Slashdot Mirror
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."
I hope they're nervous. They need a little "fear" to keep them honest (or at least as honest as they can be considering they are the some of the greediest bastards on earth).
Looks like both Dem's & Rep's aren't exactly thrilled with everything Elena Kagan stands for. It always sounds like a good choice when neither side is happy with the possibilities.
technology changes law. technology does not fit into the confines as defined by law, law adjusts and accommodates to new technology
and when law pits itself against technology, law always loses. technological progress has destroyed and swept aside so many legal, social, and political structures in this world
why does anyone believe hollywood stands a chance? the internet has permanently changed media distribution, in favor of the consumer. all that media companies can do is adapt, or die. of course, in the adaptation period, plenty of absurd attempts at preserving the legal status quos of past dead technological eras will be attempted, but this is just denial
in the end, we, the consumer, win. because technology empowers us to route around the old status quo. and if the law is pitted against the technology, then it also empowers us above the law (in this one narrow issue)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm failing to see where she would be influenced by 'payola'. It's true that politics play a role in getting onto the Supreme Court. Once on the Supreme Court the only way she can lose her job is if the House of Representatives impeaches her, the Senate tries her, and she is convicted by a super-majority vote. Her salary can never go down. She will not have to face election. She will be guaranteed employment for life.
The only way she could accept payola is if she took an outright bribe. That's not unheard of as Clarance Thomas accepted a $1 million advance on his biography one week before issuing his ruling in Eldred v Ashcroft. Nevertheless, accepting a bribe is one of very few things that could ruin a Supreme Court justice's career.
Perhaps you have not been paying attention: in America, "conservative" means "always do whatever corporations want," and "liberal" means "sometimes do whatever corporations want."
Palm trees and 8
Except that the justices who have moved most to the Left have been the ones appointed by Republicans.
John Paul Stevens is an example of that. He was appointed by Gerald Ford and sold as a conservative. He is arguably the furthest Left of any Justice currently sitting on the Court.
But maybe you have a point. Recent Republican presidents have appointed justices so far to the Right that there's really no place for them to go but Left.
Robert Bork would almost certainly be considered not conservative enough by today's Republicans because he took the 2nd Amendment literally and believed it only applied to "well-regulated militias" and did not give everybody the right to pack heat.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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