property law

Part one of Errol Morris's First Person interview with Murray Richman, a New York lawyer who defends mob figures. He talks about how he sees the law and his clients.

A one-minute clip from the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. Thomas More refuses to arrest the Devil, saying he would give even the Devil the benefit of law for his own safety's sake.

An Adam Ruins Everything segment on the real facts of the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, covering the severity of the burns and the corporate PR campaign that painted it as frivolous.

LegalEagle analyzes Katko v. Briney, the Iowa case about a homeowner whose shotgun booby trap injured a burglar, and the limits on deadly force in defending property.

Casey Muratori's lecture, originally given at the Technical University of Madrid, arguing that Conway's Law is the only viable candidate for a true law of software architecture. He explains how software mimics the organization over time, using examples like Windows' multiple volume controls.

Matt Parker examines claims that Biden's 2020 vote counts violate Benford's Law, explaining the law and why it often does not apply to precinct-level election data.

A brief toast by lithography expert Chris Mack at SPIE Advanced Lithography 2014, humorously declaring the end of Moore's Law. His argument centers on the cost per transistor no longer falling.

A four-minute clip of Milton Friedman, from a 1978 address, discussing property taxes and land value taxation. He says property tax is the least bad tax and explains why it is so unpopular.

An illustrated 23-minute summary of David Friedman's talk based on The Machinery of Freedom. It describes how law, police and courts could work as market services in a stateless society, covering private law, polycentric law and objections.

A Soho Forum debate in which patent lawyer Stephan Kinsella argues for abolishing copyright and patents against law professor Richard Epstein. Both come from libertarian perspectives.

Part 3 of WIRED's Future Cities series on Shenzhen. It examines how attitudes toward patents and intellectual property differ from the West, and how shanzhai (copycat) manufacturing created an ecosystem of rapid iteration and distribution.

A one-minute rap by George Hotz (geohot) aimed at Sony, made as an entry for a contest while Sony was suing him over the PS3 jailbreak. It is a humorous diss track delivered from the middle of the lawsuit.

A short clip of 1980s news coverage in which people react angrily to new drunk driving laws, with some calling them communist.

Adam Neely explains that Warner Music claimed his video, which defended their copyright in a lawsuit, over a work whose copyright they had lost. He calls it an ironic and absurd claim, and the claim was later released.

Bryan Cantrill's Scale By The Bay 2019 talk on software after Moore's Law. He covers the end of easy scaling and the move toward specialized, emerging architectures.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on civil asset forfeiture, the process by which police can seize property they suspect is tied to crime. It explains how the property itself is put on trial and how departments profit.

Deviant Ollam gives a long talk on risk and preparedness: get a lawyer, passport, locksmith and other resources before you need them. It covers practical steps to build defenses against serious problems in life.

Lex Fridman interviews legendary chip architect Jim Keller about Moore's Law, microprocessor design, and first-principles thinking. Keller draws on his work at AMD, Apple, Tesla and Intel, discussing instruction sets, transistor budgets, and self-driving.

Jim Keller gives a UC Berkeley EECS colloquium arguing that Moore's Law is not dead. He surveys upcoming technologies and the multiple innovation curves that can keep transistor density and performance scaling.

Engineer Stuff Made Here builds two new supposedly unpickable locks with different designs and sends them to the Lock Picking Lawyer to see whether they can be defeated. The video covers the novel anti-picking mechanisms.

A satirical 'honest' government ad from The Juice Media about Australia's 2018 Assistance and Access anti-encryption bill. It lays out in blunt terms what the law would let authorities do.

Flanders and Swann perform 'First and Second Law', a comic song about the laws of thermodynamics, from their 1964 stage show At the Drop of Another Hat. It sets the first and second laws to a deadpan call-and-response routine.

Regent Law professor James Duane gives startling reasons why people, even innocent ones, should always exercise their Fifth Amendment rights rather than talk to police. It is based on his article and book on the subject.

FTC Chair Lina Khan sits down with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show to discuss the agency's work protecting consumers from unfair business practices. Topics include the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, healthcare industry actions, and whether tech companies are racing to control AI.

Larry Lessig's TED talk argues that copyright law chokes creativity, drawing on John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the ASCAP cartel to make the case for reviving remix culture.

Wendover Productions explains why Amtrak trains run late: most Amtrak routes run on freight-owned track, and the law giving passenger trains priority is rarely enforced. The video covers rail ownership versus control and how freight carriers hold the leverage.

Paolo fromTOKYO explains why foreign tourists get arrested in Japan, covering strict laws and the justice system's very high conviction rate.

Moon Channel, run by a lawyer, explains the legal basis for emulation, including the history of emulation case law and Nintendo's takedown of Dolphin's Steam release. It argues the legality of emulators is more fragile than most people assume.

Institute for Justice footage of Nevada Highway Patrol troopers seizing the life savings of Stephen Lara, a retired Marine, during a traffic stop under civil forfeiture. The video documents the stop and the case that followed.

A 2012 lecture by Richard Stallman at Reykjavik University arguing that copyright, built for the printing press, fits poorly with computer networks. He criticizes draconian enforcement and corporate lobbying.

Louis Rossmann recounts calling NYC's Department of Consumer Affairs after his repair business was fined, only to find the agency staff could not explain what the law required. The call starts around 3:14.

A LockPickingLawyer video showing that a padlock sold as an Amazon's Choice high-security product can be opened trivially, with no picking needed.

Lawrence Lessig's Talks at Google presentation based on his book Republic, Lost, arguing that money in politics corrupts Congress and eroded public trust, and outlining what could be done about it. It supports the argument with data on political donations.

In this TED talk, Lawrence Lessig argues that American politics is corrupted by Congress's dependence on funding from a tiny fraction of citizens. He uses rapid-fire visuals and calls for a bipartisan push to reclaim the Republic.

Lawrence Krauss's 2009 talk on the current picture of the universe, how it will end and how it could have come from nothing. It covers the expanding universe, cosmic background radiation and the cosmological constant.

The first of Richard Feynman's 1964 Cornell Messenger Lectures, The Character of Physical Law, focusing on the law of gravitation. Feynman builds up from planetary motion to the nature of physical laws.

Seeker's Focal Point short documentary on ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which make the most advanced chips. It shows how plasma-generated 13.5 nm light is used to push Moore's Law forward.

John Hughes, co-creator of QuickCheck, talks about property-based testing of hard systems. He shows production examples where it found very low-level bugs, including issues in the CAN bus standard.

Physicist Geoffrey West speaks at an FQXi conference on time about complexity and scaling laws. He covers how metabolism, growth and lifespan scale across organisms and how the same mathematics applies to cities and companies.

Vsauce's explainer on Zipf's law, the pattern in which the frequency of a word is inversely related to its rank. It shows the pattern across many domains and discusses why it remains unexplained.