Thursday, March 31, 2005
A View of Nashville
The Ryman Auditorium -- Original home of the Grand Ole Opry -- and just across the street from our meeting space. Nashville has wonderful weather for those of us from the northern climes -- and you can see plenty of greenspace all over the downtown areas! 
An Early Start for Some of Us
Thursday is the official opening of the Business Law Section's meeting, but the bulk of the CLCC meetings are taking place on Friday and Saturday. However, many of us are already here, and some presentations are already underway.
A group of five -- Jackie Scheib, Candace Jones, Bruce Doeg, Juliet Moringello, and yours truly, joined together to speak to the Young Lawyers Division's day-long seminar. Believe it or not, the group managed to compress the entire body of Internet and Cyberspace Law into 90 minutes. Hopefully, we've planted the seeds for the next group of cybernauts to join us down the road.
While not actually a Cyberspace function, our own Christina Kunz worked her UCC Committee beat with a well-attended and well-received panel discussion on the theory of indemnity clauses, good drafting tactics, and other practice tips. The panel suggested that it was the tech arena where the indemnity clause stepped outside of its traditional usage -- mainly in the construction business. Having done tech contracting for so long, we may not realize that many of us are well ahead of the rest of the non-tech practitioners when it comes to the indemnity section in our contracts. (Even so -- We all could learn. I took away some information on the necessity for nexus in a private indemnity clause -- the idea that an enforceable indemnity clause needs to have a provable nexus between the covered claims and the contract itself. One of those little things that you might do already -- using words like "that arise out of" for example -- but we might not know exactly why that is important. Consequences of failing to do that? For one thing, you might get nailed for engaging in the practice of issuing insurance policies without a license...) Materials are available here (ABA membership required).
The evening was highlighted with a Welcome Reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Like last year's opening night at the Seattle Rock & Roll museum, the museum was open for the gathered to wander as they wished, and the main hall was open for meeting with old friends and listening to live music. (Guess what kind of music?)
Things get going in earnest tomorrow -- If you aren't here, we'll try to continue the tradition of live-blogging from some of the meetings, particularly the main committee meeting between 9 and 10 Central Time.
From the home of the Grand Ole Opry, Goodnight.
A group of five -- Jackie Scheib, Candace Jones, Bruce Doeg, Juliet Moringello, and yours truly, joined together to speak to the Young Lawyers Division's day-long seminar. Believe it or not, the group managed to compress the entire body of Internet and Cyberspace Law into 90 minutes. Hopefully, we've planted the seeds for the next group of cybernauts to join us down the road.
While not actually a Cyberspace function, our own Christina Kunz worked her UCC Committee beat with a well-attended and well-received panel discussion on the theory of indemnity clauses, good drafting tactics, and other practice tips. The panel suggested that it was the tech arena where the indemnity clause stepped outside of its traditional usage -- mainly in the construction business. Having done tech contracting for so long, we may not realize that many of us are well ahead of the rest of the non-tech practitioners when it comes to the indemnity section in our contracts. (Even so -- We all could learn. I took away some information on the necessity for nexus in a private indemnity clause -- the idea that an enforceable indemnity clause needs to have a provable nexus between the covered claims and the contract itself. One of those little things that you might do already -- using words like "that arise out of" for example -- but we might not know exactly why that is important. Consequences of failing to do that? For one thing, you might get nailed for engaging in the practice of issuing insurance policies without a license...) Materials are available here (ABA membership required).
The evening was highlighted with a Welcome Reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Like last year's opening night at the Seattle Rock & Roll museum, the museum was open for the gathered to wander as they wished, and the main hall was open for meeting with old friends and listening to live music. (Guess what kind of music?)
Things get going in earnest tomorrow -- If you aren't here, we'll try to continue the tradition of live-blogging from some of the meetings, particularly the main committee meeting between 9 and 10 Central Time.
From the home of the Grand Ole Opry, Goodnight.
Cyberspace Law Committee Schedule
I marked up the Master chronological schedule for the Spring Meeting and highlighted in yellow all the Cyberspace Law Committee meetings. I also annotated the schedule to identify cancellations of meetings.
You can review the annotated schedule here.
You can review the annotated schedule here.
