Cato Daily Dispatch for October 7, 2002
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Supreme Court Opens New TermEntertainment Industry Pursuing Napster Successor
Pediatrics Group Favors Limited Smallpox Vaccination Plan
Supreme Court Opens New Term
Opening its new term today, the Supreme Court has already accepted 45 cases for decision - more than half the number of cases it will decide during the entire nine-month term, and enough to fill the justices' argument calendar into February, according to The New York Times. These cases are likely to produce important decisions on criminal law, immigration, federalism, copyright law, hate speech and health care, among other topics.
But waiting in the wings is an even more important battery of cases. Opponents of affirmative action have asked the court to hear their challenge to the University of Michigan's consideration of race in admission to its law school and undergraduate program.
A broadly based First Amendment challenge to the advertising and contribution limits in the new campaign finance law, to be heard in early December before a special three-judge federal court, is on an unusually fast track and could reach the Supreme Court's docket early in 2003. Cases growing out of the war on terrorism, now making their way through the lower courts, could give the justices a chance to decide important questions on the limits of government power - to conduct secret deportation proceedings, in one case, and to hold American citizens without charges or access to a lawyer or judge, in the cases of Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, designated as "enemy combatants."
At a Sept. 17 symposium, the Cato Institute released the inaugural issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review published by Roger Pilon, director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, and edited by James L. Swanson, senior fellow in constitutional studies. The book is an annual critique of the Court's most important decisions from the Term just ended plus a look at the cases coming up.
Entertainment Industry Pursuing Napster Successor
Having vanquished the music swapping service Napster in court, the entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing its major successor, KaZaA: geography, reports The New York Times.
Sharman Networks, the distributor of the program, is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from Australia. Its computer servers are in Denmark and the source code for its software was last seen in Estonia.
KaZaA's original developers, who still control the underlying technology, are thought to be living in the Netherlands - although entertainment lawyers seeking to have them charged with violating United States copyright law have been unable to find them.
A group of recording and motion picture companies has asked a federal judge to find the custodians of KaZaA liable for contributing to copyright infringement and financially benefiting from it. If the group wins, it plans to demand an immediate injunction. Sharman would then have to stop distributing KaZaA or alter the program to block copyrighted material, which it says is not possible because of how its technology works.
In "How Far Can Hollywood Go to Protect Copyrights?" Clyde Wayne Crews and Adam Thierer, respectively, Cato's director of technology studies and director of telecommunications studies, discuss the "Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act of 2002," sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), which would allow entertainment companies to enter peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, such as KaZaA and attempt to prevent trade in their copyrighted material. They write, "While Berman's effort to empower copyright holders to protect their creations is understandable, it likely tips the balance a bit too far in favor of Charles Bronson-type vigilantism. Technological self-help is legitimate, but breaking and entering is not."
Thierer and Crews also edited the book, Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age, published earlier this year by Cato.
Pediatrics Group Favors Limited Smallpox Vaccination Plan
The American Academy of Pediatrics says the nation's smallpox plan should involve limited vaccinations if a case occurs, not universal inoculations before there's even an attack, according to The Washington Post.
Potential side effects are too severe, and available vaccines have not been tested on children, who may be at higher risk for bad reactions, the academy said in a policy statement being released Monday.
Based on studies from the 1960s, 15 out of every million people vaccinated will face life-threatening reactions, and one to two will die.
In "Give Americans the Choice to Take the Smallpox Vaccine," Senior Defense Policy Analyst Charles V. Peña writes that current policy "leaves Americans with no choice in the matter--no freedom to choose what may be most effective for their own security and peace of mind. In the case of a bioterrorist attack using smallpox, Americans cannot immunize themselves beforehand with the vaccine. The government won't give its own citizens access to the vaccine, even though it's in stock."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org