Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor's Cyberlaw Record
Hugh Pickens writes "Thomas O'Toole writes that President Obama's choice for Associate Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, authored several cyberlaw opinions regarding online contracting law, domain names, and computer privacy while on the Second Circuit. Judge Sotomayor wrote the court's 2002 opinion in Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., an important online contracting case. In Specht, the Second Circuit declined to enforce contract terms (PDF) that were available behind a hyperlink that could only be seen by scrolling down on a Web page. 'We are not persuaded that a reasonably prudent offeree in these circumstances would have known of the existence of license terms,' wrote Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor wrote an opinion in a domain name case, Storey v. Cello Holdings LLC in 2003 that held that an adverse outcome in an administrative proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy did not preclude a later-initiated federal suit (PDF) brought under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). In Leventhal v. Knapek, a privacy case, Judge Sotomayor wrote for the Second Circuit that New York state agency officials and investigators did not violate a state employee's Fourth Amendment rights when they searched the contents of his office computer (PDF) for evidence of unauthorized use of state equipment. While none of these cases may mean much as far as what Judge Sotomayor will do as an Associate Supreme Court Justice 'if confirmed, she will be the first justice who has written cyberlaw-related opinions before joining the court,' writes O'Toole."
It's not whether or not it's available, it's whether an average person would scroll down, follow the link, read it, understand it, and consider it a legally binding contract. That's what a lot of contract law is about: defining what things mean so that both parties can reasonably be expected to understand and therefore be held to the meat of the contract. Right?
As long as the lawyers can shop around as to which district they can sue in then the lawyers will still purposely find the stupidest judge for the case. So its kinda a weakest link sort of situation.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I don't buy it [that conventional wisdom is that it's a radical bomb-thrower nutcase position to hold that the government may not restrict any speech]. Conventional wisdom among who? Almost no one I know -
You must not get out much. The "falsely yelling fire in a crowded theatre" opponents, the people who believe in laws against libel and slander, people who believe that there should be penalties for false claims in advertising, people who believe that threats of violence (and not just the acts themselves) should be against the law, that it should be prohibited to advocate the positions of Al Quaida or Hamas or Nazis or Communists or anarchists or whoever the bete de jour is, that it should be prohibited to write fiction that involves children in a sexual way... It's a long list. AFAIK speech in the US (and everywhere else) has always been regulated in one way or another, the 1st Amendment notwithstanding. So yes, the 1st Amendment, as written, is an extremist position. That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it unconventional.
Why shouldn't I push for someone better than her, since she has such obvious and profound warts?
No reason, it's just that you seemed to be pushing against her, not "for" anybody. So, assuming you do have a clue, who are you pushing for?