Spring Meeting Schedule for Business Law Section
The ABA Website has the following scheduling information for the meeting:
2005 Spring Meeting Online Program Book
CLE-at-a-Glance
Alphabetical Schedule of Committees and Subcommittees
Master Chronological Schedule of Events
Program Schedule of Events
2005 Spring Meeting Online Program Book
CLE-at-a-Glance
Alphabetical Schedule of Committees and Subcommittees
Master Chronological Schedule of Events
Program Schedule of Events
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Schedule Changes
Working Group on International Policy (Saturday at 11:00 a.m.)
This Working Group has arranged to meet jointly with the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) from 11:00-11:30. The joint session will take place in the room scheduled for the ICC, Convention Center, 2d Floor, Room 202. After the joint session, the Working Group will probably remain in Room 202 to finish its meeting. Signs will be posted at the scheduled meeting room, Convention Center, 2d Floor, Room 211.
Electronic Commerce Subcommittee (Friday at 1:30):
A new project has been proposed -- formulating a Model Electronic Data Agreement (governing data held by third-party service providers). The project proposal is attached as a Word file. Members of the Electronic Commerce Subcommittee will have more information about this project.
Working Group on Electronic Payment Systems (Thursday at 1:30):
This Subcommittee will not meet.
Connectivity, Storage and Computing Infrastructure (Saturday at 2:00 p.m.):
This Subcommitee will not meet.
This Working Group has arranged to meet jointly with the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) from 11:00-11:30. The joint session will take place in the room scheduled for the ICC, Convention Center, 2d Floor, Room 202. After the joint session, the Working Group will probably remain in Room 202 to finish its meeting. Signs will be posted at the scheduled meeting room, Convention Center, 2d Floor, Room 211.
Electronic Commerce Subcommittee (Friday at 1:30):
A new project has been proposed -- formulating a Model Electronic Data Agreement (governing data held by third-party service providers). The project proposal is attached as a Word file. Members of the Electronic Commerce Subcommittee will have more information about this project.
Working Group on Electronic Payment Systems (Thursday at 1:30):
This Subcommittee will not meet.
Connectivity, Storage and Computing Infrastructure (Saturday at 2:00 p.m.):
This Subcommitee will not meet.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Spring Meeting Is Here
The Business Law Section of the ABA will have it's annual Spring Meeting this week in Nashville, Tennessee. I'll be absent for this meeting, but Michael Fleming and the other members of the crew will keep the blog alive in my absence. I'll finally get a chance to see what it's like to follow the meeting from afar via the Blog.
If you're interested in posting during the meeting, post a comment to this entry, and we'll take care of it.
-Michael McGuire
Saturday, January 29, 2005
6:30 Dinner Tonight--Cuban Food
We're going to have an informal gathering for dinner tonight. Elizabeth Bowles and her husband recommended a Cuban restaurant on California St. they ate at the other night. We're probably going to try that restaurant. Meet in the lobby of the Sheraton at 6:30.
An example of the Bayes Principle in Action
From the Wired article mentioned below. This sums it up pretty well:
In the language of statistics, Bayes' theorem relates phenomena observed in the present (the evidence) to phenomena known to have occurred in the past (the prior) and ideas about what is going to happen (the model). Mathematically, the formula is represented as
P(yt)P(t)
P(ty) = --------------
P(y)
For nonmathematicians, understanding the implications of the theorem without recourse to real-world metaphors is difficult. So imagine a short-order cook working in a busy café. In a din of conversation, clattering plates, and street noise, the waiters dash by the kitchen counter, shouting orders. What a customer actually ordered is t in the above equation. The garble the cook hears is y. A Bayesian decision process would allow the beleaguered chef to send out as many correct orders as possible.
He has some prior knowledge: Few customers order the smothered duck feet, while the steak frites is a perennial favorite. The cook can use information like this to calculate the prior probability that a given dish was ordered: P(t), or the probability of t. He also knows that one waiter tends to mispronounce any dish with a French name, that a bus roars past the restaurant every 10 minutes, and that the sizzling sounds from the skillets can obscure the difference between, say, ham and lamb. Taking these factors into account, he creates a complicated model of ways the orders might get confused: P(yt), the probability of y, given t. Bayes' theorem allows the chef to chain the probabilities of all possible influences on what he hears to calculate the probability, P(ty), that the order he heard was for the dish the customer chose.
It's pretty easy to see how this type of model could be helpful in constructing an application that could learn what's Spam and what's not Spam.
