The Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative is previewing its new Regulation Room at http://www.regulationroom.org/.  Regulation Room utilizes collaborative tools and other innovative features to "increase and enhance public engagement during the administrative rulemaking process."

From November 12th - 22nd, Regulation Room is running a test commenting period on a proposed National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) rule on new tires.  Note that this is only a test, however, as the NHTSA is no longer accepting public comments on the proposed rule.

The Regulation Room is moderated by Cornell Law School students under the close supervision of Law School faculty and the Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR) School's Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution.  It is hosted by Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII).

For more information, see the "About" and "FAQ" sections of the Regulation Room website.

Through Google Scholar's advanced search page, it is now possible to limit your search to case law and law journals available on the web. This includes law journal articles contained in select subscription databases. It is also possible to search journal articles and legal opinions combined, just federal case law, or just case law from a state of your choosing. The Internet for Lawyers web site has more information.

While this is an exciting and useful development, it is important to remember that not all law journals or case law is searchable through this interface at this time.

To be able to access journal articles in subscription databases when you are off campus, be sure to edit your Google Scholar Preferences to add Library Links for "Georgetown University Law Library."

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.

West announced yesterday that 29 of its most popular law book titles are now available for the Kindle eBook reader. Titles include Guerilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams, Contracts in a Nutshell, and Justice Scalia's Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. A complete list is available from their press release.

In a proposed settlement for a class action suit, Facebook has agreed to shut down its Beacon marketing system. The agreement is before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: Lane v. Facebook Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 5:08-cv-3845, 9/18/09).

Beacon is a controversial Facebook system that monitors a users purchases on certain online venders and then publishes that information on the user's news feeds, read by the user's Facebook friends.

Facebook aslo proposes creating a $9.5 million settlement fund, partially to pay damages. Part of the of the fund would launch a privacy foundation to fund and sponsor programs designed to educate users, regulators, and enterprises regarding critical issues relating to protection of identity and personal information online through user control, and to protect users from online threats.

Read more about the case through the library's subscription to BNA Privacy Law Watch.

Full text of the Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement Agreement is available at http://0-op.bna.com.gull.georgetown.edu/pl.nsf/r?Open=dapn-7w6jg2.

Full text of the proposed Stipulation and Agreement is available at http://0-op.bna.com.gull.georgetown.edu/pl.nsf/r?Open=dapn-7w6jjb.

IMS ExpertServices posted an online list of 10 mistakes that lawyers and judges made while using online social networks.

Highlights of the list include a lawyer who asked for a continuance because of a death in the family but had posted Facebook status updates about going partying.

Another highlight was from a judge who friended a lawyer trying a case in his court. The lawyer posted a status during the litigation that "I have a wise judge."  Opposing counsel moved for a new trial and the judge removed himself from the case and granted the new trial. The state's Judicial Standards Commission issued a public reprimand for violating the prohibition against a judge engaging in ex parte communications.

This week the Sacramento Bee reported that a California judge ruled that a litigant may learn the identity of a person who posts an anonymous comment on a blog.

In the case Calvin Chang, a police officer for the University of California in Davis filed suit against UC, claiming discrimination and breach of a settlement agreement in a prior lawsuit. David Greenwald, who operates a blog called The People's Vanguard of Davis, wrote about the suit and people commented. Chang believes that one anonymous comment was written by a 'managing agents' of the university and contained information that would violate the agreement of the prior settlement agreement.

The California judge ruled that Chang can hire a third-party to investigate whether the author of the comment was a manging agent. If it was the court would allow Chang to request that Google, the Vanguard's former host, provide him with the anonymous poster's e-mail addresses and log-in information.

The Sacramento Bee also reported that the judge ruled that the First Amendment generally protects anonymous speech, but online anonymity may be breached. "When vigorous criticism descends into defamation, constitutional protection is no longer available."

Read more about the case in the Chronicle of Higher Education, provide through the library's subscription.

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!

Jureeka is a useful tool that works with the Firefox Web browser. It recognizes legal citations and automatically searches the Web for a free version of the cited document. By using Jureeka, you don't have to search several legal sites (Findlaw, Justia, etc.) to find a particular document. Jureeka searches all of them at once.

Remember that while free legal information sites can be quite helpful in your research, they do have significant limitations. For more information, see the Law Library's Free & Low Cost Legal Research Guide.

Amazon just announced a large-format version of their electronic book reader, called the Kindle DX, which you can see in action at engadget. The product doesn't launch until this summer, but it could be in the hands of many university students for a pilot coming to five schools this fall. Library Journal reports that these schools are: Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.  As of yet, there are no law schools who will try this out.  Because Kindle books are typically locked into a single device, this could mean the disappearance of a used book market.  That said, it means fewer dead trees and possibly more publishing options for content producers.  In law schools, where much of the raw source material is in the public domain, casebooks and case compilations could be done very economically, if not for free.

An interesting feature of the new device is that it supports native PDF documents, instead of forcing people to pay to convert them to a proprietary Kindle format. This means you could get class notes or reading materials in PDF format and read them directly.  It's not clear if this would support image-based formats like scanned law reviews from Hein Online or published reporter cases from Westlaw.  If so, this could be a boon for students willing to pay almost $500 for the device.

In the past, there has been some debate over whether libraries can lend Kindle readers to their users. One problem with having a Kindle in a library is that book purchasing is tied directly to the account on the device.  A library owning one to lend would have to disable purchasing options. Books purchased for the Kindle cannot be transferred to another device.

In advance of the latest Kindle announcement, the New York Times ran a story about large format e-book readers, exploring questions of whether these could save daily newspapers.  Media conglomerate Hearst Corporation is rumored to be launching a wireless e-book reader. They publish everything from Harper's Bazaar to Good Housekeeping to Popular Mechanics.  It will be exciting to see how electronic books develop over time.  They look like a possible life preserver for print media. Perhaps this Fall we'll see how they fare in the education sector.

Update: Additional coverage, including law school topics, is found here:

• Who will get the first e-book into the law school classroom?
• Case Western Reserve University students will use textbooks on Kindle electronic reader