Denise Howell is a seasoned appellate and intellectual property litigator based in Los Angeles. Denise writes one of the first and most popular law-related blogs, Bag and Baggage, coined the term "blawg" and helped pioneer podcasting for lawyers. Microcontent obsessed since 2001, she is frequently quoted in the media on legal issues involving intellectual property and technology law. "Sound Policy" is Denise's show at IT Conversations, and it's also what she hopes results from the briefs she submits to court. Email Denise at dhowell@gmail.com.
Dennis Kennedy is a computer lawyer and legal technology expert based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author, a frequent speaker and a widely-read blogger, he has more than 300 publications on legal, technology and Internet topics, many of which are collected in his e-books. Dennis has been described as someone who knows almost every rock song in existence and, more importantly, how they apply to technology and law. Email Dennis at his gmail address.
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He has published the Internet Legal Research Weekly newsletter since 2000 and blogged about the Internet and legal technology at Inter Alia since August of 2002. With Tom's singing, Ernie on guitar and Dennis' encylopedic knowledge of rock music, we may have the beginnings of a good band, if this whole blog thing doesn't work out. Email Tom at tmighell@swbell.net.
Marty Schwimmer left a partnership in the largest trademark practice in the world and founded Schwimmer Mitchell, a full-service IP micro-boutique in Westchester County, New York, where he represents owners of famous and not yet famous trademarks. He founded The Trademark Blog, the first IP law blog and the one with the most pictures. He is the first to come in and the last to leave in his firm. Email Marty at marty@schwimmerlegal.com.
Ernest Svenson practices law with a mid-sized law firm in New Orleans, specializing in business-related lawsuits. Most of his practice takes place in federal court, especially the Eastern District. He is best known for his weblog Ernie the Attorney, which he started as an experiment. Like many experiments it got out of control. Nevertheless, he continues to practice law and, occasionally,
to seek enlightenment. Email Ernest at esvenson@gmail.com.
About this blog
Between Lawyers provides just-in-time group commentary on the issues
raised when technology, culture and the law intersect. We take you
behind the firewalls and conference room doors to show you how
experienced lawyers deal with these issues and help you prepare for
the new challenges we all face. For more, see our introductory post.
Doc Searls has a very good introduction to the increasingly important notion of the Live Web.
The money quote:
Blogs are not just sites. They are also journals — live ones, to be exact. (Significantly, Brad Fitzpatrick named his blog system LiveJournal.) When you save a blog post, Technorati knows about it and indexes it in as little as 60 seconds or less. I assume Google Blogsearch does the same. Meanwhile Google's main Static Web search engine indexes the entire Web at a less than live pace. This isn't a bad thing at all; just a different thing. This difference is so sharp that Google Blogsearch gives you a choice between "Search Blogs" and "Search the Web".
This might sound a bit acronym-soupy and cryptic, but the proverbial lightbulb is over my head at the moment, and I think it will have more impact if you attempt to understand why yourself rather than having me explain. So first, please listen to the current episode of the Gillmor Gang:
Then: consider how a virtual law firm (or a very forward thinking conventional one) might be in the perfect position to leapfrog ahead by eliminating the CRM (customer relationship management) line item from its technology and marketing budgets, and instead adopting a client driven, "vendor relationship management" approach to business development.
WisBlawg's Bonnie Shucha reports that LexisNexis is now including a lengthy list of blogs (including this one) in its Newstex database. Yet another example of the paid online legal database companies tying their business models to the location of relevant information that already is online for free. Makes me wonder how long it will take before a well designed, ad-supported free legal search competitor comes in and seriously syphons off subscribers. Google undoubtedly does this already, even though it doesn't (yet) do vertical search.
History in the making and participatory law in action — behold LawClinic.TV. From the press release: "Fordham University School of Law today became the first academic institution to launch a video blog or 'vlog.' The vlog, LawClinic.TV, features one-to-two minute videos of clinical law professors and students sharing their thoughts on clinical law education and written commentary from Fordham’s director of clinical education, Professor Ian Weinstein."
Just out this week, Socialtext Open: "Socialtext Open is released under a standard open source license, and contains all of Socialtext's enterprise grade code aside from enterprise management and enterprise integration tools."
Wikis at work,
BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP Ramp SOA Spec Efforts: "The group also has setup what they call a 'vendor-neutral Web site, designed as a wiki' they will use to collaborate, communicate and gain feedback from developers. There's a place for news, white papers, public specifications and access to information on early deployments."
