cearta.ie – Page 166 – the Irish for rights

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow evening’s presentation in the Dublin Legal Workshop, hosted by the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin.

In association with the Harvard Law School Association of Ireland, in the evening stream of the Workshop, on Tuesday, 15 May 2007, at 6.30pm, in Room 21, House 39 (map here), Professor Richard Fallon of Harvard Law School will deliver a paper entitled:

Reflections on the Morality and Legality of Coercive Interrogation by the US.

The session will be chaired by the Attorney General, Rory Brady; and there will be brief responses by The Hon Ronan Keane, former Chief Justice of Ireland, and Dr Maurice Manning, President, Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC).…

Speech just wants to be free – III

14 May, 200716 May, 2007

| 3 Comments

| Blogging, Election 2007

There have been two developments today. First, I discovered that not only is there to be a debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny on Thursday night, there is also to be one among the leaders of the next four parties on Wednesday. From RTÃ‰’s website:

The RTÃ‰ television debate among leaders of the smaller parties has been announced.

Labour, the Greens, the Progressive Democrats and Sinn FÃ©in will debate their issues on RTÃ‰ One at 9:30pm on 16 May.

Just in case it wasn’t clear, the logic of making the coverage of the Prime Time debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny on Thursday available to be shared and reused online applies equally to this debate on Wednesday. As a consequence, I emailed RTÃ‰ making it clear that my request extended to both debates, and I wrote to the leaders of these parties (pdf here), asking for their support for this initiative.

Second, in a formal response from RTÃ‰ to my initiative, early this afternon, Peter Feeney emailed me as follows:

Further to your request that RTÃ‰ waives its copyright to the debates between the party leaders due to take place on Wednesday and Thursday RTÃ‰ has decided not to agree to your request.

…

Here we go again

13 May, 200714 September, 2020

| 9 Comments

| advertising, Freedom of Expression, Irish Society, Media and Communications

The headline in today’s Sunday Independent says it all: Shock as ad on autistic children banned. Niamh Horan reports:

A new advertisement highlighting the urgent needs of autistic children in Ireland has been banned from radio stations on the grounds that it is too political.

Now Irish Autism Action [IAA], which champions the rights of Irish children suffering from autism, has said they are surprised that the ad was banned by both the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) and the national State broadcaster, RTÉ.

We have been here before. …

Speech just wants to be free – II

11 May, 200719 November, 2010

| 6 Comments

| Blogging, Copyright, Election 2007, Fair use

RTÉ were quick off the mark. Further to my letter to the Director General yesterday, mentioned in my previous post, RTÉ rang the Law School in Trinity where I work, to explain to me that all the Prime Time programmes are available on the RTÃ‰ website and that this should answer my enquiry.

I should say at once that I think that it is a splendid website, especially since its recent revamp. Moreover, I am impressed with the amout of material that they make available online. However, I don’t think that this is a full answer. My concern is not so much with availability as with lawful sharing and reuse. …

Speech just wants to be free

10 May, 200722 January, 2013

| 18 Comments

| Blogging, Election 2007

Over the last few weeks, I have been tracking the fate of a call on Larry Lessig’s blog for the US political parties and television networks to eliminate unnecessary regulation of political speech by allowing unfettered online access to the recording of the parties’ debates among presidential candidates. First, Barak Obama came on board, next John Edwards and then Chris Dodd. Then CNN announced that it would make presidential debate footage available without restrictions (though Fox News has announced that it will not).

Following yesterday’s RTE.ie web debate comes the news that there will be a television debate between Fianna Fail leader Bertie Ahern and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny on Prime Time on 17 May next. …

How to mark exams

9 May, 20073 August, 2010

| 5 Comments

| Grading and Marking, Universities

From Concurring Opinions (hat tip: TechnoLlama):

It’s that time of year again. Students have taken their finals, and now it is time to grade them. It is something professors have been looking forward to all semester. Exactness in grading is a well-honed skill, taking considerable expertise and years of practice to master. The purpose of this post is to serve as a guide to young professors about how to perfect their grading skills and as a way for students to learn the mysterious science of how their grades are determined.

Grading begins with the stack of exams, shown in Figure 1 below.

The next step is to use the most precise grading method possible. There never is 100% accuracy in grading essay exams, as subjective elements can never be eradicated from the process. Numerous methods have been proposed throughout history, but there is one method that has clearly been proven superior to the others. See Figure 2 below.

Continue reading Dan Solove’s hilarious post on Concurring Opinions. (Thanks Dan for explaining and updating this time-honoured marking system, and Andres for bringing it my attention). Now that I know what to do, I can’t wait for this summer’s scripts ……

Handing over customer records as protected speech?

8 May, 200713 May, 2007

| No Comments

| Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications, Privacy

On the day I learn (hat tip Media Law Prof Blog) that US not-for-profit NGO Freedom House has released its annual global Freedom of the Press Survey for 2007 (Ireland fares reasonably well – equal thirteenth in Europe, equal sixteenth worldwide – but we could do better), I also learn (hat tip madisonian.net) that Verizon have made an extraordinarily tendentious free speech argument in favour of disclosing customer records to the US security services. …

Contract Law Teaching, US-style

7 May, 200723 November, 2010

| No Comments

| Contract

I can’t let this pass. From a post by Nate Oman on Concurring Opinions:

Apparently Ben Davis of the University of Toledo law school really gets into the facts of Hadley v. Baxendale, acting out the various parts for his students. (Who, of course, have taped his performance and posted it to Google Videos.) For the non-contracts geeks in the audience, Hadley is a famous case on the recoverability of consequential damages for breach of contract. The facts had to do with late delivery of a replacement mill shaft, and the mill owner’s claim for lost profits. Here is professor Davis, complete with mill shaft…

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