SCOUR PICKS ITS TEAM
Leading Scour's fight—for their right to party—against the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Music Publishers Association (we're assuming "of America") is acclaimed trial lawyer Fred Bartlit of Chicago-based Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, Harvard Law School professor Arthur Miller and intellectual property rights author Peter Toran.
Let's learn a little about this tort-o-licious triumvirate, shall we?
Fred "Green Tomatoes" Bartlit leads off. A slap hitter who uses the whole field, Bartlit creates scoring opportunities with his speed. The National Law Journal calls Bartlit "one of the most successful corporate defense litigators ever, with a long history of big wins in a wide variety of cases, including fraud, antitrust, products liability and intellectual property." Bartlit has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court twice, both times as a lawyer. He also won the Harvard Law Review's "Sexiest Litigator" accolade on two non-consecutive occasions, 1993 and 1995.
Arthur "If You Get Caught Between The Moon And New York City" Miller bats second and plays third base. Miller's ability to move the runner has been without peer this season. "The Professor" is a copyright and litigation expert in the areas of civil procedure and the implications of computer technology for personal privacy. Miller has been a moderator on PBS, has hosted his own legal program on CourtTV and has beaten the Iron Chef Italian in an eggplant battle. In his spare time, Miller has also penned the award-winning plays "Death Of A Salesman," "The Crucible" and "All My Sons."
Peter "Pumpkin Eater" Toren provides the dangerous combination of power and average. A gap hitter, Toren leads the league on two-out RBIs with runners in scoring position (a terrifying .467 average). Formerly the lead prosecutor for the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, Toren currently heads the Intellectual Property Group at New York-based Brown & Wood, where he is a partner. A professor at Hofstra University, Toren wrote the DOJ's monograph on Federal Prosecution and Violations of Intellectual Property Rights, a document Entertainment Weekly called "an incendiary page-turner," "a tour de force [that] should make John Grisham sit up and take notice" and "the summer's first true ‘must-read' release."
"Scour's services have always been, and will continue to be completely legal, and have conformed from day one with all applicable laws and guidelines, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998," said Scour President Dan Rodrigues. "With the powerhouse team Fred Bartlit has assembled, and with Arthur Miller and Peter Toren on our side, we could not have better counsel to defend Scour's right to develop new technologies for the Internet."
In related news, final legal briefs were filed today in a New York case pitting the MPAA against legendary hacker zine 2600 and its publisher Eric Corley.
The suit alleges that the zine posted a software program online that allows protected DVDs to be decoded and watched on computers and therefore facilitates widespread copying of movies online. The MPAA sued to block propagation of the software.
Attorneys for 2600 claim there is no hard evidence that the software has ever been used and that the MPAA is treading on freedom of expression rights in its efforts to protect its copyrights.
