Witnessing justice

Six students and their teaching assistant grabbed sleeping bags, blankets and tarps from the Outdoor Action supply room and spent the night on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court Monday, hoping to secure spots inside the courtroom for a landmark technology case.

The students drove to Washington, D.C., on Monday evening after spending four weeks discussing the MGM v. Grokster case in computer science professor Edward Felten's class, COS 491: Information Technology and the Law.

The case, which was argued Tuesday morning before the Supreme Court, pits 28 major entertainment companies and industry associations against the software company Grokster, which is responsible for popular peer-to-peer programs Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaA. Lower courts have ruled that such programs should be legal even though they are often used to infringe copyrights.

The group heard the oral arguments made before the Court, during which lawyers present their case and then answer a series of pointed questions from the justices.

"The questions revealed more about the justices than any sort of new insight about the case," said Dan Peng '05, one of the students who attended. "When you're reading cases you see these names. They really each have their own personality, and from their questions you can tell what they're thinking about."

That gave students "a welcome break from experiencing the case purely through paper," Felten said. "It's a chance to watch and hear how the Supreme Court justices are thinking about the case."

Friend of the court

Earlier this month, Felten, along with three Princeton colleagues and 12 computer science professors from other universities such as MIT and Yale, filed an amicus brief in the case. About 40 briefs were filed by various parties, from songwriters to an association of venture capitalists.

"We wanted to try to convince the court of the importance of leaving a wide field open for research and innovation in technology," Felten said. "The other purpose is to point out to the court several technical errors or incorrect arguments that other parties had made before."

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince’. Donate now »

The case has implications for whether a distributor of a P2P software can be held responsible for the illegal actions of its users. A ruling is expected this summer.

"We, as creators and distributors of technology, are worried about how companies could be held responsible for how people use the technology. We think that users who use the system illegally should be held responsible," Felten said. "It is a landmark case for this issue."

Down to the wire

The group — Peng, Stacy Chen '05, Jeff Alpert '05, Mark Melhan '05, Mike Coenan '05 and graduate students Halran Yu and class TA Alex Halderman '03 — left for Washington Monday night at 6 p.m.

When they arrived at about 10 p.m., they found that 40 other people had already camped out — many of them professional line-sitters hired to spend the night. Knowing that fewer than 40 people are typically admitted into the Court, the group was worried.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"It was nerve-wracking, nail-biting, down to the wire," Alpert said. "Crazy that we spent the whole night on the sidewalk and might not be able to see the trial."

Camped out for the night, the group hiked six blocks to the nearest bathroom several times. Halderman and Peng posed for a picture with Jack Valenti, former head of Motion Picture Association of America, who infamously said, "The VCR is to the movie industry as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone."

Protesters for both sides of the case squared off, carrying signs saying, "Feed a musician. Download legally" and "Don't steal my future."

"We thought about recording them and putting the recording on Grokster, but no one had a tape recorder," Coenan said.

Inside the Court

At 7 a.m., two hours before anyone was admitted to court, numbered tickets were distributed indicating everyone's position in line. The Princeton group, which held numbers 32 through 38, was relieved after being told that 40 people would be allowed into the court building.

But because of influx of media attention and the arrival of about 165 people who were on a priority list that guaranteed them admission, only 35 of about 200 people who eventually showed up were admitted.

Coenan was number 36. "It was really frustrating to see all these people cruise in in their taxies and walk right past you into the courtroom," he said.

But even those who did not make it were admitted for the first 15 minutes, then readmitted for short intervals.

"It was a rare opportunity to not only see a Supreme Court case in person, but to have seen it after studying it in depth and to be able to understand the nuances," Halderman said.