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

there will always be a legitimate war on drugs

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that is, the most addictive+inebriating: cocaine, heroin, meth, etc (marijuana should be legal)

its not a war, its a maintenance function of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday

what you don't understand is that some drugs are far worse themselves to the destruction of freedom (addiction is bars in the mind) than any war on drugs and its effects on society. free and unfettered access to the most addictive/ inebriating drugs leads to a growing population of people whose lives have become zombified

so for the sake of saving lives from the hell of addiction, and preserving civilization from this infection, there will ALWAYS be a war on drugs, forever. the war on drugs is a permanent aspect of every civilization that ever existed and ever will

if it is not fought, you've created a zombie underclass of addicts and a financially fattened mafia. you need to continually drain these cesspools. every civilization that ever existed realizes this. acceptance of certain highly addictive+inebriating drugs merely means more addicts. surely you see this is far worse for the individual and society than the side effects of the war on drugs itself, right?

you don't actually believe addiction to cocaine/ meth/ heroin is harmless, or that without controls on these substances, that more lives won't be destroyed? the war on drugs has many negative effects on society. for something like marijuana, legalization is the solution. but for the most hardcore drugs, the drugs themselves are worse than the war on drugs. i hope you understand this

i understand and appreciate

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every anecdote of every negative effect of the war on drugs that you can cite or imagine

i'm also asking you to see that i'm only for making the worst substances illegal. i am for the legalization of marijuana and lsd, for exactly the reasons you cite: the war on drugs is far worse than the drugs, FOR THESE DRUGS

now i'm asking you to consider the negative effects of addiction OF THE WORST DRUGS on society and the free will

i'm asking you to consider if the war on drugs FOR ONLY THESE WORST DRUGS is less of a negative than the drugs themselves

do you see that the war on drugs cannot be mentally evaulated as "drug use" versus "war on drugs"?

it has to be evaluated as "alcohol use" versus "war on alcohol", or "lsd use" versus "war on lsd", or "meth use" versus "war on meth"

you can't lump caffeine and cocaine in the same category, and expect to say anything useful on the issue, do you see that?

think about it

real life is not a choice between rainbow unicorns and child eating demons. it is often a choice between child eating demons and slightly meaner child eating demons. with the war on drugs, and cocaine/meth/heroin, for example, you have such a difficult real world choice: lots of gray areas, and hard-to-evaluate-which-is-worse negative effects

your choice is between the horrible negative effects, and slightly worse horrible negative effects. for something like marijuana, the war on drugs is worse than the negative effects of marijuana use, clearly. so marijuana should be legal, clearly

but for something like cocaine, the war on drugs is bad, but the SUBSTANCE ITSELF, in terms of destroyed lives and encumbered society, is worse than the war on that particular drug

do you feel where i am coming from yet?

you can't come to me and evaluate all drugs the same. that's not intellectually honest of you. you cannot say something useful and valuable when mentally you put caffeine and nicotine in the same basket as heroin and methamphetamine. when you do that, you've lost the ability to say anything meaningful, because different drugs are VERY different in their pharmacological effects, so you have to evaluate each drug individually

you apparently have no appreciation

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for what substance addiction does to a life

you see all of the externalities, but you do not see what the actual substance does to someone

i'm asking to consider that, as it is obviously far worse than all of the negative effects of the war on drugs (for something like coke, heroin, meth)

additionally, i realize there is a hardcore subset of losers who are hellbent on destroying their lives and will get access to life destroying drugs no matter what is legal or not. such committed self-destructive idiots are beyond the help of anyone, no matter what the laws of drugs are: complete legality, or complete illegality, it doesn't matter: these people are doomed by their own psychology, having nothing whatsoever to do with any social policy. and so such people don't even matter in the discussion

i'm mostly concerned with the MUCH LARGER sphere of casual idiots, who will not try hard to get drugs (until they are addicts), but when offered casual use in a carefree environment, get zombified. this is what the illegality prevents: the destruction of the lives of the carefree casual idiot, whose life would be doomed to slavery to a substance, before they are given a chance to mature and realize on their own the folly and danger these substances represent to their freedom and the quality of their life

why can't you see

[circletimessquare]

that if you legalized everything, every single problem you just cited above would be worse?

the best you can do is push back against the growth of the drug addled zombie underclass, and push back against the growth of the mafia, forever. NOT pushing back against these things simply means they grow and proliferate even more, to the destruction of far more rights and freedoms and destroyed lives than the war on drugs itself. you can't ever completely destroy the drug use, but that never was the point: the point is to simply minimize their stink

why can't you see that? why can't you appreciate the damage done by a large underclass of drug zombies and a fattened mafia from their existence? why doesn't your mind perceive of and understand the threat to individual freedom from those things?

here, learn your history:

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

here's the problem: teenagers are idiots. they think of themselves as immortal and immune, they don't perceive of the limitations of their willpower when faced, for example, with crippling addiction to something like coke/ heroin/ meth. and so, in an environment of easy access, a heck of a lot of them will try these things, and wind up with a life long crippling addiction

prevent them from accessing to these drugs though, and they mature to the point where they perceive on their own these substances have towards their quality of life and their freedom. of course you won't save everyone, some committed idiots are just hellbent on personal destruction. but a much larger class of casual idiots needs to be given the chance to escape the hell of addiction

i really wish you could understand and appreciate exactly what heroin, coke, and meth do to someone's lives and their minds and their freedom. of course the war on drugs has negative effects. i recognize and acknowledge every single negative you cite. now i wish you would acknowledge what free and unfettered access to heroin/ coke/ meth will cost in wasted lives, and see that it is far worse than the war on drugs