High Tech Law in Pittsburgh

Yes, this was me this morning, quoted in this P-G story about the high tech lawyers at the local branch of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. MLB knows how to play the game, but it struggles to play the hand it has been dealt:

Morgan Lewis also tries to bring investors to town periodically and show them a handful of technologies "they haven't seen before," said Mr. Kline.

"If they invest once, they will come back. But until they come in, they think, 'Why come in?' The problem with Pittsburgh is not the perception that we're a steel town. It's the perception that we're a third-rate tech player. People don't know enough about what's going on here."

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05303/597027.stm

Fall in PA

The Pennsylvania State Tourism Office has created an online, virtual PA self-propelled leaf-peeping tour, complete with a double entendre in the URL! Check it out at http://www.fallisbiggerhere.com/.

Allegheny Conference Address

The annual meeting of the Allegheny Conference is approaching. Not surprisingly, I haven't been invited to speak. I'm not part of the business community; I'm not an economist or a planner. I have only some years of observing technology communities. I have some strong intuitions about what happens in Pittsburgh. My conclusions incorporate some anecdote and some speculation. But nothing ventured, nothing gained; if my diagnosis is that Pittsburgh needs more risk-taking, then who am I to hold back? So if I were invited to address the Allegheny Conference, then this is what I'd say:

Good morning, ladies and gentleman, guests and visitors. It is an honor to be asked to address this group.

I have one message, and one message only: Go home. The future of Allegheny County and the Western Pennsylvania region don't depend on your involvement. They depend on your getting out of the way.

What do I mean by that?

The economic future of this region depends on building jobs. Jobs require new businesses to supply them. And new businesses need at least four things: ideas, money to build companies around those ideas, people to run those companies, and the ability to move those ideas into companies, where the money and talent can go to work.

Pittsburgh has no shortage of ideas. There are two world-class research universities located in Oakland, generating incredible research in computer science, engineering, and the life sciences.

Pittsburgh has no shortage of money. Our venture capital resources don't match what you'll find in Menlo Park, New York, or Boston, and we could always use more, but money is not our weakest suit.

Pittsburgh falls short, though, in the other two areas.

First, Pittsburgh doesn't have a critical mass of mid-level managers who are willing to step in and carry the ball in early-stage companies, growing them until they succeed, or fail, or get bought out. We have a seemingly endless number of brilliant researchers, and a fair number of "serial entrepreneurs." But researchers are rarely equipped to operate companies, and serial entrepreneurs need Chief Operating Officers, and VPs of this and that, and a batch of Directors, and managers below them. We can't possibly grow these people here, at least not fast enough. So we have to persuade them to move in. But here's the catch: they're reluctant to move in unless they have some assurance that they'll have a career path -- not just that they'll have a job when they arrive, but that they can move across the street (so to speak) to a new company, when that first company craters, or when their ambition gets the better of them. Every technology lawyer, investor, and executive that I've ever talked to in Pittsburgh shares this frustration, that we have the science in Pittsburgh, but not the management. Solving it is essential.

I don't have a cure-all for that problem. But I believe that the solution is connected to my last point, because solving it requires having a supply of new businesses that can absorb this supply of talent.

I said that growth requires ideas, money, talent, and the ability to move ideas into the private sector, where money and talent can take over. Our second big failing is this: Pittsburgh is doing a terrible job at moving ideas to where the private sector can make use of them.

Where are these great ideas? Most of them, these days, are coming out of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. How do they get out into the private sector? The universities have claims on IP developed by researchers, so the universities have to spin off companies and license IP to them, or license IP to existing companies. And right now, that's where the problem lies: Like the vast majority of research universities across the country, Pitt and CMU aren't being aggressive enough in getting research results out of the lab and into the boardroom. Again, I hear this time and time again -- from lawyers downtown and from researchers at the universities. A small number of universities have had some big successes in this area. Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Wisconsin. No university wants to leave an extra dollar on this table.

