Happy Friday, readers. It’s time for another weekly installment of Law Street’s weird arrests of the week. Check them out in the slideshow below.

This One Will Bug You

Image courtesy of Rosana Prada via Flickr

Lorenzo Adan Ramirez of Tavares, Florida, was arrested after he exposed himself to women in the ladies’ bathroom. His explanation for the incident? He was trying to get a bug out of his clothes. Police didn’t buy it, and he’s been booked on charges of voyeurism.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird Arrests of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

If you love a good IPA, own a computer, and have an extra $30 per year lying around, then you might want to consider heeding the advice of the Colorado-based Brewers Association. The not-for-profit trade organization advised brewers of all sizes to register a new .beer web address, which was made available to the general public earlier this week.

In an online world saturated by .com domain names, .beer has been referred to as “top level” by the U.S. trade body. The Brewers Association already registered its own .beer address, as have many traditional brewing companies. Basic names have already been claimed, including craft.beer and oktoberfest.beer, according to Minds + Machines, which operates the domain registry.

This new naming structure makes it easier for independent brewers to establish a presence online. In fact, .beer is not the only popular item on the menu. Around 1,000 new domains are expected to be released by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) over the course of the next 18 months. ICANN is a non-profit corporation created in 1998 to assume responsibility of namespaces on the Internet. A list of web domain name applications released by ICANN in 2012 revealed requests for .pizza, .movie, and .life. On that list, Google alone applied for more than 100 domains, including .mom, .dad, and .fun.

Back in 2011 in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet, members explained, “The gTLD [Generic Top-Level Domain] proposal is designed to dramatically expand the number of top-level domains available. This expansion will raise significant revenue for ICANN, possibly launch new businesses to manage the new gTLDs and create more options for registrars to sell domain names to consumers.”

Although the online conversation about this dot-beer revolution is relatively quiet as of yet, those in the industry are hopeful that ad campaigns and inclusion of the new sites on labels will foster growth in business.

The domain name is appreciated as an inexpensive establishment of intellectual property. Although a domain name is not an intellectual property right, it is an asset to a company or individual’s IP portfolio of trademarks and patents.

This specific domain name comes at a great time for beer brewing across the country. The Brewers Association released the America brewery count in June at 3,040, marking the first time the United States has reached a number in the 3,000s. This figure signifies a new localization of beer production, with 99 percent of the 3,040 breweries being considered small and independent — the very breweries thirsty for .beer!

So, whether you’re brewing in your garage for your own enjoyment, mulling over a craft-beer startup, or merely drowning your ails in a glass of ale, you now have a new place to share the word about beer.

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Alexandra Badalamenti (@AlexBadalamenti) is a Jersey girl and soon-to-be graduate of Fordham University in Lincoln Center. She plans to enroll in law school next year to study Entertainment Law. On any given day, you’ll find her with big blonde hair, high heels, tall Nashville dreams, and holding a newspaper or venti latte.

Feature image courtesy of [Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr]

The post Calling All Brewers and Connoisseurs: .Beer is Open appeared first on Law Street.

As you may very well know, citizens of the United Sates can form and sign petitions on the White House Website. If a petition reaches 100,000 signatures in 30 days, the White House has to respond, though they sometimes respond to petitions with fewer signatures. For example, earlier this summer, a new petition went up asking the White House to change the name of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to the Tim Howard National Airport, in honor of Howard’s great performance as goalie for the United States Men’s Soccer team. This got me thinking, what are the wackiest, craziest, coolest, and dumbest White House petitions ever received? Well, here are my ten “favorites” (besides the Tim Howard one). This list includes a couple classics that you may of heard of before and some newer ones that you most likely have not. Enjoy!

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Matt DeWilde

Matt DeWilde is a member of the American University class of 2016 majoring in politics and considering going to law school. He loves writing about politics, reading, watching Netflix, and long walks on the beach. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post We the People: Top 10 Weirdest White House Petitions appeared first on Law Street.

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, compiles a list of intangible cultural heritages. These can include a variety of things like music, dance, social practices, or art. The entire list of intangible cultural heritages can be found here, and I would highly recommend you check it out. A lot of them are really cool and some even have video demonstrations. There’s Tsiattista poetic duelling from Cyprus, the Tango from Argentina and Uruguay, and the Dragon Boat Festival of China, among hundreds of others.

But Germany is trying to get something a little different — and really fun — on the list. Beer!

Historically in Germany, specifically Bavaria, there was a law called Reinheitsgebot. Translated into English, it roughly means “German Beer Purity Law.” It required that brewers only use water, hops, and barley malt in creating beer. No flavorings or preservatives are allowed in the creation of Reinheitsgebot beer.

Put your reading glasses on, and let’s check out some beer history:

Ready? Ok, so Reinheitsgebot beer certainly fits the idea of “heritage’ — the law was created in 1516 in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt by the Dukes Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X. The law was written both to set basic standards for making and selling beer, and also to stem conflict between bakers and beer makers, who competed over wheat, yeast, and other grains. If a brewer was found breaking the law, they could have their beer confiscated without any sort of compensation. In 1871, the law was incorporated into the unification of Germany.

While German beer laws have changed slightly since then, there are still regulations that brewers must follow. The current beer law is called Biergesetz, and allows only a few more ingredients than the original Reinheitsgebot. Most brewers claim to follow Reinheitsgebot, even if they actually really just follow Biergesetz.

And believe me, Germany takes its beer very, very seriously. For 10 years in the 1990s, after the reunification of East and West Germany, there was the infamous “Brandenburg Beer War.”

Unfortunately, not this kind of beer war.

The Fritsche family in Brandenburg brewed a beer called the “Black Abbott.” They added just a little big of sugar to give it a distinctive taste. Germany informed them that they could not market their brew as real beer, so the Fritsches said the government couldn’t tax it as real beer. After about 10 years of back and forth, they eventually received a special permit to label Black Abbott as beer.

According to some historians, Reinheitsgebot is the oldest remaining food or drink regulation in the world, and therefore deserves to be on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. Germany has around 1,300 separate breweries, and 5,000 brands of beer.

Those in favor of including Reinheitsgebot on the next UNESCO list, such as craft beer expert Matt Simpson, emphasize the important role that beer has played in cultural human history. Simpson stated, “Considering beer’s place in human history, I would say that it certainly deserves a place among other cultural phenomena.”

Want to try some Reinheitsgebot-approved beer without traveling all the way to Germany? Here are some American breweries that create beers that, for the most part, strictly follow Reinheitsgebot:

• Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, Charlotte, NC
• Sierra Nevada, North Carolina and California
  
• Redhook Brewery, Woodinville, WA
• Deschutes Brewery, Portland, OR

There are obviously many more, but those should put you all off to a good start (assuming you’re 21+, if not, save these suggestions for after your birthday). So, next time you’re in the mood for a drink, get some future-potential-intangible cultural heritage at the same time!

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Kasia Wallis via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Let’s Get Some Beer & Cultural Heritage appeared first on Law Street.