The truth? Who knows. But Google is smart to determine what it might need to pay to push its content to the top of consumers’ pipes if broadband access remains mostly unregulated. Especially when Verizon is paying the most to bend the ears of those in power.

Confusion arises when people (read: professional journalists) take the rather vague term of “network neutrality,” as is bantered about by lobbyists (read: Google) and embrace the vagueness for the sake of making a story. Today, it’s that Google, one of the world’s biggest internet content providers, is talking with Verizon, a major broadband service provider and Google’s primary handset-based internet access provider, about how Google can ensure its services are delivered to its consumers. Framed that way, the talks make perfect sense. (Remember: Google is now, always has been, and will continue to be, paying someone to get its content from one end of the internet to the other. This is just a question of whether Google can pay more to get better service.)

Wikipedia can tell you what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is not the law. It is a very nice idea that would require a major political commitment by our government to subvert free market principles in broadband access. I’m looking for where Google swore it would never plan for what happens when our government lacks the political will or simply lacks the legal authority to enforce net neutrality for Google’s benefit. I don’t think I’ll find such a promise.

Until Congress gets the courage to enact something to prevent such lawful collusion, or the FCC solidifies its stance with legitimate rules, this is exactly the kind of behavior we should expect from Google and its content and delivery brethren.

Bottom line: this is capitalism at its finest. If you want to protect the internet, you’ve got to be willing to have the government step in. Net neutrality is a socialist idea. I am comfortable with that. The New York Times clearly is not.

What caught my attention earlier today was the discussion from the Economics of Interface: Vendors Respond session. You can get a feel for it through Greg Lambert’s tweets, starting here and Meg Kribble’s starting here. The gist that interested me was that Westlaw (here, in the form of WestlawNext) and LexisNexis representatives were recycling content and information about product upgrades that everyone has heard before. But Fastcase was unveiling new research features and talking researching scholarship. Telling was Sarah Glassmeyer’s characterization of Ed Walters as a third-party candidate in a political debate. (Ed is founder and CEO of Fastcase, which I’ve written about before.) Westlaw and Lexis came off like the big-party candidates with canned non-responses, while Fastcase was there to actually discuss the issues.

My interest has always been piqued by horror stories of legal research pricing. I appreciate that every company must make money to survive, but, as a long-time public servant, I’m put off by anyone who’s willing to capitalize so much on information that’s created with public money (statutes, case law, and much legal scholarship).

So what makes Fastcase different? First, it is very open about pricing, and about what’s included in a given price. Compare that to WestlawNext’s gymnastics to keep pricing out of new product discussions. Second, Fastcase is a small company, with leadership that’s extremely approachable (Ed responds to tweets and phone calls promptly and personally). It also doesn’t hurt that Fastcase had positioned itself well in the eyes of some AALL attendees before the vendor session. Finally, Fastcase is willing to innovate for the sake of better research — and not just by creating a Google-esque interface, which WestlawNext’s primary improvement, from my perspective as a novice researcher. Fastcase’s four dimensional search visualization really is useful, and it’s brand-new Forecite feature will bring together the purposefulness Fastcase’s interface design with the common-sense usability of a Google keyword search. (Though Ed Walters might have overstated Foresite’s gravity just a bit; pretty sure Google beat ‘em to this with “did you mean.” But still awesome.)

Thanks to the AALL tweeters for delivering insightful perspectives on the rapidly-changing landscape of legal research.

This opinion:

1. Reaffirms my ♥ for Justice Stevens.
2. Reads like a mini-treatise on how and why the court got to where it is today in this function-over-form assessment of combinations that might restrain trade.
3. Severely overuses the phrase “independent centers of decisionmaking.”
4. Is a reminder that the new administration’s antitrust machine is rolling right along (see the amicus brief for this case here).
5. Makes me grateful for having learned antitrust from Herbert Hovenkamp.

Cases like this — that concretely connect something I’ve recently studied in law school to the popular real work — fully activate my dormant lawgeek, and make me glad I’ve committed to learning and studying law.

I know a lot more now about the balance of equity involved in barring or allowing claims. I get that shorter statutes of limitation are good for finality, but also for judicial efficiency: keeping stale claims out of the courts. Today I learned why statutes of limitations, and the finality that they provide defendants, are absolutely critical in the criminal context, thanks to criminal defense attorney and blogger Brian Tannebaum. On the risks of removing the Florida statute of limitations for some sex offenses:

We live in a country where person after person after person is being exonerated by DNA evidence. People who were sentenced to death, and to life. Is this the time to abolish statutes of limitations on cases where a mere accusation can result in a criminal prosecution that can take away a person’s liberty for the rest of their life?…Why we are OK letting our elected leaders convince us that finality and liberty only matter in the types of cases in which they decide?

Brian’s point is that the very real and tragic victims’ stories often prevent discussion of why we have statutes of limitations in the first place: that freedom from fear of prosecution is integral to our liberty, and liberty is a fundamental American right. Thanks, Brian, for bringing this point home.

A statement by Iowa’s Senate Majority Leader perhaps best sums up why I still stick up for Iowa:

“Iowa has always been a leader in the area of civil rights.

“In 1839, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected slavery in a decision that found that a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War decided the issue.

“In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated “separate but equal” schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.

“In 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations, 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.

“In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law.

“In the case of recognizing loving relationships between two adults, the Iowa Supreme Court is once again taking a leadership position on civil rights.”

Finally, as a law student, it was pretty awesome, albeit a little nerdy, to read an opinion of such historic relevance and 1) understand what’s going on from a procedural standpoint and 2) recall that I had a chance to meet the opinion’s author, Justice Mark Cady last fall at a dinner party at a professor’s house. Sweet.