What Can a Lawyer Do For Open Source? 162
zolltron writes "I have a friend who went to law school. He really enjoyed intellectual property law, and he seems to genuinely regret that he didn't end up as an IP lawyer. But, what's done is done, and he's not going to radically change career trajectories now. But, I think he might be interested in volunteering a little of his time if there was an interesting project he could get behind. Computer folks are always trying to figure out how to get involved in open source even if it won't be their full time job. So, now I ask you Slashdot, how can my friend use his expertise to help an open source project?"
First things first (Score:4, Insightful)
Volunteer with EFF (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet they have all sorts of odd research and writing they could use help.
Re:Forming an international, leaderless organizati (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck making a fork.
Re:If he wants to help (Score:4, Insightful)
specifics (Score:5, Insightful)
A few things can be done simply by being a lawyer at all.
- Recruiting other lawyers, including IP folks, at bar association and other lawyer-only events. Not to mention posting ads in bar association newsletters and hosting events at bar association buildings and finding and encouraging relevant CLE events.
- Writing readily available and current guides to open source for the rest of us, especially the differences between the GPL and other licenses. A good chart of those differences would be golden. Again, especially if kept current AND READILY FINDABLE INLINE. not just in theory, but in case law and in terms of the corporate and institutional moves that could be learned just fine by spending enough time following links from right here on /. and following up on things like Westlaw.
Even not being an IP lawyer, (s)he's still better equipped than most, if only from access to Lexis-Nexis, to build an educated view of what the issues are, for example how companies can use open source and still stay in compliance both with those terms and confidentiality requirements of contractors. Or what code can pass on in commercial products that then use that open source code, etc.
- This isn't open source as such, but there's also a real need for more guides to fair use in general. I've looked high and low and nobody seems to keep a current site about what can and can't legally be photographed, for example. I *do* know that lots of the regulations about taking pictures of private facilities, for example, are bullshit. As in in conflict with the law. But try explaining that without cases and regulation, right down to number, on paper right there when some goon is sent out to grab your camera because you were taking pictures through the chain link fence.
Same for the ever-changing limits of TSA-controlled areas. When a woman can be kept from flying for "unusual contours of the buttocks" and supposedly have no legal recourse, well, looks like we could use some help there to me. Same goes for sampling music or the many related fields. And again, actual case citations and regulations listed by number and category.
Just being able to "presort" is of value, if only to help people in trouble find an IP lawyer who can finish the job. The EFF is great but they ain't everybody, esp. since it can help to have a local lawyer for some things.
- Another possibility is to get involved in helping open-source related organizations get legal standing as non-profits and fund and charter endowments. There are plenty of open source projects that could qualify as non-profits and when I talk to them about it they look vaguely interested but they have neither the skills nor the understanding of how it could help them out to actually get it done. Endowments? Don't get me started. For example, New York's ABC No Rio computer center has hosted many events and teach-ins that help open source and they're always short of help of many kinds. Same for many Free Skools. There are at least fifty infoshops in this country that could do the same IF they were more stable and somebody did the work of getting the right people together in the right place on a repeating basis. Lawyer as yenta is a role that goes back centuries. It's not what people think of as a lawyer's role but it works. Especially since most lawyers can quietly and unobtrusively slip in the twenty bucks now and again that can (absurdly enough) be what stands between a project getting moving and five more fucking meetings over the course of a year to "achieve consensus".
Ya see, a lot of this is about culture. Ask Autumn Wiggins about the work she's doing right now to bring open source tools to the crafting world. Or all of us who simply never took R.M. Stallman as seriously as we could have because, well, he doesn't listen, doesn't move beyond his circles and, at least in my day, didn't bathe. And lawyers are, in their very different way, trained as hackers. As masters of social engineering. Of getting institutions to do what they want through the
Re:If he wants to help (Score:5, Insightful)
tell him to throw himself off a bridge or something. I know he means well, but lawyers are a major part of the problem this litigious society has.
Civil Rights.
Worker Safety.
Environmental Protection.
Food Safety.
Freedom of Speech.
Miranda Warnings.
Fucking lawyers. Always part of the problem.
Re:If he wants to help (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem. I just get sick of seeing people bashing lawyers without ever having met one.
I know a guy. I refer to him as "my lawyer". He helped me take a bunch of junk faxers to court, as a result of which, I was able to give about $50k or so to random poor people I knew -- you know, stuff like that one month's rent that makes the difference between staying in your place until your new job starts paying or being out on the street and jobless. I've watched him put in insanely long hours helping poor people get the help they need to get away from scumbag debt collectors, advising trannies on how to get their name changes, stuff like that. I've seen him walk away from large amounts of money if he didn't think the job was ethical. And I've seen the six foot Clash poster in his office.
I also know someone who did Family Practice, which is the most nightmarish job in the world. Hello, welcome to a fight between people who were married for ten years. You are the only person in this room who gives a flying fuck what happens to this kid. Your job is to, without actually telling your client to grow the fuck up, cause your client to stop and think whether she actually wants the kids, or just wants to hurt her soon-to-be ex-husband.
It's like mechanics, really. Yeah, everyone's had a run-in with some guy who will just make shit up to charge you hundreds of bucks. But most of us have eventually found the guy who'll fix stuff for free if he can just reach in and do it, spend two hours on the phone tracking down a replacement part that's no longer made, and tell you "you'll need to replace these, but you've got another six months, easy." Blaming all mechanics for the stereotyped bad ones is just sloppy thinking.
It bugs me to see people who think they're super smart and all good with logic and reasoning, and then the moment you hand 'em a stereotype they just run with it. WTF guys.
Re:Software Freedom Law Center (Score:5, Insightful)