But they should. If there's an economic upside to what's coming out of Oakland, then for the good of the region Pitt and CMU shouldn't try to keep all of that for themselves. My own alma mater is located in a depressed urban community: New Haven. My college spent years saying that the best thing that it could do for New Haven was to be a fabulous university. That was code for: We'll take care of ourselves. About a decade ago, Yale changed its tune and started making direct investments in the city, partnering with New Haven in a variety of ways. The city isn't "well," but it's a lot better. Pitt and CMU can use technology transfer negotiations the same way: Invest in the region, and let the region profit. Use lower equity requirements and reduce royalty rates. Leave upside on the table for the entrepreneurs and future investors. Don't negotiate every deal like it's the next home run. Play small ball: make a lot of small bets, instead of a few big ones.

Let me be clear that I'm not knocking the hard-working folks who run technology transfer offices at Pitt or at CMU or elsewhere. They're doing what they're told: The CEO wants results, and to ensure results, the CEO wants control. But that's not the way a new technology economy works. Some people would look at this and conclude: low risk, low return. I grew up in and practiced law in the Silicon Valley. I worked with venture capitalists, researchers, and entrepreneurs. I conclude: A new technology economy grows from the bottom, not from the top.

Right now, Pittsburgh is trying to grow from the top. That's why you're having this meeting: it's growth from the top. So change has to come from the top. And with all due respect to the history of the Allegheny Conference, that's why I'm telling you to go home. It's why I'd send the same message to Mark Nordenberg, who has done an extraordinary job as Chancellor of Pitt, and to Jared Cohon, his equally remarkable counterpart at CMU. Private sector CEOs and top management at the universities need to join forces and -- let it go. They need to turn their technology loose.

Pittsburgh's CEO culture is deep and strong. The top folks are talented and have enormous respect for one another, and they spend a lot of time doing what CEOs do well: strategic planning. We have consortia and greenhouses, alliances and councils and conferences. Strategic planning, though, doesn't grow companies or jobs. There's so much planning, and so much CEO involvement and control, that the money and the talent and the ideas can't find each other.

What I'm talking about is cultural change as well as economic change, and it's difficult, and it can't happen overnight -- even if people agree that it should. In fact, I would be delighted to be proven wrong, to be shown compelling evidence that top-level strategic planning of the sort that Pittsburgh engages in can and does lead to sustained economic growth. Because then the hard work of change could be avoided. But I'm skeptical; I don't think that such evidence exists. So feel free to prove me wrong. But if I'm right, and if the changes that I'm describing don't happen, then I'm convinced that Pittsburgh will remain what it is today: a city of enormous promise. Enormous, but unfulfilled, promise.

Thank you.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05295/593016.stm

Blueroof McKeesport

Among the many cool presentations at yesterday's Technology and Aging Conference in Oakland was a talk about Blueroof Technologies and its model "Smart Cottage" for seniors in McKeesport.

It was said that this is the first new home built in McKeesport's 3rd Ward in 75 years. True? Amazing.

Link: http://www.bluerooftechnologies.com/

Los Steelers es mas macho!

John O'Brien writes about the Steelers diaspora, but the P-G buries the lede:

A traveling friend found a bar near the Los Angeles airport, [Steelers President Arthur J. Rooney II] Rooney said. "In one corner of the place he saw Steelers fans and walked up and tried to talk to them, but they all spoke Spanish. Mexico is a big Steelers nation, so to speak, and we recently put a Spanish language element to our Web site because so many Steelers fans speak Spanish."

Fabulous! I went to the Steelers website and surfed around for a while, but I couldn't find any Spanish-language material. Can anyone help me out?

Of course, the Spanish-speaking Steelers diaspora may also be the key to turning around the region's failure to attract Latino immigrants in large numbers. Who needs jobs? Who needs acceptance by natives? The Allegheny Conference should send this message to Latino communities around the U.S. and to Central and South America: Move to Pittsburgh, and the Steelers will get you you season tickets and a Big Ben jersey. Uno para el pulgar!

UPDATE: Steelers en espanol! (Thanks to Rust Belt. It was staring me right in the face!)

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05295/592935.stm

Technology and Aging Conference at Pitt

Tomorrow (Friday, 10/21), Pitt is hosting a conference on technology and aging -- a first of its kind, according to the organizers. There's a press release, and the Post-Gazette wrote up a nice preview. The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Select in Oakland, near the Cathedral of Learning.

