ゆうぎおう（遊戯王）デュエルモンスターズGX タッグフォース TAGFORCE……

男の紫外線対策 男は日焼けした肌が格好いい、と思い込んでいませんか? 紫外線を浴びると、過剰な活性酸素が生み出されて、シミ・ソバカス・シワの原因となり肌の老化へとつながり…

Michael Arrington writes at Techcrunch about a former law firm, all of whose records are going to be opened to the public: Brobeck, Pleger & Harrison LLP was a well known law firm in silicon valley during the first Internet……

Thanks for pointing out the error in the text on the Brobeck Closed Archive website. The “link to” was my note to the webmaster and needs to be cleaned up. I’ll take care of that next week.

To be clear and on the record, I have no interest in preserving records that legitimate rightsholders do not want to have preserved. Period. I believe that individuals should control the fate of their electronic traces in the world. I have received “opt in” notices from several individuals, and these few records will be preserved, but that’s it as far as individuals go.

I am interested in saving the records of organizations that no longer have voice, either because they have failed or because they have provided no guidance about what to do with these records. In the case of Brobeck, we have a law firm that is no longer able to provide basic custodial service to its former clients, some of which may be historically important for our understanding of the rise of the internet. I don’t want those records to be lost simply because the default preservation setting for 1s and 0s is “do not save.” According to the court ruling, it will very hard for scholars to access these records, too hard I fear for many. But I figured that saving something, anything, from this period would be better than losing it all for sure.

Now, of course, organizations are made up of individuals so the records of organizations will contain information about individuals, some of which may need to be scrubbed by archivists for sensitive information, but I would argue that one’s history within an organizational setting is very different from personal history. And that’s a problem that professional archivists deal with every day, very capably.

Reasonable people may disagree with what we are trying to do. That’s fine. I believe that digital preservation deserves better than digging through bankruptcy filings to save scraps of the past. This is a debate that we should be having in kitchens and board rooms across the country. But for the moment, we’re having it here, 40 messages deep on a comment board. So be it. Hopefully, eventually, we will define a collective policy regime and associated technology that will allow us to preserve our digital heritage while maintaining privacy as needed (and, of course, legal confidentiality and privilege too).

Climbing down from my soapbox, let me give you a sense of where we stand today, Dec 2006. We have received opt out requests from approximately 400 former Brobeck clients, out of 26,000+ total client database entries. Obviously, these are the bigger clients. In total, approximately 10% of the records will be covered under “opt out,” a number that may rise slightly as time passes and more former clients avail themselves of their right to opt out.

Again, thanks for your interest and for reading this far. And thanks Sam, for being persistent in tracking me down. This is a far flung enterprise with many moving parts so it keeps us busy.

Best holiday wishes,

- david k.

Can you explain what you mean “…much less understand that if a corp is disolved, the ip/papers don’t simply go to anyone (or org) who’s named in the docs.. this would be why the judge made the ruling to do what he did with the docs.”?

I have seen a corporation dissolution first hand, I don’t get what you mean. Brobeck didn’t just dissolve (and it was an LLP not a corp). The partners filed for dissolution but it was insolvent and couldn’t meet its debts. So creditors filed an involuntary Chapter 7 and then the bankruptcy trustee and the judge make a clear decision to allow this to happen. The UMD archive project reached out to the judge and trutee, not the other way around. This is not a typical practice for a bankruptcy (although it does happen). Normally I would expect that corporate records would go to whomever acquired those assets or be shredded.

I am disappointed you didn’t make it clear in your comment, the perfect place to do it, that former Brobeck clients can still opt-out. And your website fails to link to the opt-out documents. It has the text, but there is no active URL:

“Q. What if I don’t want to participate? What can I do?
A. Pursuant to the Court Order, you may elect to Opt-Out of the Closed Archive by completing an Option Notice [link: option sheet]. At the time the Brobeck records are transferred into the permanent archive, you will receive a notice confirming that your wishes have been honored. There is no need to expedite your decision to opt-out; even after your records have been transferred into the permanent archive, you retain the right to opt-out later, at which time we will remove your records.
You may also be interested in obtaining a copy of your records for your own use. Please note that opting-out of the Closed Archive and requesting a copy of your records are separate decisions; you may choose to do one without doing the other. To request a copy of your records, please e-mail Prof. David Kirsch (dkirsch (at) rhsmith (dot) umd (dot) edu) for more information.”

