otium cum dignitate

Internet Radio In Trouble

Since starting my office job at a law firm this summer, I've become an avid listener of Pandora, the popular internet radio website.  After raving about Pandora to friends and coworkers, I was surprised on Tuesday when Pandora and all of the other internet radio providers staged a "Day of Silence."

A recent ruling in March by the Copyright Royalty Board increased royalty rates by 300 to 1200% for internet radio broadcasters.  The steep increase is so severe for internet radio broadcasters that a special website has been set up to fight the ruling, and all internet radio broadcasters went dark on Tuesday to call attention to the issue.  Supposedly, it worked, as more than 350,000 calls were made to Congress opposing the royalty rate hike.

Internet radio broadcasters argue that their royalty rates should be equal to the royalty rates paid by satellite radio broadcasters.  This seems pretty reasonable to me.  You can't copy songs onto your computer from internet radio broadcasters, so I don't understand the harm of lower royalty rates.  If anything, Pandora exposes me to musicians that I've never heard of,  and encourages me to buy the music I really like since I can only listen to it once on Pandora. 

Baseball Post #1: The Unheralded Casey Kotchman

Since I already spend hours of my day reading and researching baseball statistics, I feel like I should impart some of my more esoteric tidbits of baseball knowledge to my loyal blog readers.  And I might as well join the millions of baseball bloggers in an attempt to act like I actually know what I'm talking about.  These posts should also be helpful to fantasy baseball players (like myself) who don't have the time or motivation to dig through unending pages of stats and player notes. 

Today's baseball post examines the curious lack of hype for the young Angels slugger Casey Kotchman.  Selected in the first round in 2001, Kotchman is only 24 years old, and he is putting up elite batting statistics this year:  .333 avg, 8 hr, 35 rbi, .411 OBP (24:16 BB:K ratio).  Kotchman's .967 OPS ranks him 9th in the majors.  Moreover, Kotchman's GPA (gross production average -- basically OPS adjusted for park factors) is .336, placing at #7 in the league between David Ortiz and Prince Fielder. 

Perhaps Kotchman's .152 avg in 2006 scared the hype bandwagon away.  Nevermind the fact that he had mono last spring, and went on the DL for the year with the illness in May.

Kotchman hasn't exactly come out of nowhere.  His career Minor League #'s: .325 avg, .407 OBP, .900 OPS.  In 2001, Baseball America rated Kotchman the #1 high school prospect in the country.

So why isn't this guy demanding the sort of hype typically showered on young phenoms (see David Wright, Prince Fielder, Justin Verlander)?  He's currently suffering from post-concussion symptoms (someone threw a baseball at his head), so maybe the injury has quieted the hype machine.  The real answer, I think, is that Kotchman has never really showed 40-50 HR potential.  That's ok with me though.  He's on my fantasy team for good and I have no fear predicting 2007 #'s of: .320 avg, 28 HR, 100 RBI, 90 BB's, 90 runs.  Going forward, Casey Kotchman will be a top 15 player for years. 

Mid-summer update

It's been a while since I wrote a post that is actually about me. 

Lately, I've been working at a small administrative law firm in Alexandria, VA as well as working as an environmental law research assistant for a professor at GW law.  Both jobs are actually great.  The firm job has given me a new perspective on small-firm life.  It's unbelievably better than the horror stories you hear coming out of the big corporate firms.  The research position, although more boring, is allowing me to work in a field I actually care about (environmental law).

Other than that, I've been refining my golf game.  I've come a long way since last summer, and i'm consistently shooting in the mid 90's these days.  My goal is to break 90 by summer's end.  I shot a 41 on a 9-hole course last weekend (the course was pretty easy though), so I'm definitely headed in the right direction.

I also joined an adult softball league, which has turned out to be an incredible idea.  It's really fun, and hopefully I can hold onto my current shortstop position without making too many dumb plays.

Music-wise, I continue to spend hours/day with my i-pod, and i'm sensing an obsessive jazz-listening phase approaching.  Still not really playing though...

More generally, my outlook on my legal career is vastly improved over last summer when I suffered through a nasty case of the post-1L blues.  It took me a good year to fully regain perspective on life again.  I finally feel healthy, both mentally and physically.  Speaking of which, I'm continuing my workout routine which I began in January.  It's had minimal effects on my physique thus far, but that probably has more to do with all the beer I ingest. 

My fantasy baseball team is seriously pissing me off.  If any of you have any good tips, I'd welcome just about any piece of advice right now.

Real posts to come, hopefully... 

Law 5 , Politics 4

It's always exciting to see a non-abortion Supreme Court opinion receive front-page press coverage.  This week, the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear has garnered a fair amount of attention both in the news and editorials.

I think that this case, and the outcry against it, demonstrates the all-too-common misunderstanding that politics and the law are a single entity.  I submitted the following letter to the NYT this morning (i'm pretty certain they won't publish it):

Dear NYT Editors,
 
While I do not take issue with the policy advocated in your recent editorial "Injustice 5, Justice 4," I am frustrated with your apparent inability to separate politics from the law.  The Civil Rights Act specifically requires employees to file complaints within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory practice.  Congress did not include this restriction just so that it could be broadened to the point of irrelevancy by the courts and the E.E.O.C.  Instead of castigating the Supreme Court majority and lauding Justice Ginsburg's Scalia-esque rant from the bench, you should call on Congress to revise the law so that it better aligns with what you call the "realities of the workplace." The place for policy-making is and should remain in Congress, not in the Supreme Court, or any court for that matter.
 
Thank you for your time,
Zachary Williams,
George Washington University Law Student, Washington, DC

While I do not necessarily agree with the policy that stems from the Court's legitimate interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, I do understand the important justification in limiting the ability of employees to sue employers on the often unfounded basis of gender or race discrimination.  Also, the Equal Pay Act  further protects employees such as Ledbetter in this case who receive lesser pay then their male counterparts merely on the basis of gender.

In general, I believe in a hands-off judicial approach that refuses to usurp the role of lawmaking from the actual elected lawmakers.  Obviously, this judicial philosophy is not always appropriate, but in this case, it seems to make a lot of sense.