I'm speaking on the last panel of the day, which runs from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., in a discussion that the organizers have titled "The Impact and Ethics of Innovation for Older Adults." It should be an interesting day.

Link (press release): http://newsbureau.upmc.com/MedSurg2/GeriatricTechnology.htm

Link (P-G preview): http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05292/590722.stm

Pittsburgh on Zombie Alert

"Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack"

A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.

Fact or fiction? Is Pittsburgh already in the grip of zombies? Pittsblog readers can decide for themselves.

Link: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41676

Gentlemen, Remove Your Hats

Before the national anthem is played, public address announcers at Pittsburgh sporting events say, "Please stand, and gentlemen, please remove your hats."

Why are only men asked to remove their hats?

I've been to sports events up and down the West Coast, and on the East Coast from DC to Boston. I've been to professional games, college games, and high school games, and I've heard the national anthem hundreds of times. I've heard requests to remove hats. Usually, there is an announcement that people should stand, but no reference to hats. But I've never heard a PA announcer speak to *men's* hats only -- except in Pittsburgh.

Hats don't always have to come off as a sign of respect. Traditionally, women didn't remove hats in church. Women often wore hats that were secured to their hair, so removing their hats was a big deal. Even today, members of the military don't remove their hats while the Star Spangled Banner is played. And members of the band usually don't take off their hats, either. But women -- and service members -- and the band -- know the rules, and they know how to follow them.

So why can't men (and women) at Pittsburgh sporting events be trusted to do the right thing? The gender-specific hat request strikes me as a bizarre anachronism. Is it, instead, a quaint historical relic? Am I missing some important feature of Pittsburgh culture?

Pittsburgh Public Service Fund

I'm trying to get a handle on the Pittsburgh Public Service Fund. Last week, the umbrella for local nonprofits anted up a less-than-expected $12.1 million to the City, to offset the fact that nonprofit owners of real estate don't pay real estate taxes. For years, nonprofit real estate owners (hospitals, universities) have made payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to the City. The new Fund expands that program, in exchange for promises not to assess further taxes or fees on the nonprofits. But all of the details, including the identities of the nonprofits involved, are confidential.

Have I got that right? If so, I have some questions.

First, there is no local or state law that gives the City any real leverage here. There is no law that imposes a tax on nonprofits by default, so that Fund participants are getting a better deal by making this pledge. Is that right?

Second, does Philadelphia have this problem? Lots of untaxed real estate owned by nonprofits? What does Philly do?

Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have conspired in the past to solve common problems. Is this a situation where a little cooperation could help both ends of the Commonwealth? Maybe our state legislators could earn a little of their compensation: Everyone meet in Harrisburg and hammer out a state-brokered PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) program that mandates default levels of payments to cities by real estate-owning nonprofits, with the proviso that cities and local nonprofits are free to negotiate alternative payment plans. Pittsburgh votes to support the Philly plan so long as Philly votes to support the Pittsburgh plan. And vice versa.

It's worked before.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05286/587793.stm

Building a Diverse Work Force

Here is the key paragraph from this morning's bleak P-G report on Pittsburgh's non-diverse professional work force:

But perhaps the best hope of diversifying Pittsburgh's professional work force lies less with attracting new people to Pittsburgh than with doing more for those already here -- first, by helping more minority citizens to achieve professional status, and second, by giving international students who flow into our institutions of higher learning more reasons to stay here after they graduate.

This is wrong, no?

First, if 50% of the local adult African-American population is unemployed (is this still true?), then helping that population achieve professional status is a long-term solution to an immediate problem. A 50% unemployment rate doesn't mean that there is a large pool of people wanting and waiting to put on suits in the morning. These people need jobs now. Graduate school can wait. Educate the ones who haven't finished high school. Train the ones who need training. Create better jobs for the ones who are educated and trained, adequate jobs for the ones who aren't, and professional education and professional jobs for those who are want to move toward professional status. And that applies not just to the African-American community, of course, though it applies to that community with special urgency. It applies to everyone.

