Paul Jacobson

I have a problem with legal publishers generally. They rip customers off with high prices and profit by denying meaningful access to legal materials and knowledge to the people who need that access the most.

I was flipping through my friendly attorney’s magazine, De Rebus, when I came across a review of what looks like a fascinating book titled “Defamation and Freedom of Speech” by Dario Milo. The book sounds fascinating and the kind of book I want to add to my library because it is focussed squarely on one of the main themes of my work as a new media lawyer. The book is actually a modified version of Milo’s PhD thesis which I believe he completed at Oxford university so I have little doubt this is a great book to have. The catch is that the book costs around $100 on the Oxford University website (or £55 at the UK Amazon store) and is advertised for R700 in De Rebus. Kalahari.net is selling it for the reduced price of R642.56 which is a little lower than a direct exchange rate conversion price. The book has about 270 pages and Kalahari.net is selling it in softcover. Maybe I am just a little bit cheap when it comes to these sorts of books but that strikes me as pricey and despite how much I’d like to have the book, I don’t think I want to spend that much money on a book!

I am all for supporting our academics and paying for their books but paying this much for these books goes a little beyond the supporting them, covering costs and earning the publisher a modest profit (unless I misunderstood these sorts of things?). Another example of this is the wonderful book my friend and colleague, David Bilchitz, wrote a little while ago titled “Poverty and Fundamental Rights: The Justification and Enforcement of Socio-Economic Rights“. It is an important book written by one of our brightest academics and social thinkers and it goes for R527.81 on Kalahari.net. David’s book should be read by as many people as possible given its vital message and yet it is practically out of reach of most people. If this is just the cost of such books then what about a free or cheaper digital version? Digital versions don’t carry the printing and distribution costs of their paper siblings so why not make it available for less (or even nothing?). Lock it down in a PDF but make it available.

On the topic of digital versions, there is a legal diary published by Hortors which is pretty handy. It contains a directory of lawyers and useful information about the courts and other offices. I used it a couple times in the past just for the directory info. It is a solid, thick diary/directory and well put together. I received an order form for the 2009 edition today. Here are the prices:

I don’t really mind the physical diary prices but the so-called “eDiary” price is just nuts! R750 for a digital version of the diary? That is just profiteering. It could be a lot cheaper and be used by just about every lawyer with an Internet connection and instead it is just another example of how the publishers exploit the legal community.

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legal publishers, profiteering, hortors, dario milo, academic publishers, kalahari.net

There is a debate about LinkedIn’s utility in the face of apparently growing numbers of lawyers joining and maintaining profiles on the service on Lexblog and Home Office Lawyer. This debate comes at a good time for me because I have been ruminating on LinkedIn’s value to me as a business networking tool the last week or so. My first thought is to ditch my free, personal account armbands and swim out into the deeper and potentially more rewarding paid, business account waters. At the same time I do want to see clear potential for value.

The first thing I did was to post a question on LinkedIn and on this blog about 4 days ago:

I’ve started thinking about upgrading my account from a free personal account to a paid business account. The business accounts offer quite a bit more than the personal account. My question to myself is whether I am using LinkedIn enough to justify the $19.95 per month (or even the $199.50 per year). What I would really like to see is a post or discussion about the value of a business account and what difference it makes to a user. Do I need to be a power user to benefit from a business account? Is the correct question even whether I am using it enough to justify the upgrade? Should it be more about upgrading and reaping the rewards?

In that time I didn’t receive any comments on my blog and received 5 responses on LinkedIn (not counting further interaction when I responded to the initial responses). That already says something about LinkedIn’s value to me as a networking/information/knowledge tool. If one of the goals of a service like LinkedIn and tools like blogs is to facilitate a conversation then LinkedIn is already ahead of the game. To add to this, I think it is fair to say that my blog has more traffic than my LinkedIn profile and this only enhances my LinkedIn profile’s value from this perspective. Of course there are a range of dynamics which impact on my rough analysis so it is hardly bulletproof.

