If you’ve ever spent much time reading Amazon reviews, you probably have come away with the impression that something funny is often going on in the review sections. Now Shay David and Trevor Pinch have put together a formal study of how people use Amazon’s review features, not only to boost or dis products but also to create reputational equity. Take a look at the abstract of their study (titled “Six Degrees of Reputation”), and, if it interests you, you can download it here.

I’ve accepted an appointment to a research fellowship at Yale University, co-sponsored by the computer-science department and by the law school, and affiliated with the PORTIA Project and with the Information Society Project. I’ll still be based in the DC area, but will be commuting to New Haven on a regular basis.

Public Knowledge is graciously continuing to host the Godwin’s Law blog.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal publicizes the fact that Google has resumed scanning copyrighted works for its database. This is, I believe, good news for most of us, just as it would be good news if every book were indexed — life is too short, and the world of books is too big, for us to have to spend extra time or money to find things.

Garry Trudeau, the creator and writer of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” has a fine article in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about the kinds of preparations he undertook (and still undertakes) to write about war:

Both soldiers, with the help of incredibly dedicated counselors, are trying to figure out how to live with their emotional wounds as they make the transition out of a military culture that still stigmatizes post-traumatic stress syndrome, and then into a civilian population that can’t possibly understand what they’ve been through.

The reason that I’ve been listening to their stories is that my character B.D. is now at that precise point in his own life, and I need to learn about what that must feel like before I can write about it.

When and if I finally do, I have to do another terrible thing: I have to make it funny. And I have to find a way of doing so without contributing to the suffering that these young veterans are enduring.

In a panel discussion at a forum at Cardozo Law School in New York last year, I argued that in an age of convergence, the Computer Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) would inevitably end up being applied directly to Internet communications. We’re now seeing my prediction come true.

Officially, CALEA was passed in 1994 to apply only to traditional voice communications over the traditional phone network, but the Federal Communications Commission has recently interpreted the law in a more expansive way, ostensibly to address Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) communications. The result? Everybody who’s part of the Internet is now going to be asked (or required) to build in wiretappability.

This New York Times story is just the tip of the iceberg.

My review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent novel, NEVER LET ME GO, is posted now at Reason Online. I liked the book, which was shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.

I’m quoted in a New York Times Week-in-Review article yesterday, regarding the digital video made on the cheap and set to “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” by the Houston rap duo Legendary K.O.

Even if you don’t like the political sentiment of the piece, it’s clear to me that the feelings of rage and frustration behind the music and the video are authentic. And this video was, it is reported, assembled from sampled sources, set to the Legendary K.O.’s music, and distributed to the Internet for about ten bucks. That fact in itself is remarkable — the Times was right to see a story in that.

James Ayres, the UT Austin professor of English who founded the Shakespeare at Winedale program (which I’ve blogged about here) lives in Round Top, Texas, about halfway between Houston and Austin (and thus possibly in the path of Hurricane Rita). On Thursday he e-mailed several of his former students, including me, about what it’s like down there in Southeast Texas, and with his permission I am sharing an excerpt of his e-mail below:

Yesterday I made the mistake of going to Walmart and HEB in La Grange. Should have known what I was in for by the parking lot jam. Inside people were stripping shelves. Bread, crackers, cookies, water, soda pop, beer, toilet paper, paper plates, charcoal, lighter fluid, canned goods….all gone. Checkout lines went down the aisles to the other end of the store. The frenzy is what bothered me the most. The sight of people pushing three piled-high carts. Walmart sold out of all plastic containers, everything that could hold water. They had an attendant at the door saying if you came for water or anything to put water in, we don’t have it. All gas stations in the area have lines of cars….

I got on the road this morning at 6 to go to Austin to teach. An hour and a half later I was in Smithville. That’s about 16 miles from La Grange! As I crawled along–at 5 mph, I saw families sitting on the roadside, waiting for something. Trailers, mobile homes, RVs. trucks and cars pulling very expensive boats. Everyone at 5 mph. Then stop and start. I turned around. Called James [Loehlin]to teach my classes. Houston folks I met today in Round Top told me that it took them 8 hours to get here. At lunch today, JoAnn and I met a family who had left Houston at 4 a.m. They arrived here at 1 p.m. 9 hrs! And they knew the “back roads” they said, the short cuts. JoAnn’s kids in Houston cannot get out because they cannot find a gas station to fill up and are worried about running out of gas during the 8 hour drive it takes to get here.

The good news I suppose is that, learning from Katrina, they are evacuating and that there is not a hint of lawlessness. But there is much of … fear–not of the hurricane–but of strangers invading the community…. Kids are happy: no school. I went to Winedale this afternoon. They have boarded up all glass windows. But alas done nothing to protect the [Shakespeare-at-Winedale] theater] barn. I’m not really worried, though. The barn withstood [Hurricane] Carla in [1961] and though it fills with water during even an ordinary rain, everyone of course knows that hope floats.

Of course, this is nothing, nothing at all like the situation in New Orleans. Nowhere even close. And all of this is well before the storm. That comes tomorrow or Saturday. And I hope everyone will be safe. But I am troubled by how folks are behaving. And also wondering where all of those cars on 71 and 290 are going. Our governor said on TV that “We have 1.5 million to move out of Houston and we’ll do it,” he said . “Be patient.” Sounds a bit like Balthasar in The Comedy of Errors. Or Bush. So where are they to go?

The saddest thing I heard today was an Austin TV reporter say “we have some really good news, the hurricane is moving closer to Louisiana.”

The New York Times reports today that the Authors Guild has sued Google Print for “massive copyright infringment” (according to the language of the complaint). The fact that (a) no one can download a complete work, or even most of one, that’s protected by our copyright law (you can get only snippets, based on Google searches), and (b) the service will almost certainly result in more sales rather than fewer sales, seems to have escaped the plaintiffs.

The Times story ends by noting that some publishers have voluntarily given over their works to Google for the Google Print project — “Most of the large commercial publishing houses have submitted books to Google for scanning, in the hope that the program will lead users to find and buy their books more easily.” So at least some publishers are aware that reflexively screaming “Infringement!” is not the best way to make money for themselves and their authors.

There are principled arguments that our nation should rely not on regulation but on market forces — specifically, on the skyrocketing prices of gasoline — to trigger fuel efficiency in new automobiles. But leave it to the Wall Street Journal to label government-imposed fuel-efficiency standards as “blood for oil.”

The theory here is that lighter vehicles (which are therefore more fuel-efficient) are more likely to result in death or injury during collisions. Although this generalization is overbroad — some heavier vehicles, such as pickup trucks, may be designed in ways that, despite their weight, result in more catastrophic accidents for their passengers — it’s true that smaller cars are likely to come out worse in collisions with heavier vehicles. But isn’t this an argument for creating disincentives, rather than incentives, for buying heavier vehicles? (Whether the disincentives come primarily from price hikes or from regulation makes no difference to me.) I find the prospect of being hit by a Mini Cooper or a Prius less daunting than a collision with a Hummer.

It seems hardly worth repeating that less dependence on foreign oil would make the United States less politically, economically, and militarily vulnerable, and would be better for the environment besides. So fuel efficiency, however we get there, seems to be indisputably a worthy goal — at least for rational people.

One implication of the Journal’s editorial is that we ought to be building heavier, less fuel-efficient cars on the theory that a crash in a heavier car is something you’re likelier to walk away from. In any case, the notion that calling for fuel efficiency is the equivalent of trading blood for oil is the sort of perversity that makes you wonder if the Wall Street Journal’s editorialists live in Bizarro World.