Law Librarian Blog

When Opposites Don't Attract: Partisan-Based Dating Websites for Internet Match-Making

While political opposites may make interesting couples, the successful "James Carville-Mary Matalin" hook-ups appear to be pretty rare. So here's a big dating hat tip to ATL's Non-Sequiturs: 11.20.12 for this gem. "Want to avoid dating Democrats or (Republicans)? There’s an app — okay, two websites — for that." The sites are designed to filter those awkward political converations from Internet courtship "by matching users only with people who share their political affiliation, via a sophisticated series of questions on individual viewpoints."

Erin Gloria Ryan's Jezebel post provides information on websites to allow one to screen out Republicans or Democrats for dating purposes. I view this post as a PSA for those in the government sector who are still doing the dating thing (unlike this aging and decrepit public sector law librarian) and who can fall into the trap of dating someone who is not "politically correct" by party affiliation. Just remember, politics is local. Luckily the Blog Widow votes Republican. [JH]

Pitch Black Friday Every Day? What Happens When Marketing Gurus Delegate Sales Pitches to Robots for Pseudo Customer-Specific Emails

Sometime ago I was looking for a whiteboard. After hitting the usual office supply eCommerce sites, I checked out what Amazon had to offer. I spent a fair amount of time clicking to individual whiteboard page displayes on Amazon before deciding that what I wanted was not available. Hey I'm picky and perhaps the sort of whiteboard I want doesn't exist in the size I wanted or was beyond what I wanted to spend.

It wasn't long before I received an Amazon email that stated in effect, "Amazon customers interested in whiteboards looked at following ones" with links provided to each product .Ah OK, I had already viewed those products so the spam was deleted. But my first thought was how soon will our major vendors be issuing similar emails. Pretty damn soon.

TR Legal Gets Semi-Smart or Compared to Amazon Very Dumb. After spending a fair amount of time on WestMart, I received a similar email. In this instance it was not narrow focused because I had been viewing a number of secondary titles on diverse topics.

Hello TR Legal, if I am spending a lot of time and clicking on a lot product descriptions on WestMart, it is not because I am interested in buying anything. I am comparing buy-new title pricing (with or without the latest discounted prices) to make cancellation decisions in order to determine if or when I might buy the titles at some later date assuming my library users even notice that the titles have been killed. The robo-marketing coding appears to be generated by some sort of math which takes into account time spent online and product displays viewed on WestMart. It was not, however, "smart" enough to take into account what I have on standing order.

While Lexis Marketing Robo Emails Commoditize the Sales-Buyer Relationship. Then there are the robo-emails being generated by Lexis marketing that frankly used my long-time and very helpful pBook account rep's name in vain. Got one recently that was pitching ALM titles for "my collection." I don't know if it was spit out because I looked at a couple of ALM titles Lexis is selling but clearly my Lexis pBook rep knows that my collection does not need the pitched titles because we have a direct one-on-one, well-established relationship, one that includes knowing I am not interested in any combo-priced pBook-web access ALM titles.

I knew the email was not sent by my rep based on the robo-email address. Frankly I found this to be rather humorous until it dawned on me that, unlike TR Legal, Lexis L&P sales spends one hellva of a lot of time establishing and maintaining customer relationships. Perhaps the robo-email was intended to connect small customers with their pBook account managers. But if that was the case, I seriously doubt ALM treatises are the best products to be pitching.

What's Up with This? My hunch is that it is the dawn of the pseudo consumer-specific robo email era. Sales generate recurring and new revenue streams, not marketing spam. While I like to receive emails about discounted pricings, any email marketing company will advise companies that anything more than one email a week will go unread as in deleted without reading because anything more than one email per week will be viewed as spam. That includes robo-emails. 

It is clear, however, that their corporate marketing mavens do not understand the dynamics of sales. Instead of sales driving marketing based on well-informed direct sales-buyer intelligence acquired by human contact and established professional relationships, professional marketers, who quite frankly have a pathological lack of understanding this, are calling the shots. Robo-marketing has no apprecation for the human equation in the buyer-seller relationship. [JH}

Being Thankful Your Back Isn't Against the Wall

While helping those hard-pressed this Thanksgiving. [JH]

Whatever Happened To The Rudovsky Case?

Anyone remember the Rudovsky case?  That’s the one where West was successfully sued by academics David Rudovsky and Leonard Sosnov for defamation when West put their names on a pocket part update that was of low quality.  That may be an understatement.  The case was notorious for exposing some of West’s editorial practices for a “continuously updated resource.”  See my posts The Rudovsky Case and Quality Control and A Bit More On The Rudovsky Case for the details.