Illustrating the approaches toward blogging policies should be context-specific and not cookie cutter:
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz: "Our blogging policy is 'Be authentic. Period.'" (It's been awhile since I was showing up bright eyed and bushy tailed for Larry Sonsini's Securities Regs class in law school, but I'd be willing to bet Sun's securities lawyers might want a qualifier or two.)
Summer camps, with camper identities to protect and other considerations, might understandably go a different route. That article also highlights, and Dennis pointed out (by pointing here) on our mailing list, the camps' attempts to police bloggy uses of their trademarks. I'll have to defer to Marty on this but what they're concerned about sounds like nominative fair use.
The dog days of summer have already hit St. Louis. You begin to look for any way to get a break from the heat. And those high-heat notebook computers are no picnic.
In potenitlally good news, scientists from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a semiconductor approximately 100 times faster than chips commonly used today by freezing ithe chips at 451 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (close to absolute zero).
A friend of mine once joked that he made Jiffy Pop popcorn on his notebook computer because it got so hot. At least I think he was joking. With these new chips perhaps we'll be able to keep drinks chilled or even make a little home-made ice cream while typing away.
Alas, no prospects of the chips coming into production in the near future.
The real news in this story, of course, is what it may mean for Moore's Law and the idea of the Singularity.
Corporate blogging aficionista Debbie Weil is poised to unleash her Corporate Blogging Book on August 3. In the meantime she's offering freebies to tease and entice &mdash the complete first chapter, called "Top 20 Questions About Corporate Blogging," and, if you preorder at Amazon, the book's chart highlights — which you can check out at the book's site.
A colleague recently asked me what concrete steps I thought an organization could take to help ensure the concepts underlying a blogging policy are actually understood and implemented. Bearing in mind I am so not an employment lawyer, I did have a few thoughts.
Blog. I suspect that companies pursuing their own blogging initiatives in addition to implementing policies intended to cover unsanctioned employee blogs will run into fewer problems with employee mistakes or misunderstandings. This is because the management and culture throughout the organization is bound to better grasp the process and related security and compliance issues. IMO, the best "training" occurs by example and widespread use.
Breathe. As I've pontificated here before, there's a pretty good case to be made that blogs and their ilk are
actually the least risky form of corporate communication. If a company adequately gets across the reasons it expects certain employee conduct with regard to external communications, confidential
information, and technology use, blogs, etc. are at least as "safe" as email and the phone; in fact, because people are more likely to understand up front these technologies are designed to accomplish wide and persistent information distribution, people are more likely to approach their use with caution and respect.
Mix. Organizations need to make sure their P.R./marketing and legal arms are communicating about how employees should be relaying work related information to third parties or the world at large, and they need to have an open-eyed appreciation of all the ways people might be or are using technology to do so. Brace yourself: P.R. and legal goals just might compete. Management needs to understand those conflicts and decide what resolution best fits what they're trying to accomplish (and what the law insists they accomplish).
I've finally been getting around to reading some back issues of Wired Magazine this weekend, which is always a worthwhile thing to do. (My regular magazine reading consists of: Wired, Technology Review, Popular Science, Fast Company, MacAddict — Dennis, you should subscribe to this, it will take your MacBook usage and enjoyment to new heights — and any of the free, locally ad-supported, parent-focused pubs available at the grocery store and My Gym. Put that in your demographic pipe and smoke it.) There, I may have found an answer to Dennis' recent lament, "I doubt that anyone has more trouble with or dislikes cell phone service more than I do." It's the MVNO, "mobile virtual network operator." What I do know thanks to Wired — Sky Dayton Gets Mobile — is that MVNOs, which piggy back on the carriers' spectrum and resell wireless services under their own name, will be a breath of fresh air to those frustrated by the products, features, and plans available from the big boys in the world of cellular services. What I don't know (and I'd love it if someone could enlighten me) is whether MVNOs, in addition to satisfying our longing for variety and flexibility, can do anything to offer improved reliability and/or speed; since their service backbone is the infrastructure of the existing cellular networks, they may just be putting lipstick on a pig.
The Wired article is several months old now (January oops, March; reading January now), and though it got me thorougly jazzed to own a Helio phone named after Y.T. from Snow Crash, it looks like only Hiro ultimately got the nod, and then with a spelling change (*sigh*). Ah well, it still is a terribly attractive notion to hitch one's cellular service wagon to a company that thinks of itself as "a gang of miltant consumers who barricade themselves inside a carrier's headquarters and refuse to leave until they get what they want." Though Helio is clearly targeting someone younger than me with more free time (or maybe a different way of looking at it is they're going after those inclined to post to Slashdot and Digg rather than just followalong), I find the whole notion refreshing, and look forward to more — whether from Helio or another MVNO.
