Cultivated Compendium

Ars Technica reports on the leak of draft language of a proposed free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, between the United States and several other countries, including Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, and Canada.

The draft's proposals include:

* imposing limitations on retransmissions of television signals on the Internet without the authorization of copyright holders (Aereo and its rival FilmOn X say their streaming services don't violate copyright law because they use individual antennas for each customer to retransmit free broadcast TV on-line);

* extending copyright law in other countries to last for the life of the author plus 70 years;

* and a six-strikes regime "that could ultimately lead to customers suspected of copyright piracy being kicked off their ISP."

Google's book-scanning project has been ruled to be a fair use that doesn't violate copyright law, GigaOM reports.  Judge Denny Chin, who now sits on the Second Circuit, ruled that the digitization of the books did not violate the authors' copyrights because the scanning project is "'highly transformative' and because it didn’t harm the market for the original work," GigaOM also reports.

The Greenwich Time reports that a hearing on Michael Skakel's release from jail will be held next week. The Kennedy cousin has won a new trial after a judge ruled that he received inadequate representation by his defense lawyer. Skakel was convicted many years after teenager Martha Moxley was killed by being beaten and stabbed with golf clubs that belonged to Skakel's family.

Hawaii became the 15th state to authorize same-sex marriage with Governor Neil Abercrombie's signature on the legislation, the Los Angeles Times reports. When the bill was in the House, "deliberations lasted for several days and included a committee hearing in which 5,000 people signed up to testify for more than 50 hours, followed by hours of debate on the House floor on nearly 30 proposed amendments."

A court challenge to the same-sex marriage law is already pending. The argument is that legislatively authorizing same-sex nuptials violates a Hawaii constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. However, Hawaii's attorney general concluded the constitutional amendment authorized legislators to ban same-sex matrimony, but that's a step they didn't take, The LA Times also reported.

Hawaii has passed legislation to authorize same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports. The governor is expected to sign it. Illinois also has legislation to authorize same-sex marriage, and that will be signed next week.

The Recorder reports that student athletes have been certified as a class to challenge the National Collegiate Athletic Association's rules that require collegiate athletes to sign away their rights of publicity.  That would include the right to license their names and likenesses for use in videogames and on television. However, the presiding California federal judge did not certify the athletes who were seeking to recover money damages.

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes writes about the litigants who don't want their cases to go the U.S. Supreme Court because they won below. Or because they are worried about how the general-knowledge justices might change legal doctrine in their particular area of law. "For every prayer sent up by a losing party appealing a case, there is a winner who hopes — and sometimes, works hard to ensure — that it goes unanswered," Barnes writes.

In 1910, President Taft signed the Buy Indian Act into law, The Washington Times reports. The law requires the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs to give preference to American Indian-owned businesses in awarding contracts and funding. But the Interior Department only just approved the rules that will enforce the legislation, The Washington Times further reports. As a result of the law, an estimated $45 million would go to American Indian-owned and -operated businesses each year.

(I wonder how many other laws never had their implementing regulations put into place.)

sUAS News, a blog that follows news on small unmanned aerial systems (or drones), opined last week that "it is rare that industries come to Washington begging for more regulation. But that is how we in the unmanned systems business find ourselves with respect to small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS). A notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) has been on the shelf for years. We need to move forward before a serious accident occurs."

Rulemaking for small drones might finally be moving ahead. The Federal Aviation Authority just announced a roadmap for the integration of  private drones into America's airspace. The roadmap takes on important issues like privacy, civil liberties and national security.