May 13, 2008
This semester has been fairly busy, so I have not been following gambling issues in the news as well as I would like. For example, viewers of Deal or No Deal have filed lawsuits in multiple states claiming that the "Lucky Case" game is an illegal gambling game. In some states, losers may file civil suits to recover gambling losses in illegal games. The Lucky Case game allows at home viewers to choose which of five or so cases a prize is in (like a shell game) for money. Viewers text in their guesses. Texting charges apply, as well as a $.99 fee, which seems to go to NBC. At least here in Illinois, that sounds like gambling. However, the Georgia Supreme Court, in answering a question certified to it by the federal district court in Georgia, said that the game did not fall under its definition of "gambling contract," and so the viewers could not sue for losses. The court left open the question whether the Lucky Case game is a lottery, however. Fortunately or unfortunately, viewers do not have the ability to sue for losses in illegal lotteries, so unless the State of Georgia wants to prosecute NBC, the game could go on. (In Illinois, gambling losses must be at least $50 for losers to have the right to sue for recovery.) Because these laws vary from state to state, cases are still pending in other states, including California.
NBC seems to understand what is going on. On the website, the Lucky Case game is listed as taking a "short break." Another game, where viewers text in votes for the next Deal or No Deal model for a chance at a $10k price, NBC seems to be covering all bases. First, in consideration of the $1 texting fee, voters receive Deal or No Deal computer wallpaper and a chance to win the $10k. Second, if the viewer doesn't want to vote, they can merely enter for a chance to win the $10k for free. By tying the $1 to the right to vote and the wallpaper, the game does not seem to require gambling consideration.
What I thought was interesting about this Law.com story on the Georgia case was its disdain for the "colonial era Georgia statute." I guess all old statutes are obsolete, like those for murder, burglary, etc.
You may remember that my oldest daughter is in BYU's Animation Program. Each year students in the program complete an animated film, and I was just looking over some of their past work. The film Lemmings caught my eye. Here is a clip:
You know, of course, that lemmings don't really commit suicide. According to the Wikipedia entry on Lemming, the suicide myth has been around for a very long time, and remains a powerful image in popular culture. The clip below is from a 1964 Disney film entitled White Wilderness that purports to show the very act of lemmings jumping from a cliff.
This has been called "Disney's Snuff Film," but Wikipedia makes the point somewhat more delicately: "An investigation in 1983 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Brian Vallee, showed that the Disney film makers faked the entire sequence using imported lemmings (bought from Inuit children), a snow covered turntable on which a few dozen lemmings were forced to run, and literally throwing lemmings into the sea to show the alleged suicides."
The other famous lemmings image that pops to mind is Apple's 1985 advertisement:
All of this ickiness associated with lemmings ... I'm not sure that I will ever be able to use that metaphor again.
May 12, 2008
If you haven't seen it, this takedown of Dell Computer is a little business classic.
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Because I'm the best mom ever, I spent Mother's Day at the movies with my older two watching Speed Racer. I have to admit that I only vaguely remember the original cartoon (which actually began as Japanese manga), but I think the main characters and the basic plot remains intact. In a nutshell, my kids loved it. (I guess they didn't read the NYT review first.) The movie is very long (over two hours), but my six-year-old never squirmed. In fact, he stood up much of the last hour, as if to get closer to the action.
And action there was. There are frequent car racing sequences, which are a blur of color and light. There are also several martial arts sequences. As someone who wanders through our living room now and then, I have had the opportunity to observe video games from afar, and several scenes in the movie seemed to have been created for the primary purpose of a Speed Racer video game. So what's not to love? Three of the things that my son loves best, car racing (a la Cars), martial arts (a la Power Rangers), and video games were rolled up into one movie. So, it seems like a movie made for kids. Except its confusing. Much of the back story of Speed's brother, Rex, is told in flashbacks superimposed on the present. I had to explain to my kids that the movie was flipping back and forth, because they were not following. To make it even more confusing, during the large "flashback montage," Speed Racer is in a race in which Rex held the track record. A hologram of Rex's car is racing right in front of Speed Racer's real car. So, the movie flips from Rex racing a decade earlier to Speed racing now to Rex's hologram racing now. And of course, Rex and Speed look very similar. I'm still not sure if Luke understood what the true identity of Racer X is, but I think I explained it to him.
The movie is a good Mother's Day movie. The mother is Susan Sarandon, which is automatically a good thing. But the movie has a lot of good family-as-team stuff. My only regret about the movie is that my colleague Larry Ribstein wasn't there. The movie has a lot of what Larry hates -- evil corporations stamping out the heart of the artist-driver. Plus, it has outsider trading! What kid's movie has as its core plot a scheme to use car racing victories as ways to manipulate stock prices for the purpose of mergers and acquisitions?