Great marketing partnership for MySpace by the way. Though I'd probably never create a MySpace page on my own, if my phone were well integrated with it I just might. Also: when was the last time you encountered a cellular service provider with a blog?
From the Frontier of Privacy and Tracking Technology
The Glue Gun and Other Sticky Stories: Fascinating article from CIO Insider highlights some recent and wacky develpments in the world of tracking technology. You might be wondering how our laws can keep up with all of this. It's a good thing to be wondering about.
Our co-blogger Dennis Kennedy is quoted today in the New York Times: Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply. Dennis' interesting, and I'm sure far more nuanced, discussion with reporter Anna Bahney was distilled down to a truth about modern attitudes toward personal values and employment — "It's like, 'This is who I am. Consequences are what they are. I'll go work for someone who doesn't have a problem with it.'" Just as she missed the chance to round out her piece with more of Dennis' well-considered insights on this topic, the reporter missed the opportunity to tell the more accurate, important, and complicated story. Specifically, Ms. Bahney took the approach that the issue of individuals, their blogs, and their employers, is one of youth culture vs. Killjoy Lawyer III and co. E.g.:
[T]he line between what is public and what is private is increasingly fuzzy for young people comfortable with broadcasting nearly every aspect of their lives on the Web, posting pictures of their grandmother at graduation next to one of them eating whipped cream off a woman's belly. For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring.
(Emphasis added.) While I appreciate the clever juxtaposition, and the point that there undeniably is a generation gap between the online mores of under-thirty-somethings and their elders, to suggest that boundary blurring of this sort is an issue unique to the young is to ignore at least the last six years of Web-enabled communications. And to note almost in passing that "some bloggers" say "[a] blog and a job don't necessarily have to clash," is to ignore at least three years worth (and counting) of seismic shift in corporate attitudes toward communications with the outside world. Yes, it's a slow change. But to suggest the change isn't happening — "No Bloggers Need Apply" — misses the boat, and here, I fear, resulted in an alarmist headline and a story that attempted to paint the varied picture of today's business attitudes and relationships with a two-color palette.
Legal publishing conglomerate Thomson West is venturing into the podcasting arena with Westcast. I don't know what it says about West's perceptions of this endeavor that at the moment the podcast doesn't have its own page, but instead lives in the sidebar of West's News Room. The show does, however, have a feed, and three episodes in the can — covering bankruptcy reform, technology trends, and the Supreme Court's Kelo (eminent domain) decision, respectively.
Spherepromises not only excellent blog search but a bookmarklet that will "change your life " ("Note that the Sphere It! Bookmarklet finds blog posts related to the content of the page you're reading, instead of just using links...").
The Wiki-Law concept is pretty cool on all fronts, but among its nicest features is its "Digg-for-law-types" aspect. In other words, users submit articles, readers vote. Those with the most votes and comments get sorted to the front page. Still obviously very much a work in process, but I like the idea.
Wired Magazine's April '06 issue has an appropriately engrossing series of articles about videogames. Particularly interesting for anyone who realizes that popular "recreational" technologies inevitably come to have critical significance in other arenas, including the workplace, a.k.a. (beam me up) The Enterprise:
You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!: "The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading 'level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft.'"
When Virtual Worlds Collide: "All virtual worlds require a communication protocol that lets you talk with other people, a software platform that lets you build things on top of it, and a currency that enables trade. These three elements share one thing: a gravitational pull toward a common standard."
I think it was in the March 3 edition of The Gillmor Gang that Steve Gillmor had some characteristically blunt and insightful commentary about the reluctance of corporate IT departments to embrace new technologies that are compelling but disruptive of the existing infrastructure. This can be both frustrating for users and counterproductive from a business standpoint. Against this backdrop I was interested to read Paul Chin's article in Intranet Journal,The Value of User Generated Content, Part 1. [Via Genie Tyburski] Part 1 puts the issue of things like blogs, wikis, and discussion groups (discussion groups? less relevant at the moment than podcasts, I would think) in a corporate IT person's context, comparing these media forms to the "engineered content" (apt phrase) that heretofore has populated intranets. Part 2 (still to come) will examine how "[i]n order to find a happy middle ground when using UGC, and not to appear overly controlling, a formal set of content posting guidelines should be agreed upon by both the intranet owners and users." (Emphasis mine.)
