Smackdown
Judges have such a way with words…
Court to entertainment lawyer: Calling it “theft” doesn’t solve it. And curtail the use of abusive language
Judge Noonan, one of the Ninth Circuit judges who listened to the Morpheus case in which the legality of building a tool without the entertainment industry’s permission — and hence the future of the Internet — is being decided directed this blast at Ramos, the attorney arguing the music publishers’ side:“Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh
terms [”piracy,” “theft”], but you are dealing with something new, and the question is,
does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to
that something new. And that’s a very debatable question. You don’t solve it by calling it ‘theft.’ You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That’s your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language.”EFF is now hosting the entire argument in the case as an MP3, which is in the public domain. My cow-orker Donna Wentworth sums up some other good linkage in her blog post: