outragedmoderates cited by MGM v. Grokster amicus briefs

Wanted to pass on some news regarding outragedmoderates.org, a site I discussed last summer regarding substantial non-infringing uses of p2p.

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Law school student's blog cited by MGM v. Grokster amicus briefs

Queens, NY – Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law, learned that his political blog is cited in two of the amici curiae briefs submitted to the Supreme Court regarding the MGM v. Grokster case (scheduled for March 29th).

Briefs submitted in support of the respondents by the American Civil Liberties Union and Free Software Foundation and New Yorkers for Fair Use cite outragedmoderates.org's Download For Democracy campaign – which uses P2P networks to distribute government documents – as an example of a "substantial noninfringing use" of the controversial technology.

The ACLU brief states that outragedmoderates.org provides access to "numerous government documents such as the 9/11 Commission Report, all seventeen of the accompanying staff statements, and the actual testimony of many principal staff members from the Clinton and Bush administrations" (ACLU amici curiae brief, pages 11-12).

The brief also cites a July 2004 Wired article discussing outragedmoderates.org, noting that "[a]lthough these public documents are available from other sources as well, the nature of peer-to-peer technology makes it much easier - and quicker - to access and view the documents, many of which are quite lengthy and otherwise difficult to locate."

According to the Wired article: "Anderson said that seeing the documents themselves, rather than reading about them through the filter of a news article, has a greater impact. 'It's a very direct and primary source when you read (these documents) without any spin,' he said. 'Unlike a Michael Moore film, there is no dramatic music being played. You're sitting there looking at it on your computer, and it's a great way for people to make up their own minds about things.'"

Despite the high-tech nature of the MGM v. Grokster legal battle, Anderson says that he inherited his belief in freedom of speech and open government from a decidedly old-fashioned source: his family's roots in North Carolina. Anderson was born and raised in Raleigh, NC, and his grandfather and great-grandfather are characters in Tim Tyson's critically-acclaimed 'Blood Done Sign My Name," which tells the story of a racially-motivated murder in Oxford, North Carolina.

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Andrew Zangrilli, blogbook, bothers to pull the cites:

First citation:
(discussing the outragedmoderates.org website, which contains hundreds of government and court documents and makes them available for download through peer-to-peer networks).

Second citation:
See http://www.outragedmoderates.org/HowtoUseP2PNetworks.html (last visited Feb. 24, 2005).

The Free Software Foundation and New Yorkers for Fair Use brief contains the second double mention of outragedmoderates.org.

First Citation:
In the Table of Authorities, the blog is listed under the Other Materials section, as

Outraged Moderates: Government Document Archive
at http://www.outragedmoderates.org/
GovernmentDocumentLibrary.html (2004) . . . . . . . . . . 11

Second Citation:
Footnote 9 . . . see also Outraged Moderates: Government Document Archive at http:
//www.outragedmoderates.org/GovernmentDocumentLibrary.html (2004)