Just to flag this up for twitchgamer readers, I’ve started a new blog IPIT Events, which collects upcoming IP and IT law events in the UK. In the past, I’ve found it difficult to keep up with all the upcoming events in IP and IT law happening around Britain. So I started a blog focused on collecting and bringing all of these together. It is still in beta, so if you have any suggestions or problems, please send them my way.

Could the UK be on its way to written constitution? BBC reports comments that “Justice Secretary Jack Straw has sent out a strong signal that the government is ready to draw up Britain’s first ever written constitution.”

Wonder how IP will factor in if it comes into existence? IP rights — patents and copyrights — are in the US Constitution.

Thanks to SCRIPTed and some behind the scenes work by myself, BILETA 2008 will have a panel on open access to the law. Read more about it on the BILETA site.

Another of my posts on academic posts…

Tilburg University in The Netherlands is advertising for a PhD and a postdoc for their new Tilburg Institute of Comparative and Transnational Law.

Edinburgh Research and Innovation is looking for a lawyer.

I also note that there are several advertisements among current and former members of the Commonwealth, including Australia, Hong Kong, and the West Indies.

And of more relevance to twitchgamer readers, is the interestingly PhD position at Twente in The Netherlands: PhD Position: Smart Legal Regimes for Smart Infrastructures. The research is described as:

Enhancing performance and possible (new) uses of existing and new information infrastructures, is often hampered by legal constraints introduced to protect certain public values (such as safety or legal certainty), which are shaped and attuned to existing infrastructural services or modus operandi. The smart legal regimes for smart technological infrastructures project focuses on the possibilities to develop smart – adaptive, facilitative and resilient – legal regimes that are more suitable for and indeed (more) conducive to speedy and sustainable infrastructural innovations, especially by improving possibilities for multi-actor and multi-level cooperation.

Makes me think of Cory Doctorow’s vision of how legal disputes are handled in Eastern Standard Tribe.

These are my links for 4th February 2008 through 5th February 2008:

• Closing of cybersquatting loophole is ‘excellent news’ for brand owners | OUT-LAW.COM - Death of kiting coverage on OUT-LAW
• Debunking six myths of the Data Protection Act | OUT-LAW.COM - Good overview of common misconceptions of the DPA.
• Czech Arbitration Court to be an approved UDRP dispute-resolution service provider - Wow! A new arbitration provider… I wonder how they will compare with leading UDRP provider WIPO.
• OS makes OpenSpace open to all. However.. - Free our data comments on a new Ordnance Survey programme…
• Google Paying Out Millions to Domain Kiters - Millions of dollars a month to kiters.

These are my links for 25th January 2008 through 1st February 2008:

• SSRN-Peeping into a Hacker’s Mind: Can Criminological Theories Explain Hacking? by Raghav Sharma - “The theoretical analysis demonstrates how the rewards in form of fame or money through hacking greatly outweigh the deterrence produced by law.” — I’m wondering if the author makes the hacker/cracker distinction. It doesn’t appear so in the abstract.
• Format shifting review - Australia is reviewing format shifting as well as the UK…
• UK and Scottish Law Commissions Propose Repeal of Hundreds of Old Statutes - Time trim the dead wood. Via SLAW.
• Teenager held over theft of 36 mil. yen in virtual cash : National : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri) - “A computer whiz kid has been arrested on suspicion of hacking into the server of an online game company and defrauding it out of about 36 million yen worth of virtual money, the Metropolitan Police Department said Thursday.” Virtual cash, virtual crime,
• Out of 600,000 bits of space debris, we’re about to be hit by one the size of a bus - Scotsman.com News - “UK bookmakers last night placed the odds of being struck by this US spy satellite at at least 20 billion to one.” If anything odd ever happens, you can be sure that the UK bookies will calculate the odds on it.
• Social Networks for Law Librarians and Law Libraries, or How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Friending | LLRX.com -

I was thinking that I never did one of those “year in review” posts for twitchgamer for the start of 2008. I’ve had the domain and tried blogging and doing various other things with it over a number of years, but it was a little over a year ago that I said “Right. Blog regularly.” And so I have. Some months more regular than others. But I have managed to put together 200 posts in the past year or so, so not doing too badly. Especially given that I know blog over at opencontentlawyer too, blogged about our research on free trade and IT businesses, and did various other posts on other sites over the year. And I’m about to start writing a whole lot more if some other projects I’m working on come to fruition.