So, it seems that IT departments may be beginning to come to terms with "UGC" and its inevitability as part of the corporate environment. As to the important related policy decisions, though, I certainly hope the norm will be for these to be the ultimate province of other parts of the organization.
If you've been following our posts concerning business blogging issues and blogging policies, or if you've just been paying attention to mainstream reporting over the last year or so, you know there has been a good deal of handwringing (some media prompted, some lawyer prompted, some both) about the unique or remarkable legal perils that weblogs and other Web-oriented communication tools supposedly pose for businesses. It was clear to me at last week's New Communications Forum that this meme has had an impact. Even in that very blog-friendly environment, concerns and uncertainties about the legal risks of wholly or partly unfiltered employee communications with the outside world were much in evidence.
Something interesting occurred to me along these lines in the course of being interviewed by Debbie Weil for her podcast. Specifically, of all the various communication tools available to employees, whether while on the job or off the job or both, blogging may actually be the least risky and most innocuous from a corporate risk management standpoint. Consider first that people commonly assume phone, email, cocktail party, and/or hallway discussions are invisible, transitory, and/or confidential. Any one of those situations is thus fairly likely to involve remarks that the speaker, rightly or wrongly, does not expect to come back to haunt them in a public way. Then consider the extent to which public blogs, podcasts, and similar tools are conceptually different from the get-go. The accessible nature of the information put out by these means is part of of the compact. Except in the limited case of behind-the-firewall blogging or podcasting, people using these tools are much more likely to comprehend that a broad audience is possible (usually, desired), and to tailor their communications accordingly.
Unlike a great deal of the reporting I read about the dangers and pitfalls of blogging, I have a hard time isolating any primary legal problems that inevitably go along with employees using communication tools of any sort. Instead, the potential problems are a direct product of the extent to which clear expectations have been set, and the extent to which a particular employee is oblivious or doesn't care. Though there are a host of situations whereby an employee's blog, podcast, photo, or video clip could conceivably subject an employer to third party liability — inadvertent disclosure of confidential or regulated information; harassment, discrimination, or other civil rights violations; false advertising or other unfair competition concerns; and much more — not only are none of them unique to online communications, but it seems to me those using such methods would be almost certain to appreciate that what they're doing is not "private."
Picture a world in which it was a newsworthy event every time someone was fired due to something said in an email or a hallway. Or every time company secrets were clandestinely or inadvertently shared over the phone or over drinks. You'd never hear about the dangers and pitfalls of blogging, because it would constitute such a small part of the overall "problem." (And we could all get back to concentrating on what's reallyimportant.)
I just tried to email a document to Marty, but of course sent the email without the document, as we all inevitably do. (Please tell me it's not just me.) In response, Marty offered a would-be — correction, would be HUGE — t-shirt slogan: THIS TIME WITH ATTACHMENT
So, in technology, Moore’s Law is alive and well. But technology does not operate in a vacuum. No business or government institution can change at 50 per cent a year. While stability and tradition are important, if a fundamental technology progresses far beyond society’s ability to absorb its impacts, a growing disconnection occurs. When, in the 19th century, technology proceeded at a rapid pace while social institutions did not, the results were upheavals and revolutions. Today, again, the key elements of the information economy are progressing at a scorching rate, while private and public institutions are lagging behind.
But, here's the money quote that lawyers those in the tech world should meditate on:
In businesses, competitive pressures lead to a speed-up of internal processes or companies fail. But for government the same is not true, even with globalisation. Courts can take years to resolve disputes. Regulators and legislators require years to establish rules. There is an entire industry out there, the main product of which is delay.
Some of the problems of these decision processes are inherent and based on the need to balance social objectives. But others could be remedied. In the US, the delay in courts could be alleviated by tripling the number of judges. Compared with the overall cost of government, judges are cheap. So are patent examiners. Streamlining administrative law, simplifying the appeals process or creating mandatory arbitration mechanisms should not be expensive. The economic benefits would be incalculable.
One needs focus not just on policy substance but also on its process – the small but constant frictions in the mechanism of government that grind down innovation and threaten to repeal Moore’s Law where physics could not.
Noam makes an interesting observation about patents and patent offices: "Patent offices everywhere are falling behind their workload. It may soon take more than five years to get a patent in the US."
