Memorandum

To: Law student subscribers.
From: David Carney.
Re: Termination of law student subscriptions.
Date: January 1, 2003.

Regretfully, as of January 1, 2003, the Tech Law Journal Daily E-Mail Alert is no longer offered for free to law students.

The TLJ Alert has been free for law students, journalists and government officials. All other subscribers have been required to pay an annual subscription fee. This has turned out to be a disastrous policy.

Basically, others have used law students to provide them with free and infringing copies. Law professors have told their law students to subscribe and provide them with free copies. Adjunct law professors who are also partners in large law firms have done the same. Finally, law firms have told their law clerks to do the same.

I write and publish the Tech Law Journal web site and the TLJ Alert as a full time business. My only source of income is subscription payments for the TLJ Alert. This practice of using law students to infringe these copyrighted works is undermining the financial viability of Tech Law Journal.

Having gone through the experience of being a poor law student myself years ago, I wanted to provide law students with free subscriptions. Unfortunately, in practice, it has not worked out.

Prospective subscribers who could easily afford to pay for subscriptions are using law students to avoid payment. For example, I recently received an e-mail from a professor who teaches intellectual property law at a major law school. He also practices law at a huge and wealthy law firm. Either his firm, his law school, or he himself could easily have afforded to pay for a subscription. Yet, he demanded a free subscription, and added that if I did not give him one, he would tell one of his students to subscribe, and forward copies to him. This is the sort of infringement that I seek to end.

This is particularly regrettable course of action because it is difficult to blame the law students. Future job opportunities depend upon the grades that they receive from their professors, and the job offers that they receive from the firms for which they have clerked. Yet, it the persons assigning these grades and making these job offers that are telling law students to infringe.

The last free issue for law students will be sent on January 17.