Posted by Orin Kerr:
More on Waiting in Line for Grokster:
The magic cutoff for showing up for the Grokster case seems to have
been around 10:00pm the night before the argument. George Mason
student Eion Murdock reports showing up at 3 am and missing getting in
by about a dozen spots; he reports that he was one of the 25
line-waiters who got to see the Brand X argument, but that he missed
Grokster. Eion writes: "Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I
figured that having stood in line for over 8 hours by that point I
needed to see something."
CDT policy analyst [1]Mike Steffen writes that he showed up around
8pm on Monday night, and that he thought it was worth waiting in line
(for 14 hours!) to see the argument. A slightly-edited excerpt from
Mike's report:
There were a lot of interesting or amusing interactions from the
line sitting experience itself. For example:
-waking up at 4 am to see a 20 person Supreme Court Bar line
materialize basically out of nowhere. It was composed almost
entirely of paid line-sitters, who made a very strange bunch. It's
a little hard to describe how surreal this was at the time;
-seeing Annalee Newitz from EFF ask Jack Valenti to autograph a
vintage Betmax tape early this morning--and seeing Valenti
sportingly oblige;
-watching the argument between some of the campers further back
from us and the MGM execs and P2P VC backers who showed up late to
take places from hired sitters--and watching the Supreme Court
police change their mind about the official policy on line-sitting
over the course of the interaction.
-chatting with the [other people in line] was fun and valuable in
itself. This included the general counsel (!) of MGM, who had to
stand in the public line with the rest of us (albeit only after
7:30 am when he showed up to replace his sitter), because
petitioners in Grokster had run out of tickets for parties. He was
exceptionally personable and friendly.
Thanks to Eion and Mike for their reports.
References
1. http://www.cdt.org/staff/msteffen.shtml
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