Are we already seeing the symptoms of the increasing pace of the pace of change that Kurzweill has called the coming Singularity?
In other patent news, on Slashdot, ScuttleMonkey points to an article on The Register, based on research from a company that provides proofreading and other services, that says:
Almost every US patent contains at least one mistake, according to new research. The vast majority are trivial errors, most of them the fault of the USPTO; but two per cent of the patents examined were found to contain serious mistakes that weakened the core claims.
Actually, I have lots, some admittedly more lofty than others. One is that law firms and their clients will find ways to spend less on IT without sacrificing performance or convenience. Robin "Roblimo" Miller's book Point & Click OpenOffice.org seems like one of many excellent possible starting points.
The January 2006 issue of PC Magazine has a nice list of tech resolutions you should be making this year. You will no doubt know that you should be doing all of these -- but we can always use a reminder. So here goes:
-- Back up your data. A few suggestions for easily backing up your important files: 1) buy a stand-alone hard drive, like the Maxtor One-Touch. An automatic back-up software program like Dantz Retrospect is great for using with an external hard drive. 2) a slightly more advanced option is the Mirra Personal Server -- it comes with all the software to automatically back you up, and you can also access your computer files from any computer that has an Internet connection. 3) Finally, an online solution I've been trying out lately called Mozy. You get 1GB of online storage for free, and an extra gig if you answer 3 simple demographic survey questions. 2GB for free is pretty good, and Mozy works great.
-- Keep Your Operating System Up to Date -- security researchers uncovered a record 5,198 flaws in operating systems last year -- gee, that's 14 a day. If you're using Windows XP, make sure you enable Automatic Updates. Then you don't even have to worry about this -- Windows will download and install critical updates without you having to do a thing.
-- Keep Your Antivirus Software Up To Date -- any antivirus program worth its salt has an automatic update feature. The antivirus companies are generally very good at keeping up with the latest viruses -- take advantage of their expertise and let them automatically update your computer with the latest definitions.
-- Run antispyware software -- if you're using Firefox, you probably don't have any problems with spyware. I certainly don't. But I still run three antispyware programs every few weeks. My favorite is Microsoft Antispyware; it updates automatically, and provides real-time protection. I also use SpyBot and Ad-Aware, and I'm wanting to try Spy Sweeper, which is regarded by many to be the best anti-spyware software out there.
-- Check System Restore Disks, and make them if you don't have them -- here's how to build an XP-SP2 Recovery Disk.
-- Check your firewall regularly -- enough said.
-- Change your passwords regularly -- learn how to create strong passwords, and keep them safe with a program like Roboform.
-- Check your credit reports regularly -- everyone is entitled to one free credit report per year; sign up for yours at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you want to check it more often, contact one of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion.
-- Back up again, and keep a copy in a safe location -- because it bears saying again.
Like AKMA and Dennis (and probably everyone who posts with any degree of regularity — and my regularity is anything but), I too get asked about time, time, time, all the time. No one has time. I'm certainly no exception.
Which is why I thought it was pretty funny when Sandra Rosenzweig, the California Lawyer's technology editor, included me in her send recently to "the ten most efficient people I know." (Sandra, we need to see about getting you out more often.) She's doing a story on time management and wanted tips. When I got a little time, I sent her some. Here they are:
Pick the 1 or 2 devices you like best and consolidate your
activities on them. If you can manage most aspects of your life with
one or maybe two devices, you can do almost anything from almost
anywhere and make efficient use of downtime. In my case they're a
cell phone and a PowerBook. You could get away with a laptop alone,
using Skype or Gizmo to handle the phone part, but WiFi penetration
isn't yet ubiquitous and cheap enough to make that work well, and I
spend too much time in the car to make the laptop my only means of
audio communication. Key to this is getting a phone that is both full
featured and easy enough to use that the features don't just languish.
Aside from its traditional function, the features I use the most on
my phone are email and the camera. With this system, I've never felt
the need for a Blackberry or a Treo.
Get a Gmail account. If it makes sense, get several. Eliminating time once spent searching for and/or attempting to organize email is
enormously helpful.
Try making all online communications (e.g., writing and responding
to emails, blogging) a secondary priority, turning to them only when
the day's "offline" communication tasks (meetings, calls, errands) are
complete. Most online communications are meant to be asynchronous
(i.e., unlike offline communications, the participants need not
participate simultaneously). Take advantage. (Can you tell I'm not a
big IM-er? This is why.)