Forget backdating scandals and accounting scandals, a new fraud revelation is shaking the travel guide industry! Thomas Kohnstamm, a travel writer for among other publishers, Lonely Planet, is making news by blowing the whistle on the crafting of guidebooks. In particular, Kohnstamm claims that the payment schemes for travel writers (who contribute to guidebooks for a fee, but share no royalties and are not reimbursed for expenses) creates incentives for writers to cheat: accept free meals and lodging, cut and paste information on tourist sights from other sources, and include information for places not personally visited. As an outrageous example, Kohnstamm admits to not visiting Colombia while contributing to Lonely Planet's guidebook to that country. Kohnstamm recounts the results of these agency problems in his new book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics & Professional Hedonism.
What is interesting is Kohnstamm's unapologetic non-whistleblower stance. Kohnstamm obviously thinks guidebook publishers should pay more if they want to get more, but he also thinks that buyers of guidebooks should take them with a grain of salt. I was listening to an interview with him on Sirius NPR, and he stressed that no guidebook is the insurer of the reader's vacation. So, if a reader stays at a resort based on its review in the book, which turns out to be recycled for years gone by, and the resort turns out to be a dump -- that's the readers fault for being so gullible. Interesting.
May 11, 2008
Pat Forde lays it on USC's doorstep: "So you take the Bush allegations, add a side of Mayo and ask the question: Has there ever been a more textbook definition of 'lack of institutional control'?"
More details on the Mayo situation here.
May 10, 2008
The idea will no doubt send shudders through the sleepiest corners of the securities industry. But the Globe reports that the question is being litigated as we speak.
While we're rounding up, thanks to the indispensible Securities Mosaic, I've learned in a busy week about just how bad UBS has it, with jailings and $37 million paybacks. And how Prawfsblawg is going for laughs re: contract law and professoring...
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May 09, 2008
I have been a bit out of the blogging loop lately, as I have been trying to meeting some writing deadlines. Last night, I fell asleep with my laptop on my lap, and when I reviewed the document today, I found this word: "analyffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffze."
May 07, 2008
Congratulations to Troy Paredes, Washington University Law School professor and the next nominee to be commissioner of the SEC. Troy has achieved a lot in a little time, including some 18 odd articles, and an editorship on the mammoth, 11 volume, Loss, Seligman, and Paredes Securities Regulation treatise. But we assume he's proudest of his guest stint at this here blog - a stint that may have fast-tracked his candidacy. Congratulations, Troy!
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As I mentioned yesterday, being in the middle of a Dean search forces one to engage in many big-picture conversations about the goals and aspirations of your institution and how best to achieve them. Michael Froomkin (whose institution is also searching for a Dean), has some thoughts about why he feels that "practitioner deans" (i.e., well-established attorneys, judges, etc.) aren't usually a good idea. As you can see from the comments, different law school constituencies feel differently about this issue. Professors seem to be the least amenable, while alumni and students may be more inclined to go with the nonacademic candidate.
The ideal law school dean candidate would be (if it existed) an excellent scholar, an excellent administrator, and an excellent fundraiser. ( I personally believe that Heidi Hurd came very close to this ideal.) Once you accept that you probably aren't going to find this ideal candidate, then the next question is which one of these facet your school is wiling to sacrifice, or at least allow for learning on the job. For different schools, this answer may be different, and for some constituencies within a school, the answer may also be different. What complicates this is that most law schools, like other parts of a research university, do at least two things. Law schools train and graduate future attorneys, but they also conduct research and provide valuable contributions into the marketplace for ideas. At the highest level, law schools use great "legal scientists" who inform the elected and the populace on the issues of the day. So, as the comments to Michael's post suggest, those who see the first contribution of a law school as training and graduating future attorneys will be more attracted to a well-known attorney or judge who brings great knowledge of the legal profession and the challenges that face the local and national bar. However, if one is committed to the second contribution of law schools, then one sees a potential disconnect between the nonacademic candidate and the need for a dean to promote and develop meaningful legal scholarship.
In any event, a school is generally looking at candidates whose skills don't entirely map on to that unique skill set that the ideal dean would have. Teaching and producing excellent scholarship don't teach someone to be able to supervise all the employees of a law school, keep the trains running on time, move the school up the rankings, recruit great students, recruit and retain great faculty, and raise gobs of money. Being an extremely successful attorney may teach someone an awful lot about an area of the law, the working of the courts or dealmaking, and how to develop clients, but it may not develop some of the skills listed above, as wells as being able to converse internally and externally about the past, present and future of legal scholarship and legal education. I've always thought it was interesting that in law firms, attorneys who are great litigators or deal lawyers then get elected managing partner, which requires a completely different set of skills, just like the excellent scholar/teacher who gets appointed dean. In the perfect world, any successful academic candidate will also have some sort of administrative experience, and I would think that the best practitioner candidate would also have some scholarly record.
A very knotty question, but a good conversation worth having.
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May 06, 2008
- Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered as Warnings About the Profession here.
- Who invented globalization? Here.
- How did Yahoo's lawyers help kill the Microsoft deal? Here, with a quote by Steve Davidoff.
- Is Russia learning how to kill foreign investment from CFIUS? Dan Drezner reports, you decide.
