(full caveat - son of an attorney, fanatical fair-use/collage/transformative use advocate)
Lawyers are hired by clients. Their job is to help their clients "win", REGARDLESS of the lawyer's personal belief. A lawyer who defends an eventually accused murderer in court is not "pro murder". A lawyer who prosecutes someone who it turns out was wrongly accused of a crime isn't against due process. It's an adversarial system by law, designed that way with the idea that truth comes out when each side has an advocate whose job is to defend/prosecute to the absolute best of their abilities. If this fellow was a judge and had issued rulings on the matter, that would be different, but the fact that this fellow did what he was hired to do in a firm hired by the RIAA doesn't make me worry that he is pro-rigid copyright. Though to be fair, there probably is an argument to be made that successful, late career lawyers who choose to practice in a certain area are another matter as they might have the option to choose a particular practice. But there would still be a grey area. Obama's ties to and interest in the arts community and his early actions connected to the arts make me optimistic that the new administration will support strengthening fair use. Brook _______________________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
