THIS JUDGE IS A RE-GIFTER
Let’s play a game of guess the federal judge. Some hints: He’s an avid eBay seller. He builds his own computers at home. And he absolutely can’t stand bloggers � though he has some tolerance for ones that consider him a “superhottie.”
If you guessed Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski, you’re right. A newly published interview with the Romania-born jurist offered some new peeks into his Internet habits, in addition to probing his views on the current state of Internet law.
Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman interviewed Kozinski in front of his Cyberlaw class back in October, and the podcast was made available last week on the school’s online Tech Law Forum. The Web site’s discussions have recently expanded beyond patent affairs into Internet law, and the interview was a good fit for that, said Jenny Cox, assistant dean at the law school.
Much has already been written about Kozinski’s successful 2004 campaign to get himself voted the “Number One Male Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary” on the legal blog “Underneath Their Robes.” But in class, Kozinksi explained his motivation a little bit more.
“I think it’s pretty important for people to think of judges as human beings, to realize that we do have families and we do have homes and children, and we’re part of the community, in a way, and that we don’t take ourselves as seriously as we expect you to take us,” Kozinski told Goldman. “I just went to my computer and I wrote a self-nomination letter. � I sent clips. I sent my ‘Dating Game’ clip and I sent my bungee jumping.”
Kozinski also revealed that he is an active eBay seller, and he frequently sells off personalized gifts he receives for speaking engagements.
“They give me like, bookends and things,” he said. “And it’s just that you can peel off the name nicely. And it’s usually stuck on there with a little glue and then you can sell these sort of gorgeous things that I would never have any use for myself. But they bring in a lot from eBay.”
The judge added, “Sometimes they engrave the actual thing with your name and I’ll say, ‘Oh, what a waste! � This could probably bring 30, 40 bucks on eBay. � Oh, damn, now I’m going to have to give it away to somebody.’”
His love for eBay aside, Kozinski said that traditional laws governing the transfer of property and trespassing never seem to adequately apply to Internet disputes.
“We’re in this world that didn’t exist 20 years ago, or 25,” Kozinski said. “And maybe it would be better to have a wholly new legal regime, one that doesn’t have concepts like trespass. I mean, trespass brings to mind somebody actually sort of setting foot on somebody’s physical property. Maybe having concepts that don’t partake of any of those ideas that are bound to the physical world, maybe that kind of system would work better.”
“But,” he continued, “that’s not how the law develops. The way the law develops is we have certain expectations about how we deal with certain things, and then when new things come along we’ll try to find an analogy.”
More than 10 years after the Internet went mainstream, Kozinski believes it’s nowhere near done pushing the law to evolve.
“There’s a certain sort of lawless, Wild West quality about cyberspace; there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “It is in many ways beyond the full grasp of government regulation because it’s so vast and so diffused. � It’s certainly changing our perceptions about a lot of things. We can also push content into various parts of the world and nobody can stop it. Totalitarian regimes can’t stop it. There’s no stopping it.”
Goldman’s interview can be found at TechLawForum.net.
� Jessie Seyfer
HELP ME, REAL
Los Angeles’ Hill, Farrer & Burrill helped a Beach Boys fan battle the band, and win.
It all began when client Roy Sciacca, himself a former rocker, tried to auction off handwritten lyrics and other Beach Boys items, which he said he’d purchased decades ago in a warehouse sale. He had recently noticed just how much money famous lyric sheets � such John Lennon’s� could go for, and decided to put them up for auction.
But The Beach Boys said those items had been stored in a warehouse where, back in the 1990s, they had discovered more than a dozen boxes of materials missing. Their lawsuit, brought by their corporate entity, Brother Records Inc., sought $60 million in damages.
The case, which made international headlines, was especially difficult for Sciacca because he was such a big Beach Boys fan, said Hill, Farrer & Burrill attorney William “Buz” White. “All of these claims really affected him personally,” he added.
Still, Sciacca found a fan in court.
U.S. District Judge Manuel Real ruled this month (.pdf) that there was no evidence that Sciacca had stolen the trove of memorabilia from the famed California band, in Brother Records Inc. v. Gaba, 06-0204.
White said the crux of the defense was that Sciacca bought the items at a warehouse sale in the 1980s.
“As you might expect, there were some difficulties locating witnesses because it was so long ago,” said White. “But, we had witnesses who testified that those warehouse sales took place, and that our client purchased items from those sales.”
Beach Boys attorney Danny Morin, of L.A.-based Parker Mills Morin, did not return a call seeking comment.
White said the defense kept pressing the Beach Boys’ side to prove there had been a theft. Even though the plaintiff had contacted crime agencies such as the FBI, Interpol and local California authorities, White added, none of those investigations resulted in any criminal charges against Sciacca.
Now, with a federal court judgment in his favor (.pdf), Sciacca is free to sell the items, though White says he’s not sure when or if his client will move forward with that.
� Kellie Schmitt
