Informationoverlord

I see Clifford Chance is now sponsoring a blog. Conflict of Law is a “news and discussion portal to those interested in the conflict of laws (otherwise known as private international law).” Which is a posh way of saying it’s a blog. To be fair, it is a blog I’ve been following for a while and contains some good stuff - if private international law is your thing - so congrats to Martin George. [Geek Lawyer isn’t happy though …]

I was thrown back into the world of cataloguing for a brief period earlier today when reading a great post by Paige Turner (still wish I’d have thought of that nom de plume). ‘Paige’ has a blog detailing the development of the new Swansea central library. Now as someone that worked in the old central library for around 6 years I have an interest in the old place. However, I digress, the post was about Dewey. What about Dewey? Exactly! Paige dares to ask - or at least hints at - do we need him in public libraries???

I’ll let Paige explain (Paige hope you don’t mind me reprinting most of your post!?)

Anyway, for the sake of argument, you’re a customer and you’re looking for Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking.

By the way - helpful tip, when you do get to it, if you do get to it, hope there’s not too may books on French cookery, because chances are, you won’t be able to identify the book you want behind all the spine labels.

Sound familiar??

Now, I like Dewey. Yes, that makes me strange - or strang(er) - but I do. HOWEVER … I have never been a fan of making it harder rather than easier to find things. This was indeed something that the people I worked with in my time at Swansea Reference Library agreed with me on. So we started to make Dewey a bit more user friendly. No Dewey number would go more than 3 numbers after the decimal point for starters. Then, in areas such as ART, Literature and a few others we swapped what was after the decimal point with the first three letters of the Author, Artist etc.

So, we were not getting rid of Dewey, but we WERE trying to make him more useful to our patrons, and yes dear reader, even ourselves as it make it much easier to reshelve items using this system.

Could we have gone further - yes, I think we could of done: but what we did was a start.

Even now in my current job, I have created a filing system for my small collection of 450 books that makes it easier for me and my lawyers to find them, rather than using an established ’system’.

Of course, Paige’s post is putting the question out there of whether - in the 21st century - we actually need Dewey in libraries (esp Public Libraries) at all. So, is it time for Dewey to be retired? Should the Library of Congress system join it? What do you think, dear readers?

Simon at Slaw mentioned a mindmapping tool I wasn’t aware of - Mind42 , which in turn reminded me to bookmark and mention one that I came across late last week called Wisemapping . Both are Beta products, and look promising.

With All Hallows Eve upon us, I thought you’d like some links to some Halloween goodies on YouTube…

This is Halloween song from The Nightmare Before Christmas

Buffy and Halloween
The Simpsons -‘The Raven’ The Trailer for the Original Halloween film
Siouxsie and the Banshees -Halloween
Ryan Adams - Halloweenhead and finally, The History of Halloween from the History Channel

Decided to give Jiglu a try on this site and my other site Todd is God. Jiglu is “a super-smart engine that pieces your site together, intelligently tagging and linking your web content” …

That’s what they say, but in reality, does it work??? No results for this site as I write, but over on Todd is God it has identified the “people” : ‘Sunny Afternoon’ (as in the Kinks Song) and ‘Summer Clothes’ ( as in ‘Girls in their SUMMER CLOTHES - a track on the new Bruce Springsteen album).

It does better on topics although we do have ‘n roll hall’ (as in rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame).

Will wait to see how it copes with this site before making a decision as to whether it is worth while or not.

BskyB, Virgin and others have replied to the possible remedies and the provisional findings of the Competition Commission (CC) that the acquisition by British Sky Broadcasting plc (BSkyB) of a 17.9 percent share in ITV restricts competition, and therefore operates against the public interest.

The CC invited views on three potential remedies to alleviate the situation: (i) BSkyB sells its entire stake; (ii) BSkyB sells enough of its stake to ensure it no longer has material influence over ITV (previous examples include reductions to just below 10% and just below 15%); and (iii) BSkyB sells some of its stake and is subject to behavioural restrictions, which might relate to areas such as voting behaviour and the solicitation or acceptance of board representation; as well as asking for any other proposals.

Needless to say, BSkyB started by stating that the CC is wrong and they will submit evidence to back up their argument that a ‘relevant merger situation’ hasn’t been created or that the creation of such a situation would be expected to lead to a lessening of competition in the market due to a loss of rivalry between ITV and BskyB. However, they pragmatically say that ‘if’ the CC persists with its incorrect view then the only viable solution to the problem identified by the CC in its preliminary findings would be for Sky to place 3% of its 17.9% in the hands of ‘a voting trust with a respected institutional trustee’. This, according to Sky, would address their alleged ability to block special resolutions of the ITV Board, put to shareholders.

