It’s easy to be scared of someone who has not a single decision to her credit. From the Hollywood Reporter:
Hollywood’s biggest worry about Kagan might be her philosophy on intellectual property matters. As dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, she 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.
[…]
Kagan got her biggest opportunity to showcase her feelings on IP when the U.S. Supreme Court asked her, as U.S. Solicitor General, to weigh in on the big Cablevision case.
Hollywood was upset when Cablevision announced its intention to allow subscribers to store TV programs on the cable operator’s computer servers instead of a hard-top box. The introduction of remote-storage DVR kicked off furious litigation, and the 2nd Circuit overturned a lower court ruling by saying that the technology wouldn’t violate copyright holder’s rights. The studios appealed to the Supreme Court.
In Kagan’s brief to the high court, she argued the justices shouldn’t take the case and trumpeted fair use. She went against broadcasters there and even criticized Cablevision for limiting the scope of its arguments.
To the contrary of the author’s concluding graph: I’d argue that it absolutely does establish a precedence on which way Kagan would swing on IP issues.
(h/t teapartycozy)
