Copyleft – Great Idea or a Legal Minefield?

Although it gives the impression that it is the opposite of copyright, it is not. Copyleft is still a license in the legal sense. Ironically enough, a copyleft work still has copyright.

A copyleft license has five characteristics:

1. Free Use
2. Freeree Distribution
3. Free Modification and Derivation
4. Free Combination
5. Universal Application

When owners of IP want to share their work, they often shy away from putting it in the public domain which would entail that they forfeit their IP and all legal claims to their program or work. The legal problem with public domain is that once a program or work is part of it, anyone can take it, amend or adjust it, and copyright or patent it. 

Examples of copyleft license:

CC-SA

CC-SA is a small set of copyleft licenses rapidly growing in popularity, particularly in Free Culture communities rather than Open Source Software communities. It is a set of Creative Commons Share-Alike License. These copyleft terms for Creative Commons licenses are offered in two different Creative Commons licenses, providing the CC-BY-SA (Attribution/Share-Alike) and CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share-Alike).

GPL

By far the most prominent and popular copyleft license is the GNU General Public License, or GPL. In addition to the usual copyleft terms and preferential treatment (but not prescriptive requirement) for noncommercial uses, it adds additional restrictions and reinforcements of restrictions based on earlier versions.

MPL

The Mozilla Public License, or MPL, is used by Firefox Web browser and is hence one of the best-known pieces of open source software in the world.

What Makes a Good Lawyer Biography?

Recently, I have been involved in writing content for several lawyer websites. The bio or “About” page is one of the most viewed pages. This bio or profile helps new connections or potential followers make decisions about whether or not to interact with the lawyer.
What are the elements of a good biography?

• Description of who the lawyer is
• Reference of how the lawyer got where he/she is
• The knowledge and experience of the lawyer
• The fields of expertise, including court cases on
• The personal touch or other unique traits of the lawyer (or the law office)

An about page is what potential clients want to know about the lawyer. It must address what the clients want to know. This isn’t necessarily the same as what you think they should want to know.

Therefore, the lawyer’s bio should focus on:

• The target audience
• The target audience’s problems or challenges
• The solution and expertise the lawyer offers (how the lawyer helps clients or solves problems for them)
• How the lawyer’s approach is different from other law firms’ solutions

What clients want:

1. Clients do not care who you are; they want to know how you can solve their problems. Lawyers need to address their concerns. 
2. Clients don’t really care which university their lawyer graduated from; they just want to the credentials of their lawyer.  
3. Clients want to understand what their lawyer is about. Labels, such as “lawyer” or “securities lawyer” confuse. Be specific and talk (or write) about the people the lawyer helped or the problems he/she solved.
4. Clients want to see a realistic photo of their (potential) lawyer. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. Posting a photograph helps (potential) clients to feel that they ‘know’ their lawyer.
5. Use social media. A lawyer’s (potential) customers are on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, so the lawyer should be there too. Blogs are a great way to engage. If you as a lawyer do not have the time, use an expert to do the social media for you!

Want help to write content for your website and colletaral? Contact Tip Top Writer or Debra De-Jong.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Well, that may be so, but names are very personal. Parents normally give it a lot of consideration what they want to name their offspring. In the US, that’s quite straightforward. This has its downside – famous children have to go through life which first names such as “Moon Unit”, “Apple” and “Aleph”. Not all countries are as liberal as the US.

In Sweden "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb111163” (pronounced Albin) was submitted by a child's parents in protest of the naming law and was rejected. The parents later submitted "A" (also pronounced Albin) as the child's name which was also rejected. Other rejected names include Metallica, Superman, Veranda, Ikea and Elvis. Funny enough, accepted names include Google (as a middle name) and Lego.

In Germany, the child’s first name must indicate the child’s gender and must not negatively affect the well being of the child. Many German parents prefer to give their traditional names such as Maximilian, Alexander, Marie and Sophie. “Matti” was rejected for a boy because it didn't indicate gender. However, approved names for boys include "Legolas" and "Nemo".

In China, babies must be named based on the ability of computer scanners to read those names on national identification cards. Numbers and non-Chinese symbols and characters are not allowed. Furthermore, Chinese characters that can not be represented on the computer are not allowed, which limits them to 13,000 out of 70,000 Chinese characters. “Wang @" was therefore rejected, although the parents chose it since the @ symbol in Chinese is pronounced "ai-ta" which is very similar to a phrase that means "love him."

A similar issue emerged in Iceland. A teenager is suing thegovernment since her given name “Blaer” (which means “light breeze” in Icelandic) was rejected since it is not in the list of 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names officially allowed. In Iceland, given names are significant since everyone is listed in the phone book by their first names. Even the president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, is addressed simply as Olafur. Furthermore, names such as Cara, Carolina, Cesil, and Christa have been rejected since the letter "c'' is not part of Iceland's 32-letter alphabet.

Will Blaer be successful? I hope so!

 

(Image courtesy of crazyyetwise)