The parties appealed the outcome to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.  Not much happened until January 20^th of this year when a Stipulation of Dismissal Pursuant to F.R.A.P 42(B) was filed.  The parties accepted the Court’s Appellate Mediation Program and essentially settled.  The dismissal was with prejudice and without costs to each party.  As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.  [MG]

Friday Fun on Wednesday: How to cook a turkey like it's 1956

It's better with "real butter." [JH]

Why Not Offer Digital And Hard Copy Books In A Single Sale?

One of the more interesting ideas that publishers could consider comes from Michael Clarke at the Scholarly Kitchen.  The article is called What Can Publishers Learn from Indie Rock?  The article compares the sale of vinyl albums (a growing niche, but a niche nonetheless) and hardcover books.  Many indie bands provide digital download links with the sale of a vinyl edition of an album.  Clarke proposes that hardcover book sales could work similarly by offering a digital copy of the book as part of the sale.  A variation of that would be to offer a combined hard/digital copy for a combined lower prince.  We’ve seen this same marketing technique with DVDs where a movie is sold with the rights to a digital copy for a limited time after the sale.  Clarke also proposes that the digital copy of the book be DRM free.  I seriously doubt that publishers would go for that.  It’s an interesting idea though, and it might even spur sales of physical books. 

There may be other marketing possibilities such as making the digital copy available if the hardcover was purchased at a physical bookstore.  Publishers have expressed anxiety over Amazon’s dominance of the book market in one form or another to the detriment of brick and mortar retailers.  I’m not suggesting publishers cut Amazon out of the equation, but some form of marketing may make local retailers more attractive to buyers.

The article is interesting to me for another reason as it highlights the “legendary” Reckless Records as an inspiration for music discovery through knowledgeable staff.  I’ve mentioned Reckless occasionally in past posts as a great place to find used music and movies at extremely reasonable prices.  I was at the store earlier this morning and found an Australian DVD released in 1981 of Fischer-Z live.  The cost was a mere $2.99.  I mention this merely because the outcome of the Kirtsaeng case awaiting decision by the Supreme Court may subject Reckless to liability for copyright violation by offering for sale a foreign-made used copy of a work in the second-hand market.  More on that here.  [MG]

A Q&A on Secession

It isn't just Texans messing with Texans on the We Petition site. Sarah Randag reports that the White House received secession petitions from all 50 states last week on ABAJ News. Her story also called attention to Eugene Volokh's Sucession post. Questions asked and answered by Volokh:

1. Is It a Good Idea for Some States to Secede from the U.S.?
2. Do States Have a Legal Right to Secede on Demand?
3. Is It Legally Possible for States to Secede?
4. Is It Treason for People to Call for Secession?
5. May People Who Call for Secession Be Deported?

Does the Republican Party want to lose a Red State? That's like asking would the Republican Party not put up a fight against admitting Puerto Rico (read Blue State) to the union if that matter was given serious consideration.

End note. I haven't checked to see if the Congressional Research Service has recently covered the topic of sucession from the union in one of its reports. If not, will it? Can mere tax-paying citizens petition the White House to ask the in-house congressional research wing to issue one? Don't think so... . [JH]

Professor Big Brother Is Watching

There is a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighting the metrics available to a faculty member who assigns an e-textbook for the course:

When students use print textbooks, professors can’t track their reading. But as learning shifts online, everything students do in digital spaces can be monitored, including the intimate details of their reading habits.

Those details are what will make the new CourseSmart service tick. Say a student uses an introductory psychology e-textbook. The book will be integrated into the college’s course-management system. It will track students’ behavior: how much time they spend reading, how many pages they view, and how many notes and highlights they make. That data will get crunched into an engagement score for each student.

The feature is ostensibly marketed as something good.  Faculty can reach out to students who show low engagement and counsel them for success.  How about some of the other possible uses for the capability?  The same information may be useful to authors and publishers in analyzing how their text is used by students.  Some of the data may also be used by school administrators to evaluate faculty performance through that same level of student engagement.  My point is really that when a pool of information is collected, there can be many uses beyond that intended.  In any event, it’s another example of what was previously not measurable becoming extremely measurable.  I can see it now:  Hey, lets do a study comparing student performance across racial and ethnic groups.  I know there are laws that protect student information and also regulate studies using human subjects.  I have a feeling that helping students to succeed will be the least of the interesting uses for this capability.  [MG]

Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Constitutional Amendment On Race In Education

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a controversial decision last Thursday which struck down a voter-enacted amendment to the Michigan Constitution that banned consideration of race in school admission, employment, and public contracting.  The challenge to the Amendment, known as Proposal 2, was strictly on the basis of education policies.  The Court explicitly did not address the impact of the amendment to the employment and public contracting components.

