Will the Supremes Hear Grokster?
From Lessig's Blog, guest-blogged this week by Tim Wu:
"So the question on Grokster-watchers’ minds: Cert? (For non-lawyers: will the Supreme Court hear this case?)
My guess is yes, for 7 reasons, ranging from the more to less legal:
1. These is a stated legal conflict on the Sony standard as between the 7th and 9th Circuits;
2. The 7th and 9th Circuits disagree (albeit in partially in dicta) on the relevance of willful blindness to secondary liability;
3. The Court has these matters in hand: it has granted cert. in many similar cases historically (Sony, 1980s, White-Smith (the Piano Roll case) 1909, Teleprompter and Fortnightly (Cable / Broadcast, 1960s & 1970s);
4. The Court has a vague sense that some far-out stuff is going on in the field of “Computer Law” that maybe it should check out;
5. Law clerks use P2P technology to plan basketball games;
6. Stevens and Breyer deeply dig this stuff;
And most importantly,
7. The Court loves to be the center of attention, and this would make it so."
"So the question on Grokster-watchers’ minds: Cert? (For non-lawyers: will the Supreme Court hear this case?)
My guess is yes, for 7 reasons, ranging from the more to less legal:
1. These is a stated legal conflict on the Sony standard as between the 7th and 9th Circuits;
2. The 7th and 9th Circuits disagree (albeit in partially in dicta) on the relevance of willful blindness to secondary liability;
3. The Court has these matters in hand: it has granted cert. in many similar cases historically (Sony, 1980s, White-Smith (the Piano Roll case) 1909, Teleprompter and Fortnightly (Cable / Broadcast, 1960s & 1970s);
4. The Court has a vague sense that some far-out stuff is going on in the field of “Computer Law” that maybe it should check out;
5. Law clerks use P2P technology to plan basketball games;
6. Stevens and Breyer deeply dig this stuff;
And most importantly,
7. The Court loves to be the center of attention, and this would make it so."

1 Comments:
At 11:47 PM, Anonymous said…
I'm going to use this tomorrow afternoon to try to convince a class full of 50 sleepy college students that they should care about the Supreme Court. Should be fun.
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