Saturday, May 30, 2009

Obama administration asks Supreme Court not to grant cert in Cartoon Networks v. CSC Holdings case

According to this report in TechDirt, the Obama Administration's Solicitor General has submitted a brief arguing that the Supreme Court ought not to disturb the holding of the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Cartoon Networks v. CSC Holdings.

The Cartoon Networks case holds that the cable companies' online storage for its customers did not invoke the reproduction right in the Copyright Act since the files were "transitory", having been buffered for only 1.2 seconds.

The Government's brief argued, among other things, that the peculiar procedural posture of the case militated against Supreme Court review, since the plaintiffs had waived their contributory liability line of attack, and the defendant had waived its fair use defense.

Amicus Curiae Brief of United States

Previous articles about Cartoon Networks case:

"MPAA loses in case against Cablevision, Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings"
"Editorial comment on Cartoon Network v. CSC and Capitol v. Thomas"
"My article in "Journal of Internet Law""

[Ed. note. As I pointed out in footnote 18 of my "Journal of Internet Law" article, the content cartel's "usual suspects", including the same Jenner & Block attorneys who now occupy some of the highest positions in the Justice Department, were representing the film companies in the Cartoon Networks case. So the filing of this brief shows that there is more than one voice being heard. Which is good. -R.B.]

Commentary & discussion:

TechDirt
Los Angeles Times
Slashdot
p2pnet.net



Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

6 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

the LA times seems to host a copy of the brief.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/files/cablevision-09-05-29osg-brief.pdf

That link is mentioned in this article

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/cablevision-network-dvr-supreme-court-obama-administration.html

Anonymous said...

Finally, some common sense.

Anonymous said...

2nd Circuit Court? Isn't that where our newest Supreme Court justice nominee hails from? That doesn't bode well to this man on the quality of their decisions. And it used to only be the 9th Circuit Court which seemed the outlier.

While it might at first seem a victory for common sense to leave the 2nd Circuit Court decision in place, without SCOTUS review and affirmation that decision remains local to the 2nd Circuit only. This man does not see how that limitation is a good thing for the rest of the country.

{The Common Man Speaking}

raybeckerman said...

You're wrong. It is a good thing, not a bad thing. You're in a dream world if you think it's good for the Supreme Court to possibly change the ruling.

Alter_Fritz said...

just stumbled over it: the headline misses an "w".

(on a second thought; sometimes it seems organised content does indeed behave like orks on the net) ;-)

Anonymous said...

ARS Technica gives an excellent argument here on why this is a lousy case to try and settle such an important overall issue on. And it's written in a way that the common man can understand it.

{The Common Man Speaking}