The First Year Really Isn't Going To Last Forever

Once again, we've reached that time in the semester when things are ridiculously busy. Walk through the library at any time and you're almost certain to see someone asleep at a desk or sprawled out on one of the couches with their jacket pulled up over their head. For us 1Ls, it's Appellate Brief season. We have about two or three weeks to research and pull together a 15-17 page brief. In addition, professors are playing catchup and assigning massive amounts of reading. And to think, I used to enjoy Spring.



There is one positive we can look forward (I mean other than a summer in Africa). Registration for next Fall is starting soon and we're beginning to realize that we're actually going to have a chance to take classes that we enjoy next year. Of course, there are some mandatory classes. We'll both be assigned a Con Law II class and an Evidence class next semester, but we get to choose our other three classes. For me, Copyright is being offered next semester as well as a Trademark class and a Patent class. Hopefully I'll be able to get into at least one of them. For Hers, Estate Planning I is available in the Fall and she's going to fight hard to make it into that class.



For now though, I'm back to researching my Appellate Brief.

There's No Place Like Nebraska

I promised Hers I wouldn't bring this blog down by boring the few readers we have with copyright issues, but I just had to give some props to my Alma Matar. This post at BoingBoing pointed me to this article at ZDNet, which pointed me to this article from the Omaha World-Herald about the University of Nebraska at Lincoln's dealings with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

The RIAA sends out settlement offers to students it plans to sue for illegally downloading music. If music is downloaded over a university network, the RIAA needs the help of the school to find the student's name. UNL has traditionally retained records regarding student internet activity for about a month. Without this information, the RIAA cannot track down students who illegally share files on the University network.

Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, derided the school's record retention policy in the Omaha-World Herald article:

"One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records," she said.

I would imagine that retaining data for a longer period of time would result in added expense for the University. Clearly, the University itself has no need to retain the records any longer than it does, so in changing its record retention policy, the University would bear the complete burden and the RIAA would be the sole (or at least major) beneficiary. Not a bad deal for the RIAA.

In addition to settlement offers, the RIAA also sends thousands of cease and desist (C&D) notices to students. Like settlement offers, the RIAA requires help from the University to find the student's name before sending out a C&D. UNL has received over 1,000 C&D-related requests during the current school year. It costs the University $11 to process each requests meaning the University has spent more than $11,000 during the current school year helping out the RIAA. In response, UNL sent the RIAA a bill for its expenses. Walter Weir, the University's chief information officer, says it better than I can:

"We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems. Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?"

Nonehteless, UNL clearly has a problem. The University receives more C&D requests than any other in the country save two. However, the University realizes that it isn't as simple as tossing up a filter to prevent peer-to-peer file sharing as the RIAA advocates and as so many other universities have already done. Chancellor Perlman and others at the university have pointed out that the software is expensive and that peer-to-peer has many legal uses. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, expressed his doubts that students are downloading Shakespeare over peer-to-peer networks as if the University doesn't have a computer science department. It's often more efficient to download open source software (some of which would certainly be useful to a computer programming major) over a peer-to-peer network. Such software is free to distribute over a peer-to-peer network. Additionally, some companies are even taking advantage of peer-to-peer to distribute videos and other content legally because it's a cheaper, more efficient method of distribution.

Sorry for long, boring post, but um . . .
Go Big Red!

Take That Lincoln

Several months ago, friends and family back in our former home of Lincoln, Nebraska were all excited because Extreme Home Makeover came to town (well, I don't know if excited is the right word, but the town seemed to be abuzz). They built a larger house so that a couple and their children from previous marriages could move into the same house together.

Well, our new home in Colonie, New York, has a woman with several adopted children, some of which are HIV positive. They all live in a house with a sinking foundation. That nets Colonie the two hour season finale! So if everyone back home wants to get a peak at our neck of the woods, check out Extreme Home Makeover on May 20. Of course, we urge you to practice safe viewing by recording the show so you can fast forward past the blatant emotional manipulation the show relies on to pay its bills. That should leave you with about twenty minutes of actual viewing and make it easier to fit it into your busy schedule.

Our Summer is looking even better...

Spring break is coming to an end or so says the two feet of freshly fallen snow. We had a good break, got some work done, and finalized some plans for the best summer ever!

