is the first Massachusetts judge -- federal or state -- to blog and one of only a handful of judges nationwide who blog. She believes strongly that judges should have more leeway to discuss their work, through blogs and other media. "The more we talk about what we do, the more we expose the shibboleths and the more maybe we can get back to respecting the institution," she tells us in this interview.

You can listen to or download the entire interview from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Podcast: Polygamy and the Law

The raid of a polygamist compound in West Texas has raised difficult and troubling issues concerning the interplay between the state, religion and the rights of children, women and families. This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, I discuss the events in Texas with two guests: Betsy Branch, a family-law attorney with the Dallas firm of McCurley, Orsinger, McCurley, Nelson & Downing, who serves as attorney ad litem for several children in the West Texas case, and lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer, who has written about the civil liberties aspects of the case at the blogthefreeforall.net.

• Episode details.
• Download the MP3 file.
  
• Listen in Windows Media.
  

You can receive all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Podcast: Spitzer and the Law

Lawyers considered Eliot Spitzer either a hero or a villain. But as the now-former governor of New York faces possible criminal charges, we explore the case against him on this week's edition of the legal-affairs podcast LegalTalkNetwork. Joining my cohost J. Craig Williams and me to discuss the legal case against Spitzer are: Harvey Silverglate, nationally known criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, writer and blogger; Dan Slater, lead writer for The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog; and David Frank, former criminal prosecutor and now a reporter at Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

• Episode details.
• Download the MP3 file.
  
• Listen in Windows Media.
  

You can receive all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.