Second, even if Pittsburgh handcuffed every incoming international student to the bar at Primanti's, the resulting increase in working "diversity" professionals in Pittsburgh would be trivial. Not every incoming international student is non-white. Not every incoming international student is a would-be entrepreneur. A lot of them are graduate students getting academic training. And at least some of them come to Pittsburgh as part of programs whose explicit mission is to train them to do better work in their home countries. (My law school's LL.M. program, which hosts foreign law graduates for a year, is an example.) Finally, local universities *want* to send their alumni out into the world. They shouldn't be recruiting stations for the local economy. This is a good thing, for the universities (it helps them recruit better students), for the students (who get the education they want), and for Pittsburgh (don't forget local pride over Pitt and CMU connections to recent Nobel laureates).

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05290/588966.stm

Pgh Flikr Photo Collections

Two great collections of Pittsburgh photos, at Flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/pittsburgh/

and

http://www.flickr.com/groups/pittsburghbridges/

Noted courtesy of Mark Stroup of the Pittsburgh Signs Project. Check out the "Magic Hour" photography project set for next Monday.

Pittsburgh for Breakfast

Suppose you want to set up a meeting with a colleague, or a prospective customer or partner, or a networking target, or someone who you would simply like to get better acquainted with -- all of these in a professional or business context.

Do you set up lunch? Or breakfast? Here's a hypothesis:

Pittsburgh is a lunch town. Pittsburgh is not a breakfast town -- setting aside Saturday mornings at Deluca's or Pamela's or the many other good and not-so-good places to breakfast or brunch on the weekend.

Why does this matter? Here's a further hypothesis: On the whole, Pittsburgh rolls into work at a sensible hour -- say, between 8 and 8:30 in the morning, and on the whole, Pittsburgh rolls home at an equally sensible hour -- say, between 5 and 6 in the afternoon/evening. That leaves some time for family, friends, and non-work interests.

Want to know, then, why Pittsburgh lags more growth-oriented cities? We don't work hard enough. Palo Alto is a breakfast town. Out the door at 6 a.m.; business breakfast at 6:30 or 7 a.m.; in the office by 8, with the deal all but done. New York isn't a breakfast town, but it's a late-night-with-dinner-in-the-office town. In the office by 9 or 9:30 a.m.; home at 10 p.m.

Pittsburgh's work-life balance may be a sensible one; as they say, no one dies saying that they wished they had spent more time at the office. We might like it the way it is, and that's a reasonable judgment. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that we can work like we do AND ramp the economy up to light speed (let alone the infamous "ludicrous speed") at the same time.

At least, that's my hypothesis.

UPDATE: An article from last week's P-G covered a talk that strikes a related note. Jack Roseman, who teaches entrepreneurship at CMU, argued that local investors should embrace more risk -- and more startup companies should fail.
Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05285/586699.stm

Pittsblog Commenting Changes

I'm going to transition Comments from the current Haloscan system to Blogger's built-in system. Please put new Comments in the Blogger system.

I'm trying to forestall the damage from another unexpected "Comment purge" of the sort that I experienced last summer.

Thanks.

Better than Boston?

From last Sunday's Bits and Bytes in the P-G:

It turns out that Pittsburgh isn't the only city suffering from the oft-lamented "brain drain" -- the exodus of young talent in search of better opportunities. Boston officials, it turns out, are wringing their hands over the same issue. Believe it.

This reported back from participants in the Allegheny Conference on Community Development's recent benchmarking trip to Boston in which nearly 100 business and nonprofit leaders and a few elected officials spent three-days sizing up Boston from every angle, including education, the arts, economic development and transportation.

In its quest to capture young people, Boston struggles for different reasons than Pittsburgh. Two-bedrooms starting at $440,000 and a high cost of living, it appears, can kill a city's sexiness, even for a 24-year-old. To top it off, the tech bust of 2001 didn't help matters as the industry shrunk, shuttering firms and leaving young techies without work. Consequently, many young people relocated.

The topic sparked interesting conversations among the group, participants said, where in Pittsburgh, the big sucking sound is of young "singletons" fleeing for hipper cities with higher-paying jobs and cooler bars. As Strip District-based consultant Pat Clark said, [hearing Boston's troubles] was "kind of a freak show, bizarro world. On the whole, I'd almost rather have our problem."