The Sixth Circuit’s opinion comes in the form on an en banc decision that polled the Court’s roster of Judges in an 8 to 7 split for striking down the Amendment.  The Court used the “political process” doctrine which basically holds that a law which burdens a minority from seeking favorable legislation—in this case favorable admission policies from university governing boards—is unconstitutional.  The Court used two Supreme Court cases, Washington v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 458 U.S. 457, (1982) and Hunter v. Erickson, 393 U.S. 385, (1969) as the basis for its decision.  Those cases struck down referendum-based legislation as impermissibly burdening the political process for minorities.

The dissents skewered the majority for reasoning they believed turned the Equal Protection Clause on its head.  Even though race may be taken into limited consideration under Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), doing so is permissive rather than mandated by the decision.  The dissents reason that under these circumstances the majority has moved considering racial preferences as beyond the political process.  They find Hunter and Seattle as an “extreme” application of the political process doctrine.

The decision may not matter in the long run as the Supreme Court is essentially considering the issue of how far race can be used in the admissions process in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.  The question presented in that case is:

Whether this Court's decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), permit the University of Texas at Austin's use of race in undergraduate admissions decisions.

The prediction of many commentators based on the oral argument transcript is that the Court will strike down the use of race in admissions.  The Court has been pretty divided on this issue since the Bakke decision in 1978.  One factor in the Fisher case is that Justice Kagan is not participating in the decision.  The Michigan Attorney General’s Office has said it will appeal the Sixth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.

The case is Coal. to Defend Affirmative Action, et al. v. Regents of the Univ. of Mich., et al., (Nos. 08-1387/1389/1534; 09-1111).  [MG]

Two App Developments That Could Pave the Way to the Future ... Someday

First off, Bloomberg has launched the Bloomberg App Portal for Bloomberg's financial data services subscribers. From the press release:

Applications on the Bloomberg App Portal are developed by software companies, financial institutions, academics and other third parties. The Bloomberg App Portal enables Bloomberg subscribers to enhance their user experience by adding specialty features and tools that complement those available on the Bloomberg Professional service.

The Bloomberg App Portal page indicate that these enterprise apps include data analysis, news and research, portfolio management and risk analysis, valuation and pricing, and visualization and technical analysis. According to published reports, Bloomberg will take 30 percent of app sales revenue but does not expect that to substantially increase its estimated $7 billion revenue. However, anything that keeps "users glued to its terminals for more of their working day" is a good thing. Quoting from Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson's Bloomberg launches iTunes-style platform (Financial Times).

Second, Bookboard has launched an iPad app that provides streaming access to children's eBooks. Currently in beta, the Company plans a commercial launch in 1Q 2013 with revenue coming from monthly subscriptions for unlimited access to its library of titles. The business model calls for publishers to receive royalties based on the number of pages read (and other factors). Founded by two former Adobe execs, will this be the first successful "Netflix of eBooks"? For more, see Laura Hazard Owen's Bookboard tries Netflix-like model for kids’ ebooks (paidContent).

Some Navel-Gazing. It is clearly significant when the market leader in financial data services, Bloomberg, opens its closed universe of data to third party enterprise app development for the Company's estimated 315,000 subscribers. Will we see a BLaw App Store someday? It certainly could be a way to fill a huge gaping hole in providing professional legal services beyond search and current awareness to increase its competitiveness with WEXIS and keep users glued to BLaw-BNA's online services.

Second, will we see the market leader in legal publishing, Thomson Reuters, take a Netflix-like approach to streaming its eBooks based on a subscription model? If so, it could be a quasi-eLending and discovery platform to counter Lexis' enterprise eLending solution. {JH]

"George Washington University has been stripped of its U.S. News college ranking. The law school appears safe."

That's a direct quote from ATL's Non-Sequiturs: 11.14.12 by Elie Mystal. I think that means admitted undergrad students are still required to pay tuition and paychecks will still be issued. For details, see TaxProf Blog's Rankings Scandal at George Washington and U.S. News Strips George Washington of its Ranking Due to Cheating. [JH]