ABA Journal - December 2009

How Many
Postal Workers
Does It Take ...

IF THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE START OF A bad joke, please forgive Philadelphia writer Leigh Deveres for filling in the punch line.

For the last two years Deveres has been receiving periodic but regular bundles of mail intended for the clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court.

The most recent batch was delivered to her this summer. The clerk’s office is housed in the 31-story landmark building known as the Richard J. Daley Center in the heart of downtown Chicago. That’s Chicago, Ill. Deveres lives in a three-story, single-family house in suburban Philadelphia. That’s Philadelphia, Pa.

So why is Deveres getting courthouse mail—including responses to jury summonses—delivered to her? A representative for the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County also declined to comment. But the best Deveres can figure is that the two share a similar street address.

That’s where the similarities end. Deveres lives on Washington Lane; the Daley Center is located on Washington Street. Still, she notes without a hint of irony, “A lot of people had to fall down for this to happen.”

Deveres says she brought the mix-up to the attention of the U.S. Postal Service in Chicago, where a representative told her that it shouldn’t be happening. A spokesman for the USPS in Chicago said he could not comment without first seeing the errant mail.

Well, Deveres could mail it to him. —J.S.C.

THE STAMP OF JUSTICE

Looking for that special something to jazz up your holiday cards?

How about the mugs of Associate Justices Joseph Story, Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter or William J. Brennan Jr.? This fall the United States Postal Service introduced a set of commemorative stamps honoring these justices. At 44 cents each, it’s a small price to pay for justice.

M.E. Hart doesn’t mind if he’s become something of a joke on the Internet. It just means that his message is getting out.

Hart, a lawyer, does corporate training for a Washington, D.C.-based strategic management company. But he may be better known for his work as DP, the rapper from cyberspace who bursts through computer monitors to warn of the dangers of copyright infringement.

Hart first starred as DP—Digital Protector— in the Software & Information Industry Association’s 1992 educational video, Don’t Copy That Floppy. He reprised the role this year for the follow-up video, Don’t Copy That 2.

“The goal was to do something that gets people talking about ... the consequences of their choices,” says Hart, also a professional actor who has worked on stage and screen since the ’80s.

The 1992 video was sent to teachers nationwide as part of an educational campaign, but the DP character remained under the radar until 2005 when the video was, well, copied, and put on YouTube. Hart became an Internet phenom.

“What was fascinating to me were the comments I got about the video,” he says.

“I even got a call from someone asking me if I knew I was on Wikipedia.”

None of that stopped Hart when the Software & Information Industry Association asked him to do Don’t Copy That 2. Hart saw it as a challenge to reach kids in the digital age. “We had to change the message up—to make it, dare

I say, more threatening,” says the SIIA’s Keith Kupferschmid.

The new video flashes back to the original before ending with a warning from 24-year-old Jeremiah Mondello, who is serving time in a federal prison for selling pirated software.