2006 in Review

How is it already the end of December? On a personal note, I am glad to say that I met my major goals for this year– it sucked less than 2005. And that applies to blogging, as well. While I’m not winning any awards over here, I managed to get name-dropped in the NY Times, which at least gave me something to talk about at my high school reunion. That was only one of a few interesting posts. Here are the topics I discussed and some of the best posts:

Communications Law Issues

Indecency Regulation

Some of these include more than superficial analysis. A rarity for this blog.

• Senate Indecency Hearings Part 1, part 2 (1/19, 1/22)
• The Indecency Standard (3/24)
• The Profanity Standard(3/24)
• Are Indecency Regulations Obsolete? (3/28)
• Chilling Effects from Broadcast Indecency Regulations? (3/28)
• Indecency Update (6/14)

Internet Discrimination and Network Neutrality Regulation

• Some links on network neutrality (4/4)

• Three Things About Network Neutrality (4/17)

• Save the Internet (4/23)

• Why Oppose Net Neutrality? (4/27)

• Neutral Planet (5/3)

• Your Neutralness (5/4)

  • Broadband Here and There (5/16)
  • Neutrality in the News (5/31)
  • A series of tubes: the song: the story (7/13)
  • Neutral Policy (7/26)
  • Helping or hurting your cause? (8/1)
  • PBS looks at neutrality (10/11)
  • Internet access and monopoly power (11/30)

Copyright

• Copyright Fraud and Misuse (7/17)

• Baseball stats in the fact-based community (8/10)

• Answer: B. Copyright Infringement (8/25)

• Everything Old is New Again, in Bb (8/30)

• Calling Elvis’s Ringtone (which features the best case summary EVAR!) (10/17)

• Fair Use

  • House Fair Use Hearings (3/30)

  • Satisfying the 21st Century Consumer (4/3)

  • Thoughts on Fair Use (5/4)

  • DRM and Copyright’s fuzzy bounds(6/28)

  • Clean Flicks (7/12)

  • YouTubing (7/12)

  • Copyright and Search Engines

  • Perfect 10 v. Google (2/27)

  • Caching and Copyright(4/24)

Information Literacy

• The Problem with Wikipedia (4/19)
• Wikiality (8/2)
• Long Tail, Decline of Filters, Information Literacy (8/9)

Trademark and Reality TV

Did any other site on the web have more comprehensive coverage of the Supernova trademark lawsuit? If not, I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.

• Reality TV and the Law (7/26)
• Like two stars colliding… in a courtroom (9/13)
• Unfortunately, the lawsuit is more entertaining than the band (9/20)

Miscellany

• Trends: IP Disciplines (6/15)
• Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars in Hoboken (8/8)
• Great headline, lame post: Weezer to Bud: Say It Ain’t So (10/5)
• Is Apple’s success causing labels to go DRM-free? (12/8)

Virtual Worlds

I’m late to the party on the property and virtual worlds party, but it’s an interesting topic:

• Second Life (10/3)
  Let’s Go: Virtual Worlds (10/16)
• Copyright infringement and the collapse of virtual economies (11/16)

What’s Next?

So, what’s on the horizon for next year? My goal is to integrate blogging and music better along with my professional life. I’m not yet quite sure how that plays out on this blog or in my life. As I intended to do last year, but managed only in unrealized fits and starts, I suspect that it involves taking these topics beyond the blog, probably by writing scholarly articles intended for a real publication or participating better in real life activities here in the city (particularly as far as teaching information literacy issues). The problem, of course, is doing it in a way that doesn’t result in scattering myself even thinner across more unrelated activities.