Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Category Archives: Legal Research

Is it Over Now (Social Media Version)?

The Scholarly Kitchen: “…For many years now, Twitter has been our leading social media source of referrals of readers. But over the last year, LinkedIn has started to catch up, and over the last 90 days, LinkedIn referrals surpassed those from Twitter, and are now bringing us 1.65 times as many readers. Bluesky remains far… Continue Reading

Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds

Torrent Freak: “Z-Library is one of the largest shadow libraries on the Internet, hosting millions of books and academic articles that can be downloaded for free. The site defied all odds over the past two years. It continued to operate despite a full-fledged criminal prosecution by the United States, which resulted in the arrest of… Continue Reading

Judicial Remedies To Restore Competition in the Market for General Search

Yale Tobin Center for Public Policy. Judicial Remedies To Restore Lost Competition in the Market for General Search. September 4, 2024 (Working Draft). by Fiona Scott Morton, David Dinielli, Alissa Cooper, Gene Kimmelman, Margaret O’Grady. “The Trial – Last month, a United States federal judge found Google (today known as “Alphabet”) liable for illegal monopolization… Continue Reading

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world

The Guardian – Carole Cadwalladr – In the wake of Trump’s unnerving appointees, the investigative journalist and veteran of the libel court offers [20] pointers on coping in an age of surveillance… Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI… Continue Reading

What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter?

Via LLRX – What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter? – Most people agree that actual facts matter – in such activities as debate, discussion and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting. But what happens when important, verified facts are published and… Continue Reading

How Google Spent 15 Years Creating a Culture of Concealment

The New York Times [free article] – “Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible…How Google developed this distrustful culture was pieced together from hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the… Continue Reading

Appointment and Confirmation of Executive Branch Leadership: An Overview

Professor Bert Chapman, Govt. Information & Political Science Librarian, Purdue University: March 2021 CRS prepared this report on appointing and confirming executive branch leadership. With confirmation hearings upcoming, this should be a good resource for our users and I imagine CRS will produce a new version in the near future. Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence and Constitutional Interpretation

Coan, Andrew and Surden, Harry, Artificial Intelligence and Constitutional Interpretation (November 12, 2024). Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 24-30, U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 24-39, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5018779 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5018779 This Article examines the potential use of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in constitutional interpretation. LLMs are extremely… Continue Reading

Trump’s criminal conviction won’t stop him from getting security clearance as president

Via LLRX – Trump’s criminal conviction won’t stop him from getting security clearance as president – Law professor Dakota Rudesill explains that because Trump was elected to a second term, he will again have expansive access to classified information and control over it as of noon on Jan. 20, 2025, when his term begins. He will also… Continue Reading

Congress should designate an entity to oversee data security, GAO says

Fedscoop: “Federal agencies may need to rethink how they handle individuals’ personal data to protect their civil rights and civil liberties, a congressional watchdog said in a new report Tuesday. Without federal guidance governing the protection of the public’s civil rights and liberties, agencies have pursued a patchwork system of policies tied to the collection,… Continue Reading

The Death of Search

The Atlantic unpaywalled – AI is transforming how billions navigate the web. A lot will be lost in the process. “…Although ChatGPT and Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite their sources with (small) footnotes or bars to click on, not clicking on those links is the entire point. OpenAI, in its announcement of its new… Continue Reading

20 things you didn’t know about Google Scholar

Google Blog: “To celebrate 20 years of Google Scholar, we’re sharing some fun facts about the go-to resource for researchers worldwide. …some features available on Scholar Review a paper efficiently and effectively with AI outlines. We recently added AI outlines to Scholar PDF Reader to help you read papers both quickly and in depth. PDF… Continue Reading