Make your errands come to you rather than vice versa. E.g., four
words that will change your life (if they have not already done so):
home delivery dry cleaning.
Read The Support Economy, then
do your best to help it along (both in the services you use and in
those you may provide).
So that's how I find the occasional two minutes to blog. Tiny investment, immediate dividends. Speaking of which, thanks Sandra, for getting that bloggers who contribute to such pieces are genetically hardwired not to wait for the print production schedule to run its course before posting their bit; that's what the next two spare minutes are for.
Dennis Kennedy in the New York Times today on metadata, Beware Your Trail of Digital Fingerprints: "If you take the time to educate yourself a little and know the issues, you can avoid problems pretty easily." (I'm less sanguine about that for the nonbusiness or small business user, whose document distribution habits aren't being scrutinized by a department of minions dedicated to avoiding these sorts of snafus. How many users do you know, for example, who have the time or inclination to make heads or tails of these search results?)
We had a follow-up discussion this morning on our back-channel email list about metadata and the post on metadata I made yesterday.
We thought we'd let you see our discussion and invite you to join in.
Marty started it by saying:
Dennis:
Maybe you could recommend a specific meta-cleanser and provide a link?
Meta-cleanser - sounds like something an existential cleaning service might use.
Marty
p.s. The WSJ ran a piece on the UN report with the title "Will Bill Gates Topple Assad?'
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Denise replied:
How do you reconcile the tension between the fact that on the one hand metadata can convey information you might not have wanted to convey, and it also enhances searchability and the richness of one's internal database? Is the solution just to ensure metadata is purged before things break free of the firewall?
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Dennis replied:
Aye, there's the rub.
In the article on my blog and when I speak about this issue in more detail, I try to reconcile the two faces of metadata and emphasize that it can be quite a good thing. (e.g., "Metadata is not inherently evil. It is often quite useful.")
I'd almost think of metadata with the idea of DRM in mind. Internally and with clients, metadata, especially the collaborative info, is incredibly useful. However, in someone else's hands, it can be quite damaging. The "scrubbing" is almost like sending the doc out with limited rights and access to the "full" document, at least conceptually.
So, metadata can't be handled appropriately without considering who the audience is (or might be). You then start to think of the document not just as a document, but as a published product.
In the classic approach, you would "scrub" the document (or create a new clean version or create a PDF) just before you sent it to an opposing party or someone who should not see the metadata. I.e., handle it as a separate process before the doc leaves the firewall.
BTW, I think the good of metadata far outweighs the bad, and, frankly, it's not that difficult to deal with metadata in most cases, if you take the time to learn about it.
I'd mention a metadata scrubber, but since I'm not getting any royalties on the gigantic amount of business I'd send over to them by mentioning a product on this blog, I probably won't do that on the blog. ;-)
Microsoft has a free downloadable Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003/XP that some experts turn up their noses at because it doesn't clean EVERYTHING, but, if you are aware of what it doesn't do, most of the time you'll be fine with it Note that it's for Office 2003 and XP, but, seriously, why are law firms still using older versions of Office as we near the start of 2006?
. Donna Payne has a cleaner called Metadata Assistant that's more or less become the de facto standard tool in legal. It's $79.There are a couple of others (E.g., EZClean.or Workshare Protect.)
Even with scrubbers, you still have the possibility of user error problems.
Both Tom and Ernie are very knowledgeable on these issues and probably have a few other pointers.
My main recommendation is to go into MS Word's properties and turn on what I think is called the "Show Hidden Data" setting (that's the one that will automatically show you the stuff in docs people send to you). Also very helpful is a setting that will pop up the properties window when you first save a document, so you can delete some of the standard automatically-generated metadata.
I think that most explanations of metadata are laden with fear-mongering. Of course, this is probably called for since the greatest danger of metadata is not knowing that it is created in the first place. It's a very binary problem. If you know about metadata and know about the threat then the odds are you aren't going to make a mistake (note I said 'the odds are' and not 'you won't make a mistake').
I think many people don't want to understand the problem; they just want to avoid it. And for those people I would say this: make your document into a PDF using some tool that lets you 'print to PDF.'
Make sure that you have chosen to print only the document and not 'the tracked changes' or any similar thing.
Then after you 'print to PDF' open the document and see if the metadata is visible in the PDF document. If it is go back to step #1. If it's not. then feel free to send it.
If you are doing anything more complicated than that (i.e. redacting using an advance PDF function in Acrobat etc.) then read everything that Dennis has written on the subject of metadata and be afraid. Be VERY afraid....
