there's been happenings-a-transpiring

Well...it's been a while since I posted. I was afraid nobody was interested in my blog, but then I received a veritable plethora off comments from my friend Jenny (who is appreciative of shout-outs, so there's another one for you, sweetness), so I guess people actually do read this big piece of crap.

Last week some organization, club or something had a meeting at lunchtime. I didn't know or really care about what they were selling, but when I saw the pizza being delivered to the room, I decided in fact I was interested! I'm so sad...but really, free food is too good to pass up.

So off I go into the meeting, which it turns out was for this organization called Equal Justice Works. Can you guess what they do? Of course. It's an organization that encourages public service law (actually I'm not sure if it's law only, or public service in general).

Let me interject here that I really never had that idealism that so many law students have, or that we are told so many law students have. I never had that "I'm going to save the world!" mentality - and frankly, I don't know too many of my peers who do. Maybe they're too embarrassed or something. I think for me, my age has a lot to do with it.

Sorry - another interjection here, within the 1st interjection - I'm sitting in class, and my prof has to be the most technologically challenged man in the history of technologically challenged men. Nevertheless, he shows powerpoint slides every day. A few times over the semester he's had to call the computer person from the library to do something that was likely very simple but which h couldn't figure out.

So just now, he was in the middle of these slides - no one is paying any attention - and he stops, I look up and he's trying to fix something on the screen. He's asking for help, no one is answering, so I speak up and ask, "What are you trying to do?"

He says, "I'm trying to get this off the screen." There's nothing on the screen that we can see. He continues, "it says s-v-c-h-o-s-t-dot-e-x-e." Yeah, I can tell at this point that this computer novice is probably scared shitless at a window that says this. I look around, no one cares.

So, I run down and look at the screen. Sure enough, it's a dialog window that isn't showing up on the overhead projection, but is on his screen. I tell him, "Just click 'ok'."

"I can't," says he. Poor, poor man. He is confused at the difference between the touch screen and the regular screen. So I click ok on the touch-screen with my fingernail (as good as a stylus, I've found), and he proclaims, "GENIUS!" I hope I get extra credit.

Anyway...where the heck was I? Oh yeah. I'm not idealistic.

So I'm in this presentation, where they tell us that Equal Justice Works has a fellowship program, where you, the newly graduated lawyer, make a 2-year program in some area of public interest law. I didn't think much of it, until this weekend, when I realized, hey, maybe I am idealistic, at least in one specific area of interest - Intellectual Property! I may write a different post about some other transpirings that happened in that respect.

But, walking back from the store last night (between the 1st and 2nd periods of the Wings awesome series-clinching defeat of the disgustingly inept and dirty Flames) I had an idea: I could work for 2 years for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a.k.a. EFF, and travel the country defending people from lawsuits for file sharing. The logistics of this proposal are, admittedly, ambitious (understatement). How do I argue before possibly every federal district court? Do every one pro hoc vice? Or actually get licensed before every court? Or get licensed before only each court in which there is a case? I don't know...

The other part of what I'd like to do is to speak at Universities in regards to organizations like the RIAA demanding that they give up their students information - IP addresses, stuff like that. Basically, I want to defend people - as part of a bigger organization, as part of a bigger plan by that organization. Also, it might be a great way to get my foot n the door at EFF, who are concerned with so many of the issues that I am.

Ok - super long post that has taken me a long time to write. More later.