Hollywood Nervous About Kagan's Fair Use Views

Of the many commentaries and analyses springing up about Obama's Supreme Court nominee, this community might be most interested in one from the Hollywood Reporter. Reader Hugh Pickens notes that Hollywood may have reason to be nervous about the nomination of Elena Kagan to be the next US Supreme Court justice. "As dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, Kagan was instrumental in beefing up the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society by recruiting Lawrence Lessig and others who take a strongly liberal position on fair use in copyright disputes. And Kagan got an opportunity to showcase her feelings on intellectual property when the US Supreme Court asked her, as US Solicitor General, to weigh in on the big Cablevision case. 'After Cablevision announced in 2006 that it would allow subscribers to store TV programs on the cable operator's computer servers instead of on a hard-top box, Hollywood studios went nuts, predicting that the days of licensing on-demand content would be over,' writes Gardner. Kagan's brief compared remote-storage DVRs to VCRs (PDF), brought up the Sony/Betamax case, and lightly slapped Cablevision on the wrist for not making fair use a bigger issue. 'It sounds to us like Kagan would love the Court to determine when customers have a fair-use right to copy, which should cheer those on the copy-left at the EFF, and worry many in the entertainment industry.' On the minus side, Kagan has surrounded herself with entertainment industry advocates in the Justice Department."

Comments

Libertarian, not liberal

[SuperKendall]

...Society by recruiting Lawrence Lessig and others who take a strongly liberal position on fair use in copyright disputes.

The Liberal position is, do what Hollywood says, because they donate a ton of money to political campaigns (as well as endorsing candidates).

The Libertarian position is, protect the individual.

Try not to confuse the two when you vote. There are liberals (and conservatives) who align with this Libertarian viewpoint, but if you make the mistake of voting only for liberals thinking they are going to always oppose the MPAA you will be very sad.

you want to talk history?

[circletimessquare]

then learn your history, before it is repeated, fool: this is what happens when drug dealing imperialists are allowed to destroy a society by reducing large swaths of its citizens to zombies via drug addiction:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM

in the history of the world, the sum total of every fascist, totalitarian, despotic, religious fundamentalist, and autocratic authoritarian law has, by orders of magnitude, never even remotely touched the freedom that was destroyed in terms of wasted lives due to drug addiction. drug addiction is the most potent threat to individual freedom that has ever existed and perhaps ever will exist in the history of mankind

the most fascist totalitarian state possible to be imagined in the furthest reaches of orwell's fantasy life has nothing on the freedom destroying power of drug addiction. unless, of course, such a hypothetical totalitarian government actually force addicted its own citizens. that's the ultimate totalitarian state

why do you think

[circletimessquare]

that the war on drugs has no effects? it minimizes the damage that substance abuse does. it doesn't eradicate it, that's never been the goal. anyone who thinks that mocking that goal somehow legitimizes the problem doesn't understand the issues, because no one serious thinks that's a goal

it simply makes it harder for the casual idiot to become an addict before they mature and realize on their own the danger. of course there will always be a hardcore group of seriously stupid who will destroy their lives with drugs, no matter what the social policy, completely free access or completely draconian laws: some people are just doomed by their own bad psychology/ ideology. you can't help such people, so they don't matter on the policy questions. the point is not to save everyone, the point is to save as many as you can

the point is, if there were no war on drugs, the stink you point to would merely be larger. of coruse we can never completely eradicate these things, and of course the war itself makes some things worse. but no war at all CLEARLY is even worse, can't you see that?

there will always be a growing underclass of drug addled zombies, forever. there will always be a mafia, forever. the best you can do is push back against both, and minimize it. and any civilization that has ever existed, and ever will exist, therefore will forever more be engaged in such a "war" (its not really a war, thats a bad name, its more like a simple maintenance function, like taking the trash out every thursday. we all have a "war on trash" in our houses)

what i don't understand this mentality that says "becuase we can't completely eradicate it, we should allow it to be worse"

insane

Re:Good

[radtea]

I presume neither party would like bin Laden

I dunno... they both are using him as an excuse for the largest power grab and rights-trampling stampede in American history.

The US government is currently in the process of pre-trial hearings for an illegally detained child soldier in Guantanomo Bay, which demonstrates the New American Empire's power to ignore the American constitution whenever it feels like it. And the illegally detained child soldier is a native-born Canadian citizen, so it is pretty clear that the New American Empire intends to extend its power across the world whenever it feels like it.

PJ O'Rourke said that giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys, and bin Laden's actions have resulted in the oligarchs of the New American Empire being given a whole lot of both. They and bin Laden (and other Islamist nutjobs) are the only people who actually benefit from the "War on Terror", and they are effectively colluding together to maintain it[*]
=====

[*] Although there is almost certainly no actual collusion involved--it is just that the natural intent of both groups, the Islamist nutjobs on the one hand and the oligarchs of the New American Empire on the other are aligned in their mutual opposition. It takes two to make a war, and the leadership of both sides are extremely interested in maintaining the war at all costs, right down to the last drop of someone else's blood...

completely false

[circletimessquare]

the effects of addiction of the worst (coke. meth, heroin) is far worse the effects of the war on drugs

you like to point to history. i'm glad your victorian upper middle class examples were able to make positive contributions despite their crippling drug problems (ask them, they would say themselves that the drug use didn't help them: imagine how much they could contribute had they not been so addled)

here's another victorian history lesson for you, that is the real instruction as to what the viral spread of highly addictive substances does to a society:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM

"you're willing to point guns at people and lock them in cages to control their behavior. You should be ashamed."

yes, i am willing to lock away mafioso who don't care about destroying lives in order to get a buck, i have no problem with that

you apparently are happy with millions of lives destroyed because you have no appreciation what easy access to a highly addictive substance does to people and the freedom it destroys. you should be ashamed

i understand its easy to get drugs

[circletimessquare]

understand that if it were legalized it would be even EASIER. duh

so you push back against availability, and you cut down on zombie creation, simple as that. you don't stop zombie creation. you can't ever do that. but you certainly don't allow it to proceed without any interference: you're never going to stop the idiots committed to destroying their lives, but you sure as hell will stop a hell of a lot of casual idiots from the fate drug addled zombiehood. then they mature, realize the threat on their own, and that's one less useless zombie you have to house and feed

why do you have a mental block on the concept that addiction itself is a harm? i mean if the cost in wasted lives, if the destruction of individual freedoms means nothing to you (it's "none of my business") then consider the cost to society in terms of having to house and feed these zombies

with the monkey on their back, they can't keep a job or a relationship. so i have to pay for them. well, if i am footing the bill, then i think i'd rather spend my money preventing the creation of the zombies in the first place, no? its a hell of a lot cheaper. i won't prevent the creation of all of them, but i'll put a significant dent in their numbers

feel me now?

what a moron

[circletimessquare]

ever hear of hillbilly heroin?

its nothing but WELL-REGULATED oxycodone, developing its own black market, as a simple result of WIDER AVAILABILITY of a highly addictive+inebriating drug

so you're deep in the twilight zone now: you're arguing in favor of the illegality of the substance (that's what "regulation" is, numbskull), while pointing at such regulation as a success (when its clearly a failure, as in the case of hillybilly heroin), under an obvious historical example of what happens when a drugs are freely available (the opium wars: drug dealers humiliating a proud civilization by force addicting wide swaths of chinese society)

consider yourself spanked, moron