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Dennis replied:
I really agree that the basics of metadata aren't that hard to learn, if you just invest a little time. Once you start sending Word docs around, though, you really should know what you are doing or you're asking for trouble, just like the UN group.
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Marty replied:
pls blog this thread
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One in our occasional series of looks into our behind-the-scenes discussions.
The Times Online reports the latest in the growing list of documents that have been released with previous edits and other information still contained in the documents and readily accessible.
THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.
The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.
Extraordinary computer gaffe? These "gaffes" have become all too commonplace.
And too many lawyers remain unaware of the issue.
As an example, a lawyer sent me an email today noting this article and saying, "is my understanding correct that the two ways of preventing prior versions from being disseminated in a Microsoft Word document are by either changing the format to pdf or rtf, or by clicking 'accept changes' in Word?"
I thought I'd share my answer to that question:
Arrrghhh!!! Your second assumption is probably the CAUSE of the revisions being able to be revealed! It's absolutely not the solution.
The first method will generally work, but you can mess up and reveal revisions and other information (which I'll refer to as "metadata") even when using RTFs and PDFs. If you want to be really sure, you'll want to use a metadata cleaner and then save the document as a PDF. However, even then you need to become acquainted with the various issues out there and the actual dangers in documents.
Be aware that you can reintroduce that hidden info in a variety of ways after you think that you have "cleaned" it. By the way, don't make the assumption that the doc was in MS Word, even though the odds are that was the program used here. You can pull that prior version info out of other programs as well, including the beloved tool of many lawyers, WordPerfect. In addition, be careful about the assumptions you make about different versions of different programs. Don't make assumptions - make it your business to learn about the issues and the solutions.
This is important stuff, often with embarrassing and far-reaching results. There's no excuse for lawyers (and others) not to be familiar with the basic issues of metadata and to be knowledgeable about both the problems and the solutions. That is, unless they want to have their documents or their clients' documents appear in similar stories in the newspaper. Too many lawyers are operating in the dark on this one. Lawyers routinely send me documents that have metadata that is either easily visible or can readily be surfaced with little or no effort.
I posted a short primer on metadata and the related issues on my blog at http://www.denniskennedy.com/archives/2005_10.html#a000891. Use it as a starting point and then set aside a little time to get yourself up to speed on these issues. Making assumptions in this area is especially dangerous.
How many times do you (and lawyers in general) need to hear the alarm go off on these issues before you stop hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep?
The new FindLaw homepages — one geared toward the legal profession and one geared toward everyone else — go live tomorrow but you can preview them now. They're considerably cleaner — less cluttered, more usable. Looks like a most welcome upgrade. Thanks to FindLaw's Scott Kinney for the heads up.
Apple, Creating Video Podcasts on Mac OS X: "The next generation of podcasting has arrived. Now you can create video podcasts and have them posted in the iTunes Podcast Directory for millions to view and download to their iPods." (Via Podcasting News)
And, more frequently these days, I'm thinking terms of search feeds and using them more often. Same ideas as Denise mentions, but in a somewhat different context.
When I set up my Google News alert for the name of my law firm, and added a similar entry to my Technorati watchlist, I thought it was mostly to keep an eye on what people were saying about the firm. Turns out, this is a pretty great way to stay more current on what things people in the law firm are doing — a potentially impossible task when you're talking something like 1,000 lawyers. Thus did I learn that:
Neither is something that would have filtered through the mass of internal email I receive. Both hit my radar instead because I actually pay attention to things I'm affirmatively looking for. I'm glad they did because both are topics I'm interested in.
For anyone fearful of being overwhelmed by their queries and subscriptions (and it's a very well placed fear): just follow Kevin Heller'slead. And for God's sake, use the "download most recent show only" option in iTunes. Your peace of mind will be tangible.
I expect people (Tom?) do this a lot, I just noticed it this morning and realized I do it all the time: thinking in search. What it is: absently stringing together queries in your head that you need to plug in the next time you're in front of a search engine, in order to get things done in work and life. At the moment, mine have to do with an obscure California statute, and Snoopy.
David Teten and Scott Allen have written "The Virtual Handshake" a discussion of building relationships online by focusing on'social software' such as blogs, email, Ryze, LinkedIn and some obscure sources such as Biography Analysis Software.
Shameless self-promotion: The Trademark Blog is featured in the discussion of blogs.
