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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."
Her name is on the Bilski brief submitted by the Obama administration:
No extant field of technology or industry--including software and diagnostic methods, the two fields addressed by numerous amici--is wholly excluded from patent protection under that approach;
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A great HuffPo Piece by none other than Lawrence Lessig, Mr. Creative Commons himself.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Elena Kagan doesn't run the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder does.
But if neither dominant party thinks she's toeing the line enough then that's _exactly_ the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.
Your logic is broken. I presume neither party would like bin Laden, but I don't think that would make him a good nomination. Have you heard why people don't like her? Here's some of her thoughts on the first amendment:
Someone who feels that freedom of speech is overrated - spare me the "fire! in a theater" exceptions we already know about - is not someone who I want deciding freedom of speech cases.
She also argued that prosecutors who deliberately manufacture evidence to convict (by definition) innocent people should not be civilly liable for their actions. I don't have great hopes that she'd side with individuals when it most matters.
It seems like there's something for everyone to dislike about Kagan, unless you're already a person in power and seeking to extend your powers. Then she'd be the woman for the job.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
SCOTUSBlog posted a nice, hysteria-free overview of Kagan's career a few days ago. It's well worth a read, and the authors seem to know a thing or two about the courts (unlike most reporters and pundits who have been covering the story).
If you read up on her career, you'll see that she has a great deal of respect for existing precedent, and doesn't seem to have allowed her own personal opinions to interfere with her past jobs.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
1) Recruiting people does not mean you share their ideological views. Indeed, one of the selling points of Kagan (according to her supporters) is that in spite of her supposed liberal views she was able to recruit people from across the ideological spectrum, including conservatives, to Harvard Law School.
2) As the Solicitor General, you are a lawyer for the government. You argue their cases. We should not confuse positions she took as the Solicitor General with her own personal opinions on the cases.
If anyone wants the real story on Kagan (she's woefully unprepared for the Supreme Court) please read what Glenn Greenwald has recently been writing about her http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan and a debate yesterday http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/10/progressives_divided_over_obamas_nomination_of