‘A Media Company’ seemed to agree the pacing of shares in trust could work, but argued that whole of BskyB’s holding be put in a discretionary trust.

Unsurprisingly, Virgin Media doesn’t agree with either the trust or the 3% reduction (however achieved), and on this very point states in its response to the possible remedies that even if BskyB had to sell that 3% “BskyB would still be able to vote shares representing almost 21% …[and] would need shareholders holding only 2.9% of ITV shares to vote with it in order to block a special resolution of ITV in circumstances in which up to 4.9 % of votes were cast against resolutions at the last ITV AGM”

Virgin states the only solution is for BskB to sell its whole 17.9% and get out of ITV altogether. At 14%, Virgin reckon BskyB would still represent 21% of votes cast at ITV General Meetings; and at around 10% would stop potential bidders for ITV (for which, read Virgin Media) being able to buy the company outright, by essentially acting as a pain in the arse (a ye olde technical legal term, I believe).

Of course, it is not just a Sky/Virgin spat. Rapture, who are also not exactly Sky’s biggest fans [ They are currently appealing a determination by Ofcom, to the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT), that charges levied by BSkyB for the provision of electronic programme guide (EPG) services between November 2005 and November 2006 were fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory] also chipped in.

They were short and sweet in their response stating ” Please note my objection to the BSkyB purchase of ITV shares and I would recommend that BSkyB be forced to sell all shares in ITV without delay. Furthermore BSkyB should be forbidden to extend its influence to any and all other broadcasters/content providers and should certainly not be allowed to launch its technology on any other platforms in the UK. This would at least help reduce the risk of future abuse by BSkyB.”

Incorporated Society of British Advertisers Ltd (ISBA) remain disappointed that the CC dismissed competition concerns in airtime sales and TV News arising form the ITV stake, but think that either a complete divestiture of divestiture to below 10% would be acceptable.

The CC is expected to issue its final report to John Hutton, Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) in December (although it has until January 2008 to do so).

It seems that Yahoo has finally decided to pull the plug on their original failed attempt at social networking/blogging - Yahoo 360. This is not a great surprise, especially considering that they are currently beta-ing yet another attempt, with ‘Mash’

So what is the reason?

“Yahoo! is building a universal profile system to provide a more integrated experience. We currently have many different profiles for different Yahoo! products. Our goal is to centralize as many of these as possible into one common profile”

Now this new platform will have blogging capabilities and - if like me - you do have any content on 360, you will be able to get it out/move it to the new platform, which will be Mash, right? Erm, sort of … “The universal profile will not be Mash — at least not the Mash that you see today. The new profile is likely to share the same platform as Mash, which means that we can provide you with greater flexibility than you currently have on 360°.”

According to Yahoo’s Matt Warburton “our goal is to build a new profile and blogging solution that will delight all of you”. So watch this space.

I’m sure most people reading this will know I work for Clifford Chance. We’re a corporate law firm so we don’t usually hit the headlines in other aspects of law. So it makes a change to report that lawyers from our London and New York offices succeeded in securing a stay of execution for Jack Alderman, the US’ longest serving death row prisoner, who was due to be executed last Friday by lethal injection. After four unsuccessful appeals in the previous seven days, the stay of execution was granted late on Thursday, 18 October as the prison were preparing Jack Alderman for execution. Jack Alderman has been on death row for 33 years during which time he has continued to protest his innocence and to fight to clear his name.

We succeeded on arguing that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore breached the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court will now look at this and is expected to reach a decision on the legality of lethal injection around spring 2008, by which time the firm hope to have secured a new trial and/or succeed in getting Alderman acquitted.

You can read the CC press release here and learn more about the case here

I had to do some sport related research yesterday (sadly not something I get asked to do that often) so I thought it might be an idea to list a few sources that I have found useful.

World Sports Law Report (and associated blog)
Sports Betting Update (subscription service from PA Sport)
Sport Business - news site
EUFootball.biz - a very good site covering the business side of football
Sportcal.com - this was new to me until yesterday. It provides news, information on broadcast and marketing rights etc. Need to subscribe to get full access but you can look at the latest issue of their quartely Media Rights Review to get a flavour of what they offer.

If any more proof was needed that business’ need to think again about allowing access to sites such as Facebook, then surely the announcement from RIM that they have launched Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones, for that essential business tool - the BlackBerry - is it. If RIM think it makes sense to add it to what is sold as a business tool, then that says a lot.”Now you can take Facebook with you on your BlackBerry smartphone! The best part is: you stay connected to Facebook the whole time. Download this free application and take communicating with your friends to a whole new level” Of course, if you work for the type of company that blocks access to such site, then they’ve probably already crippled your blackberry to prevent you downloading things such as this software add-on.