Search and analyze the published opinions of Supreme Court nominee, Judge John G Roberts. On July 19, 2005, Judge John G. Roberts was nominated by President George W. Bush to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Roberts has helped decide about 120 cases and written 49 published opinions.
I'm all a-tingle about this one because it's a brilliant marketing move if, like askSam, you offer information management tools, and because it fills a gap in access to and searchability of these opinions. To the extent judicial opinions are freely available online, they're generally PDFs or Word documents. As far as I know this is the first time someone has aggregated all the published Roberts opinions and made them freely and easily searchable.
In addition to dealing with information overload, Prof. Tufte's book is essential for lawyers in learning how not to be deceived by graphs and statistics. An entire section is devoted to identifying deceptive methodology.
"A visual, often audible reaction upon first exposure to the presentation of a complex node-link map."
Presumably, the audible reaction begins with the letters "WTF."
The broader category of problem is called "visual shock," which refers to the same problem as brought on by graphs, charts, and diagrams.
While I sometimes kid around, I think that this interview touches on a very serious problem. From maps to instruction manuals to PowerPoint slides crafted by committees of lawyers, we too often see graphical information crammed into charts, maps and slides in a way that boggles the mind and, in truth, will produce an audible gasp. In some cases, they can even be more confusing than a lawyer's PowerPoint slide crammed with 300 words of ten-point Times New Roman type (and no graphics, of course).
I've long been intrigued by Edward Tufte and others who have addressed the issues of visual display of complex information. Some very interesting approaches to this issue have been made by the people at Xplane in St. Louis and you might enjoy taking a look around their website.
There are many ways to complicate our information overload problems, so it's always good to be on the lookout for ways to alleviate the issue.
There is such a thing as the Uniform Code Council that governs the universal product code. If you want to print UPC bar codes, you have to join this organization. Membership doesn't seem inexpensive. The UCC (this UCC) was created in 1971 and has over a million members.
IBM has released a trial enterprise blogging tool that will integrate with its Workplace Collaboration Services: "Weblog Preview provides the basic functionality usually expected of personal weblogs. For instance, Weblog Preview supports the posting of content in a journal format, emphasizing a personal point of view. The weblogs are public by default; that is, any authenticated Workplace user can read the blog. In addition, all authenticated users can comment on or link to the posts via 'permalinks.' The weblog owners, however, can restrict access to their blogs via the Workplace membership portlet, just as with any Workplace component." I don't know much about "portlets," but this strikes me as a positive and useful step in encouraging weblog use by businesses. Via Techworld, which has this quote from IBM's Ed Brill: "By putting that into Workplace, we are saying that we expect everybody in an organisation to be able to be a publisher, not just a consumer of information." Mr. Brill's blog looks like an excellent related resource.
From Swissinfo.com, Registered E-post will soon be reality: "Since the beginning of 2005, the electronic signature in Switzerland has had the same status as a handwritten signature for contracts and business transactions."
The other central issue permeating much of this discussion here at Gnomedex is how the law will deal with the commonplace uses of mass produced entertainment made possible by technology. (e.g., incorporating music, video, etc. into other works; time-and-place shifting entertainment you have purchased.) Will there be a legal solution? A commercial one? Both? Neither? Lots of opinions in all directions.
I'm at Gnomedex, taking in the comprehensive schedule that focuses on what's new and important in Web communication and technology, and what's on the horizon. Here are what I perceive to be the critical legal issues swirling around the talks so far:
Feeds and copyright. The notion of whether an implied license or waiver exists by virtue of the publication of a feed is going to get litigated, somewhere, somehow. A wrinkle I haven't seen discussed much yet: the fact that mom and pop users posting text or other material to the Web using today's ever more sophisticated and syndication-aware authoring tools might have no idea they are, in addition to creating a Web page, syndicating their material. In order for a court to conclude that a publisher has relinquished otherwise applicable copyrights, I think at minimum someone would have to show that an express intent to authorize broad re-use was present. There's thus an education gap on the user side that is poised to either work against those who urge an implied license or waiver, or against the tool providers. (I.e., "What? No one told me there might be copyright ramifications of publishing a feed.")
Someone needs to register and populate noninfringingbittorent.org.
I'm struggling with how the legal panel is going to compete with all new product previews and launches here. It's already past close of business for the week on the east coast, so maybe the Pacific time zone can come up with some radical new legal framework before day's end? Let me know!
Denise Howell
Dennis M. Kennedy
Tom Mighell
Marty Schwimmer
Ernest Svenson