This whole thing baffles me. Pittsburgh should emulate Boston? Insanity. (Not complete insanity; how about building a subway/light rail system that actually goes where people want to go?) Pittsburghers were surprised that young people leave Boston just like they leave Pittsburgh? It's what college graduates do -- and Boston has a lot of colleges. Why aren't we asking the right question? Which is: Has the extraordinary high cost of living in Boston interfered with efforts to attract and retain talented researchers, engineers, and managers? Answer -- I think -- is yes, but only somewhat. If Boston is successful enough to be worth emulating, it's been successful because of who it attracts, not because it does a better job of keeping the people it raises.

Turn that around. Has the comparatively modest cost of living in the Pittsburgh region been leveraged as a way to attract and retain talented researchers, engineers, and managers? Answer -- I think -- is yes, but only somewhat. Once again, the Allegheny Conference is stuck in "brain drain" mode.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05281/584811.stm

Foreign Affairs in Pittsburgh

I always enjoy Dan Simpson's accounts of Pittsburgh's international community, as reminders of the impressive -- and too often under-appreciated -- connections between this community and the world beyond the U.S. I do wish, though, that the P-G would give his pieces more prominence. I know that the news hole is small and getting smaller, but a little more worldliness would be a good thing.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05282/584715.stm

The Palo Alto of Pittsburgh

Sewickley, no matter what the Post-Gazette may say, is no Palo Alto.

(1) Big-time Silicon Valley CEOs don't live in Palo Alto. They live in Los Altos Hills, or Woodside, or Atherton, or even Hillsborough.
(2) Palo Alto has no middle-class, let alone any poor people. It used to, but several years ago it managed to get the poor to reincorporate as their own city on the other side of the Bayshore Freeway. It's called East Palo Alto. Law firms and venture capital firms that had speculated on inexpensive real estate tried to keep their "Palo Alto" addresses even while their real estate tax dollars were going to "East Palo Alto." Local politicians threw a fit, and the addresses changed, too.
(3) In Palo Alto, people routinely buy million-dollar residential properties and then tear them down in order to build something livable.
(4) Virtually all the charming local shops that used to line University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto have been replaced by upscale imitations. Palo Alto isn't an especially successful college town any more. It's a Yuppie GenX/GenY paradise.
(5) The public schools are high quality, but real estate taxes don't cover the budget. The "Foundation" that solicits private contributions is big business, and every family has to stomach a several-hundred dollar "voluntary" contribution, per student, per school, to cover school supplies and things like sand for the sandboxes. There are waivers for hardship situations.

This is not a vision of Sewickley's future. It's a high tech apocalypse.

But the weather out there is awfully nice.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05275/581282.stm

Pittsburgh: The Livable City

A new report from The Economist (magazine) Intelligence Unit evaluated the "livability" of 127 cities around the world. Vancouver came out number one. Pittsburgh and Cleveland ranked highest among U.S. cities.

I haven't seen the criteria.

Link: http://store.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=pr_story&press_id=660001866&ref=pr_list

Pirates Win the Series in 7

I'm informed by a reliable source that every October 13, a band of intrepid Pirates fans gathers to celebrate Bill Mazeroski's World Series-winning home run from 1960. That date is approaching fast.

Where: Old Forbes Field Wall in Oakland, between Forbes Quad (now Posvar Hall) and the Frick Fine Arts Building
When: Thursday, October 13; 1 PM - 3:36 PM
What: Listening to the taped broadcast of the game

Capitalism Rampant in Pittsburgh Restaurants

Pittsburgh restauranteurs are shocked (shocked!) to find capitalism finally creeping into the region. McCormick & Schmick's, an upscale national seafood chain, just moved into the SouthSide Works and hired managers away from Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, atop Mt. Washington. Sniffed Monterey Bay's owner: That sort of thing is "unheard of" in Pittsburgh. The owner of The Carlton raised the ante, in a Pittsburgh kind of way: "It's not typically the kind of business ethics people in this region practice," he said. "There's nothing illegal about it, but it's not the way restaurant owners in Pittsburgh generally operate."

The owner of the new place replied: "Last time I heard, Lincoln freed the slaves in 1864." Perfect.

