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

Re:Bad on software patents

[Rogerborg]

I don't remember anyone who has ever moved to the Right.

That's because Democrat Presidents tend to nominate moderates (with an occasional joke Marxist stalking horse so that they can then put forward a "compromise"), while Republican Presidents offer the Senate a choice between Ghengis Scalia or Attila the Thomas.

Could it be?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Hollywood may have reason to be nervous about the nomination of Elena Kagan to be the next US Supreme Court justice.

You refer to the prophecy of The One who will bring balance to the Copyright. You believe it's this girl?

Re:Can we mark TFA as troll?

[Golddess]

PARMGPA? You obviously have no clue how to properly create an acronym for an act.

First, you gotta come up with what you want the acronym to be. For the act in question, PETLOVE would seem to be a good one.

Next, you gotta come up with words that reduce to that acronym.

Protecting
Everyones
Timely
Lust
Of
Vertebrate
(rear)Ends

Apologies to those with invertebrate pets, I didn't want to spend any more time on this.

Re:Finally

[davester666]

You have the fair-use right to watch the TV Show at the time the station broadcasts it, on the devices they choose to enable you to view. And you have to stay and watch the commercials, otherwise you're stealing candy from the network executive's babies!