In the language of statistics, Bayes' theorem relates phenomena observed in the present (the evidence) to phenomena known to have occurred in the past (the prior) and ideas about what is going to happen (the model). Mathematically, the formula is represented as
P(yt)P(t)
P(ty) = --------------
P(y)
For nonmathematicians, understanding the implications of the theorem without recourse to real-world metaphors is difficult. So imagine a short-order cook working in a busy café. In a din of conversation, clattering plates, and street noise, the waiters dash by the kitchen counter, shouting orders. What a customer actually ordered is t in the above equation. The garble the cook hears is y. A Bayesian decision process would allow the beleaguered chef to send out as many correct orders as possible.
He has some prior knowledge: Few customers order the smothered duck feet, while the steak frites is a perennial favorite. The cook can use information like this to calculate the prior probability that a given dish was ordered: P(t), or the probability of t. He also knows that one waiter tends to mispronounce any dish with a French name, that a bus roars past the restaurant every 10 minutes, and that the sizzling sounds from the skillets can obscure the difference between, say, ham and lamb. Taking these factors into account, he creates a complicated model of ways the orders might get confused: P(yt), the probability of y, given t. Bayes' theorem allows the chef to chain the probabilities of all possible influences on what he hears to calculate the probability, P(ty), that the order he heard was for the dish the customer chose.
It's pretty easy to see how this type of model could be helpful in constructing an application that could learn what's Spam and what's not Spam.
Who's This Guy Bayes Anyway?
At the SPAM working group, we spent a few minutes discussing the difference between a Turing Test and a Baysian filter. Here are some background articles that might be helpful.
The Quest for Meaning
In 2000, Wired Magazine ran a great article on the efforts of a UK company called Autonomy and how they were using the ideas of Reverend Thomas Bayes to build a next generation tool to extract meaning from unstructured text data. It's a good article.
The Turing Test
Snipped from http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html#intro. The Turing Test was introduced by Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) as "the imitation game" in his 1950 article (now available online) Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, pp. 433-460) which he so boldly began by the following sentence:
I propose to consider the question "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."
Turing Test is meant to determine if a computer program has intelligence.
Many Spam Filters use a challenge response system to weed out automatically generated email messages. They respond with a challenge that can only be met by a human, thus defeating automated email programs that generate Spam.
The Quest for Meaning
In 2000, Wired Magazine ran a great article on the efforts of a UK company called Autonomy and how they were using the ideas of Reverend Thomas Bayes to build a next generation tool to extract meaning from unstructured text data. It's a good article.
The Turing Test
Snipped from http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html#intro. The Turing Test was introduced by Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) as "the imitation game" in his 1950 article (now available online) Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, pp. 433-460) which he so boldly began by the following sentence:
I propose to consider the question "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."
Turing Test is meant to determine if a computer program has intelligence.
Many Spam Filters use a challenge response system to weed out automatically generated email messages. They respond with a challenge that can only be met by a human, thus defeating automated email programs that generate Spam.
Survey Ideas
By brainstorming with several of the members of different Subcommittees we've devised the following list of topic ideas for the Survey. Please add to the list. The general idea is to create Survey articles this year that a more broad than they are deep and that provide general business law practitioners with an update on developments in key areas of Cyberspace Law. Space is limited, and we'll need to narrow down the field quite a bit.
See me to talk about these topics.
Internet Law
See me to talk about these topics.
Internet Law
- eDiscovery developments (Zubulake and new federal rules of ediscovery)
- J. Westermeier's (sp?) Computer Law Roundup
- Internet Taxation (Moratorium extension and state taxation of Internet sales of goods)
- EU Tax issues Electronic Voting
Privacy and Security
- Disposal rules for consumer data (SEC, FTC, FDIC)
- FACTA
- State Roundup (e.g. California update on the new mandatory disclosure of security threats, SB1, etc.)
- RFID (passport technology, Walmart, etc.)
- FBI Abandoning Carnivore
- Phishing
- Case on ECPA (transient memory)
- HIPAA Security Regs
Financial Services Issues
- Check 21
- Electronic payment systems
- Phishing
- Fin Srvcs patents
Intellectual Property
- File Sharing (Grokster, Bittorrent)
- Jay Monahan speech
- Adware/Spyware update
CAIT
- Spam Updates (German decision, Suits and criminal prosecutions,
- Regulatory landscape for VOIP
- Technology export
- Electronic monitoring of employees
- Advertising issues (?)
International
- UNCITRAL developments
- Recent defamation claims in UK; competitors
- Arrest of Amazon guy in India
- EU Data Privacy Developments (Set 2 of Model clauses, Work Group decisions)
- EU Taxes
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