I started off the week in New York City with my mom. We stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel (45^th & Madison Ave) which made a perfect locale for shopping. And did we shop. When I got to the city all of my stuff fit in a duffel bag; when I left I needed my suitcase too. I now have a fabulous shoe collection complete with olive green rain boots and a red rain coat which will come in handy in London. (Take that evil lawyering professor, I can write transitions).

We bought our tickets to London and will be there for 6 days before heading to Nairobi. We’re staying at the Kensington Hotel Bayswater. Finding cheap accommodation in London is a nightmare. First, it is a city, therefore it’s expensive. Second, the dollar sucks against the pound making it even more expense. Third, their room classifications can make booking via a US service (priceline, orbitz, etc..) impossible. If you search for one room on cheaptickets, for example, you are likely to get a single room. Which means a room for one person. And then you have to go about trying to change the reservation, and when that doesn’t work you have to cancel it and start over again. The Kensington is in a great location, just north of Hyde Park and has some great pubs around it. Fancy a Pint?

Here’s what we are planning on doing so far in London:

o The obligatory hop on hop off open topped bus tour.

o The Tower of London

o Buckingham Palace (even though we won’t be able to go in)

o Parliament – I’m really bummed we won’t be able to get tickets to question hour with Blair (UK residents or people with connections only), but we are going to try and see question hour with a random cabinet member.

o Ride the Tube (I love public transportation. I probably have my mom to thanks for that. If I hadn’t been forced to take StarTran to and from school and such a young and impressionable age I might not be the public transport fan that I am today. Strike that, I’m surprised I was able to overcome the trauma of taking the public bus at all)

o See Othello at The Globe. (We’ve got the tickets already!!)

o Go on lots of fun walks, especially the evening ones. His and I are definitely going to do “Ghosts, Gaslight and Guiness”. Can you get any cooler than combining pub crawls and ghost walks. Me thinks not.

o Windsor Castle

o The London Eye

o And so much more that I don’t have time to list or link to. Let me know if you have any suggestions on what we should do, where we should eat, etc..

That’s it from us. School starts again and we have to go back to studying.

The Best Summer Ever Is Booked

Well, at least partly. We will arrive in Nairobi on June 6, just in time to get a little shuteye and head out on our first safari the weekend before classes start. And we'll leave Nairobi on July 31. We'll almost certainly have some time in London on the way out too. Flights to London get expensive after June 1, so we're going to try and get in before June leaving us with about a week to explore London before heading out to Africa.

We'll have Spring break to hopefully get our Nairobi apartment squared away and, oh yes, shots. Lots and lots of shots. Can you think of a better way to spend Spring Break than getting a Typhoid immunization? Yea, me neither.

The good news is that the apartments will have an Internet connection. That means we won't have to take a break from posting (well, I should say posting won't be any more erratic than it already is). Oh yea, and I think they're safe too. But yea! Internet!

UPDATE: Try and get this out of your head.

Important Information for our readers....

I have new glasses; the crisis is no more.
They are red and they're spectacular!

Why Memo is the new four letter word.

I hate memo's even more than Peter Gibbon. His and I both have our summary judgment memos due next week. In short a summary judgment says: You have no argument, we win on all counts, buh bye. My world just seems to collapse anytime the word memo is mentioned.
I ate a sandwich yesterday that made me sick. Good thing I didn't eat here. So I got nothing on the blasted memo done yesterday. Then, today, I was in the library ready to dig down and work on the memo when my glasses broke. I was adjusting them and the bridge just snapped and cut my nose. My eyes have been killing me lately so I've actually been wearing my glasses. Now I have this huge research paper due and I can't wear my glasses. I've tried to tape them together with a band aid but it is not working and I can't go out in public like this.
Ask yourself a quick question: what's worse than a memo? Answer: Needing a meeting to discuss the memo. I had my memo meeting today. We chatted a bit in the beginning about my poor grammar and inability to form a cohesive thesis statement. (If she thinks my writing is poorly organized in my memos I hope she never reads this blog). Then she asked me if I had any questions. I did. In fact I had so a good question, such an amazingly spectacular point that nobody else had come up with, I have been banned from using it. She banned me from using my well thought out point. Her reason: Since no one else has brought it to her attention she will know it is my paper and that would defeat the whole purpose of anonymous grading. AHHHHHHHH! I then refused to show her any more of my memo. Not the most productive meeting.
So now I'm sitting here with bandaged glasses that are barely staying together trying to come up with a new argument that is just a little less good so that I won't stand out from the crowd. Only in the world of memo.