Anyway, I am really curious about how I can make the most of LinkedIn and how I can use it to meaningfully expand my business network. I am not talking about adding a list of names (although I have done that to a degree) but rather how I can add a list of names to my list of connections and still have some meaningful interaction with those people, whether it be some form of work or just getting to know that person a little bit better.

A couple of the people who responded to my question on LinkedIn said that for $19.95, it is worth upgrading to the business account and trying it out. The one big benefit that I can see is that it is a lot easier for people to contact me if I have a business account because of the InMail feature. I am still a little nonplussed with a model that charges for the privilege of contacting another member I am not connected to although I am beginning to understand the value of not being freely contactable by everyone (thinking about Facebook and the regular message/invite/ninja-pirate hybrid app inundation I experience on Facebook). I have been a bit of an idiot when I have thought about the value of a paid account and this is reflected in the previous sentence. Limiting direct contact to paying members must, in part, deter Facebook-style floods of inane messages. What is probably more valuable is the ability to contact someone directly (whether you are the premium subscriber looking to make contact with a potential business partner/customer for the first time or you would like to contact a premium subscriber directly for similar reasons). Making this possible through a paid service at least means that you, as the paid subscriber, are serious about making meaningful contacts and that already enhances the value of the service all around, don’t you think? The value of a paid account beyond this seems to be to make LinkedIn a more comprehensive research tool and that could come in handy too if the results are better than results from a free account search. I am already using LinkedIn as a research tool when I encounter someone new or I am looking to contact someone new. The one little thing holding me back from taking the leap is the fact that I can’t simply downgrade to a personal account from a business account by selecting the option in my account settings. I have to email customer service to downgrade. That doesn’t sound too bad except I mailed customer service with a couple queries about the upgrade a couple days ago and haven’t received a response yet. How long would I have to wait to downgrade from a paid service to the free service before customer service agents act on my request and, consequentially, how long would I have to wait before LinkedIn stops charging me?

Leaving slow response times aside I am still pretty keen to explore LinkedIn some more and develop the habit of using it more and more. There are already a number of South Africans using LinkedIn (there are in excess of 19 000 people in my extended network in Johannesburg alone)

I ran a search on the number of people who are in South Africa and who have listed “Legal Services” or “Legal Practice” as their industry type and came up with about 500 people in my network (as I understand it, my network includes people up to 3 degrees away from me). I was quite pleased to see I am at the top of that list but who’s counting anyway. I am connected to the first 10 people or so already on that list. There is definitely a user base in South Africa already even if many of the profiles on LinkedIn are not maintained. This translates into enough potential to merit using the service. I think I agree with Maxwell Kennerly that LinkedIn’s value is not readily quantifiable either in money terms or any other measure that amounts to a return on investment in the service. As with many social networking tools, the value is a little fuzzy and yet it quite clearly exists (although you may still need to work for it).

Just the same it would be great if someone from LinkedIn’s customer service department responded to my query …

Technorati Tags:
business account, business networking, law firm, lawyers, linkedin, networking

I just read a newsletter my financial advisor sent me to read. It is a JP Landman Political Comment news letter published by B.O.E for its private clients titled “Is the bad mood justified?” and I think it is worth reading because it presents another, arguably more realistic, perspective on South Africa and where we are heading.

The newsletter basically sets out a number of facts that show how the negative view of South Africa by many South Africans (typically whites, of whom only 31% were optimistic about South Africa in February 2008 compared to a national average of 60%) has little basis in fact and has perhaps been cultivated by skewed media coverage of certain issues. For example, I remember how there was media buzz about R4 billion worth of budgeted expenditure that went unspent recently. It turns out that this R4 billion was the unspent balance after R124 billion was already spent on capital expenditure in this country. It represents 3% of the total capex budget of R128 billion.

There are a couple points made which appeal to me:

• “Things were not as clean as some whites’ memories tell them.”
• “Progress does not come from having no challenges; rather it comes from responding successfully to challenges.”
• “In the late nineties SA had a low growth crisis; a 1% economy that looked as if it could not break through a 3% growth ceiling. And now growth is sufficient to lift per capita incomes quicker than Australia, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and US. The country responded successfully to the challenge of low growth.”

