Couple other SCOTUS notes before they vanish from my mind:
As pointed out by Tim and commented on here and here, the lawyer for MGM said very clearly that it was legal to rip a CD to an iPod, in contradiction to the industry’s position in other cases. At the time, my immediate internal response was ‘lying hypocrites’, which is my typical reaction to lots of Washington things these days, but Tim points out that under the doctrine of estoppel, it is possible that this statement would basically legalize CD ripping, which would be a nice touch.
Mako Hill wrote in more detail than I did about the sucking sound that is the right of the public to see the court. I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t ever go back to see another oral argument, but it was, as he says, disenchanting. Ben also points out how tasteless my ‘Justice Vader’ crack was ;)
Alex Halderman was the #32 who I mentioned yesterday. He took copious notes; I’m hoping he’ll get them up soon for all of us to dissect and compare with Tim’s. He was also, apparently, the guy who pointed out that SunComm’s copy protection sucked and got threatened with a suit for it. Nelson Pavlosky, who sued Diebold and won, and founded the very cool freeculture.org (and is also a GNOME user ;) was #33 or thereabouts. Cool to meet and talk with him. Clearly I need to sue or get sued more often to fit in with the cool kids in the IP scene.