In a recent decision issued by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, a reporter's use of Twitter during a trial was prohibited according to Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer requested permission to issue tweets throughout the court proceedings of a criminal case, but the court found that this constituted "broadcasting" which is not allowed under the current rule.

   The Office of Documents and Administrative Issuances has released their new database for finding current DC Municipal Regulations (DCMR) and copies of the DC Register (DCR).  The DCMR and DCR are available in PDF format which make citation much easier.  In fact, when citing to the DCMR or DCR, you must use the official DC version available on this website and not Lexis or Westlaw. Lexis and Westlaw's versions of the DCMR are not current nor up to date because of the many changes that have been made in compiling the new official online version. In compiling the DCMR for its new release, many inconsistencies and mistakes were found in prior versions of the DCMR and are still found in the Lexis and Westlaw versions.  The new online version of the DCMR is the only source that contains the most up to date, official versions of the regulations.  Many inconsistencies exist between the DC government version and versions found on Lexis and Westlaw.  Be safe with citation, and in this instance, Lexis and Westlaw are not currently created equal to the official government source.

Fee Fie Foe Firm is a new law firm search engine that promises to be the most comprehensive of its kind. It monitors the websites of U.S. law firms and provides access to firm profiles, media releases, client seminars, case notes and other legal analysis, as well as newsletters, bulletins and legal publications.

Instead of using Google to track a specific lawyer or law firm, try running a search in Fee Fie Foe Firm to retrieve a more targeted list of results. This could be especially useful for job searching and interview preparations.

The Legal Information Institute, in partnership with Justia, has launched a free lawyer directory. The LII Lawyer Directory contains listings for lawyers who have "claimed their profile" in Justia’s directory.

The LII Lawyer Directory can be searched by legal issue or lawyer name or browsed by practice area, state, or metropolitan area. Lawyers who donate to the Legal Information Institute can receive a "Cornell badge," which results in a higher, more visible ranking in the directory. For more information on the LII Lawyer Directory, please see LII's announcement and FAQ as well as an announcement on Justia's blog.

The Law Library of Congress recently announced the availability of House Floor Today and Senate Floor Today daily feeds via RSS or e-mail.

Once Congress reconvenes from its recess, this tool will provide subscribers with daily updates identifying the latest bills and resolutions being considered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Check it out!

The House of Lords and its now famous "Law Lords" will become part of history, at least as such. The judicial function of the House of Lords will be replaced in October by the UK Supreme Court, which will sit in the Middlesex Guildhall of the Parliament Square, London. There is a video by one of the Law Lords, Lord Mance, posted on the BIALL Blog (British and Irish Law Libraries). Hat tip for the latter to Library Boy.

     The decline in the profitability of newspaper companies with the increasing use of the free web has made headlines in recent years.  Now, many news content providers are investigating ways to improve their bottom dollars by charging for access to their information online. The Financial Times has predicted that within one year, all major news providers will charge for online access.Media mogul Richard Murdoch has vowed to charge for all online news sources his conglomerate, News Corp., owns.

   Other suggestions made to protect newspaper's profitability include a recent blog post by Judge Richard Posner arguing that links to newspaper content should be protected by copyright law.  At least one major content provider, Reuters, has rejected that approach, stating that "linking adds value to all producers of content".  The debate rages on, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the era of "free news" on the web may be coming to an end.

   What impact do you see the potential of fee-based online news services having on the ability of students and others to do research using online search engines, like Google? 

Today the Georgetown Law Library is hosting a symposium entitled "The Future of Today's Scholarship: A Symposium in Honor of Bob Oakley."

Starting from the position that blogs can be a form of legal scholarship, the symposium brings together academic bloggers, law librarians, and experts in preservation to discuss how to prioritize, collect, archive, preserve, and ensure reliable long-term access to legal information on blogs.

The symposium will end this afternoon with a working group break-out session in which the participants will create a statement of best practice for:

• bloggers posting reliable legal information,
• researchers using blogs, and 
• librarians and bloggers alike working to preserve blogs.

Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain also spoke this spring at Yale's Library 2.0 conference; this past Sunday, July 19th, his opinion piece  "Lost in the Cloud" appeared, with a run-down on the up-and down-sides of cloud computing, both practical and legal. He proposes some possible improvements: requiring social networking and other cloud-inhabiting companies to 1) give your data back to you if you ask, 2) use better security, and 3) improve privacy protection. But he also raises the interesting questions of innovation, competition and control. Stay tuned!

    The SCOTUS Blog has released their end of term "Super Stat Pack" presenting a variety of different statistical measures of the United States' Supreme Court's recent term.  Data sets include information on opinion tallies, the number of times a particular justice was in the majority, scorecards for each circuit and a variety of other information. SCOTUS Blog allows you to download all charts as a PDF file.