I've eaten at McCormick & Schmick's in DC and in San Francisco. It's no French Laundry (yes, I've eaten there), but it's a giant step up from Bravo and Olive Garden (eaten there, too). More important, it's a big step up from Monterey Bay, which has to be one of the most overrated restaurants in town. It's also a step up from The Carlton, which has decent food that's overwhelmed by the starchiest atmosphere this side of Wall Street.

(Aside: have the Monterey Bay people actually been to Monterey? That restaurant wouldn't last a day out there. What's with the Miami Vice decor? The smoke-filled-but-nowhere-else-to-go-waiting-room-bar?)

Shed no tears for hometown kitchen businesses that can't stand the heat. In real restaurant towns -- New York and San Francisco -- it's a cutthroat business. For Pittsburghers who like good restaurants, McCormick & Schmick's is good news, even if they never eat there.


Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05275/580024.stm

Blogger Liability for Comments

I really do appreciate the fact that the Post-Gazette tries so earnestly to keep up with legal developments involving the Internet. Most of the time, the paper gets it right enough that it doesn't do any harm. Today's story about bloggers fits that pattern: the writer, Carolyn Corilyn Shropshire, takes a healthy swing at the topic, and she makes contact. But here's a case where a solid single isn't good enough. So I'll try to bring this batter home.

Here's the issue: You're a perfectly well-behaved bathrobe blogger (or, well, maybe you're not so well-behaved), but your commenters can get downright nasty. They write defamatory things, they post trade secrets about your competitors, they intimidate and harass. Can you be sued for what they do?

The answer lies in a relatively obscure federal law, known popularly (at least among Internet lawyers) as "Section 230." This is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (yes, the CDA that was declared mostly unconstitutional). The full text appears at 47 U.S.C. Section 230. Section 230 says: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

The original point of this section, which was passed in 1996, was to immunize OSPs (such as AOL and Compuserve) from liability for what happened on their bulletin boards and in their moderated fora. It also was designed to immunize ISPs from liability for what passed through their systems, and for material that they merely hosted. The law relies on an old distinction between "publishing" material (making it your own, even if you didn't write it) and "distributing" material (selling it or making it available). Ordinarily, "publishers" are liable for harmful third-party content; distributors are not, at least not until distributors become publishers -- which they can, sometimes, if they know the contents of what they're publishing.

How does Section 230 work? A newspaper is a publisher, legally speaking, so it's liable for what its reporters write and for what letter writers write, too. A library or a bookstore is a distributor. Under Section 230, an "interactive computer service," which is a category that includes ISPs, should not be treated as a publisher. Moreover, a federal court's interpretation of Section 230 in 1997, in Zeran v. AOL, gave Section 230 a very, very broad interpretation, and gave ISPs even broader protection from defamation claims than Congress may have intended. Zeran ruled, in effect, that an "interactive service provider" is not liable for defamatory third-party content even if the service provider actually knows that it's defamatory, and doesn't remove the content. Zeran has been very influential in later cases; aside from Congressional intent, that influence reflects a strong public policy sense that the Internet should not be regulated too heavily.

The question in the blogosphere is whether a blog is an "interactive computer service," given the way that Section 230 defines that phrase. Without belaboring the point here, the answer is: maybe; in fact, I'd be willing to say that usually, the answer is yes. With respect to third-party content, a blog is probably a mere distributor, not a publisher, so usually the blogger is not liable for third-party comments on the blog.

But we're not done. What if the blogger is given actual notice of a defamatory comment on the blog? For example, what if the blogger receives a cease-and-desist notice that points out the defamatory material? Does Section 230 still apply? The majority rule, following Zeran, is yes, so the blogger is in the clear, but there are other views. Right now, in fact, this question is in front of the California Supreme Court.

Finally: If Section 230 applies, is the blogger entirely in the clear? No. Section 230 clearly applies to defamation and other, similar tort claims. It does not apply to claims under intellectual property law. It isn't clear from the text of the statute whether Section 230 applies to trade secret claims. No court has ruled on that question yet.

So, please, if you comment on this post, no trade secrets please. I can't afford it.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05277/582101.stm

The Other Brother Will Save Us

The NHL season starts, and Pittsburgh's savior is . . . our other brother Darryl.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05277/582148.stm