(See here: http://www.brob...ve.org/faq.html)

Why no link? Maybe you can re-post those opt-out documents. I am sure it wasn’t your intention, but the impression it gives is that you are trying to avoid a mass opt-out.

So for all you former Brobeck clients. It is NOT too late to opt out. I am a former client, and I know that my full name and social security number, and that off all my former investors and officers, are in several of the documents that I believe would appear in the archive.

regarding what prof kirsh has written. he’s on the level, and he’s an oncredibly nice guy to talk to when you can find him. he’s also pretty busy!!!

in talking to him, over 6 months ago, he was quite helpful.

but, as he stated, a lot of you guys haven’t bothered to even talk with him, much less understand that if a corp is disolved, the ip/papers don’t simply go to anyone (or org) who’s named in the docs.. this would be why the judge made the ruling to do what he did with the docs…

peace…

I’m the professor responsible for this project, and looking back over the 30-odd posts above, there has been lots of mis-representation of what has happened so far and what we are proposing to do going forward.

Please: before you rant about how crazy and stupid this seems, read through the court order containing the methodology that will guide our efforts going forward – http://www.brob...osedarchive.org. There are important safeguards in place, and I, for one, am committed to honoring them. The idea that these records will be posted on a website tomorrow is bonkers.

And to those of you who think that you will simply be able to file a FOIA request to get access to these materials, guess again. Access will be strictly limited. Frankly, I wish more people could be granted access to these materials because I’m sure there’s much to be learned from the events they chronicle. But the court set the rules.

If anyone is interested in learning about what we’re actually doing, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, take much of what’s been written here with a big lump of salt.

- david kirsch

after reading/perusing a great deal of the above quotes.. i’m sitting here laughing my ass off…

1st.. has anyone actually contact u of maryland, and the business archive project. i seriosuly doubt that you have, otherwise you might not be so excited!!

you guys love to pounce on rumours.

a good deal of the material that’s available will be redacted of ’sensitive’ information. this is the information that hasn’t been removed because someone opted out of the process.

to get access to the really good stuff, you pretty much have to be in academia (student/prof/research/etc..) with a reasonable compelling reason for access. however, there will be a pool of information for the casual user, but you could proably get more sensitive information for a good tech blog.

i’ve talked with the prof behind the system, he’s pretty reasonable!!

your milage might vary.

peace..

ps. the other thing to keep in mind.. the vast majority of any information in the files/project, will be well over five years old, relating to comanies that have long since cease to exist.

which gets to a point that alot of you have bitched about, the client. if the client of the law firm was a corporate structure, and the corporate structure disolves, and is no longer operational, the docs go to whoever the judge deems fit!!

peace.!!

Oh yes, and of course IANAL.

I can see this is a really stupid idea but if they are going to do it they should not make the public for 25 years and then it wouldn’t matter so much.

Second, attorney-client privilege is not the same as client confidentiality. The privilege is a rule that pertains ONLY to communications FROM the client. For example, no firm could be subpoenaed to produce letters from their own client. The more general rule confidentiality rule is a rule of ethics with substantially more gray area. The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct are as follows:

While I don’t quite think this is a good idea, it is also not the end of the world, nor even unprecedented. After William Kunstler died 10 years ago, there was a bitter fight over who owned his files- although it was ultimately decided on rather dull issues of property law, the cases raised issues of confidentiality and publicity over client files. So far, I believe biographers and reporters have been given access to the files, but there is a plan (I think?) to archive all his old files in a museum (All in the archives, sorry- http://query.ny...amp;sort=newest)

What’s gone wrong here?

If you don’t like it don’t read it.
All the stories that Michael has posted so far, though not all directly related to Web 2.0 start ups are, in my opinion (and Michael’s evidently) likely to be of great interest to those also interested in Web 2.0.

I for one am glad this has been brought to my attention. Thank you Michael.

Do you think anyone gives a rat’s ass about your opinion on how Netflix screwed you or if you think that someone publishing something is bad. People visit your site to see links to new sites. and that’s it. If you think your opinion matters on anything, you need to think again and just stick to giving links to new sites. Sorry if I sound too blunt. But please wake up from your dream.

Thanks
rt