Why Hollywood Should Be Nervous About Court Pick; ABCNews.com

Eriq Gardner, ABCNEWS.com; Why Hollywood Should Be Nervous About Court Pick:

"Hollywood may have some reason to be nervous about President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Not a whole lot is known about Kagan's judicial philosophy, which in some ways, makes her the perfect pick to win confirmation by the Senate. Her record on issues the industry cares about, though, isn't entirely opaque.

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.

Most notably, during those years, Professor Charles Nesson at the Berkman Center represented accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum in the defense of a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group representing the major U.S. record labels. Professor Nesson led his cyberlaw class in alleging that "the RIAA is abusing law and the civil process" with excessive damage claims in piracy cases. It was Kagan herself who wrote a personal letter to the U.S. District Court to help certify the students.

Paradoxically, the Obama administration later weighed in on the side of the RIAA in the case. But that was before Kagan was fully confirmed as U.S. Solicitor General. At the time, Professor Nesson expressed some doubts about whether Kagan would back the government's amicus brief and also called her "enlightened" on these issues.

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."

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=10610313