… and the best was kept for last …

“All that remains now is to put one foot in front of the other, carry on and expect a lot of messiness. Sometimes I think it is our inability to live with messiness that paralyses us. If Whites can make this paradigm shift their mood might not be so bleak. More importantly, they can capitalise on the opportunities. “

So, yes, lots of messiness but none of this seems to justify the negative so many of us have of South Africa. There are still god things ahead if all goes well (yes, there is always an “if”) and perhaps there will be a lot more (white) people who also think that SA rocks in the not to distant future.

(Image: Views of Tidal pool on Rooi Els Coastal Road, South Africa by DanieVDM published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)

P.S. It would be really handy if B.O.E would publish these newsletters with an RSS feed … come on, share with the plebs!

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eskom, perspective, policy, politicians, south africa, jp landman political comment, facts, economic growth

This is petty and a little funny. Mashable has a post titled “Copyright Now Extends To Cease-And-Desist Letters?“:

Apparently even the cease-and-desist letters sent to sites to inform them to stop violating copyrights are now – copyrighted. TechDirt is reporting an update to a case they first covered back in October where a lawyer tried to claim his cease-and-desist letters fell under a copyright, and thus no one could legally reprint them without his express permission. The people’s advocacy group, Public Citizen, saw this as a violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and moved to stop it.

Yet from the look of a press release put out yesterday by the lawyer in question, it seems the judge agreed the man’s claim. The publication of a letter can now result statutory damages for as much as $150,000 per occurrence plus attorneys’ fees that can average $750,000 through trial.

The lawyer isn’t wrong but it just seems really petty to sue for copyright infringement where a cease-and-desist letter is republished. This sort of thing happens from time to time, especially when a well known blogger or blog receives one of these letters and wants to highlight the issues. Technically speaking, though, the letter the lawyer writes is probably subject to his copyright although there may be legitimate grounds to still republish that letter, depending on your jurisdiction. Even if there are no legitimate grounds, this just highlights how protective some lawyers can be over their knowledge.

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copyright, cease and desist, letters, republication, copyright infringement

I saw this item on BoingBoing (linked to the Consumer Law and Policy Blog) and had a giggle. Sometimes lawyers really just don’t get it and go a little too far. This clause was found on a company’s website. After reading this I have to wonder what visitors can actually do with their site:

By using this site you agree and understand that the HTML code, look, feel, content, company name, logo, text, and any likeness or derivative of such content is the sole property of ACME LLC and may not be used in any manner without the expressed written permission of ACME LLC. Furthermore, we strictly prohibit any links and or other unauthorized references to our web site without our permission.

So you can visit the site, maybe, but you can’t link to it or even refer to it without the company’s permission (hence why I am not using the company’s real name or even including a link to the site). The law firm that prepared those terms for ACME LLC (I’ll call the firm ACME LAW) have their own terms and conditions on their site (can’t link, sorry) which has a couple gems too:

ACME LAW has a lot of intellectual property on our site. For instance, we are the creators of all of the text on this website, and own the “look and feel” of this website. We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so. In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.

…

Please understand that we regularly monitor the major search engines and conduct searches to identify those individuals and companies that are using our trade name in order to attract business to their own website in which they have pecuniary and economic interests. ACME LAW obviously has the capability to immediately react to such misappropriation, oftentimes resulting in very significant financial exposure for the infringer. You are not authorized to use our name, or any derivative of it. In other words, do not put our law firm on your website suggesting you have an attorney/client relationship with us without our permission. If we do represent you, please ask us before doing so and we will consider the matter.

What I find particularly interesting is that this firm claims to have expertise in new media and yet their own attitude towards visitors to their site is completely closed and uncompromising. Even their own clients must ask for permission just to be able to ACME LAW represents them. Sheesh. So much for cultivating a conversation.

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lawyers, don’t get it, social media, website terms of use, terms of use, rules, new media