p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Sonia Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who’s about to become a supreme court judge.

She came up “from her bootstraps,” says Sky News, going on:

“As the second woman joining Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sotomayor will clearly bring a different generational view of the world.

“It is impossible to predict what her appointment would do to the balance of the court on these issues since we do not know how persuasive she might be with her colleagues or what novel opinions or ideas she may have on the major issues of the day.”

Her background is being compared to Barack Obama’s. Like him, she’s someone who, “never forgot where they came from or the people who helped them move forward,” says CNN.

Let’s hope she has a better memory than Obama, then —- particularly when it comes to the depredations of the entertainment cartels, with Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music and their RIAA up fr0nt.

Because Obama, elected largely on claims he’ d look after the interests of the people who put him into office, seems unaware of a tiny, but vitally important, group of men, women and children falsely accused by the Big 4′s RIAA of being criminals and thieves;   of being “massive online distributors” of copyrighted corporate music ‘product’.

The RIAA has succeeded in bringing only one case before a judge and jury, and even that is slated to be reheard on June 15.

It involves Jammie Thomas-Rasset who, with her new lawyer, K.A.D. ‘Kiwi’ Camara, will for the second time take on the RIAA.

And six, and possibly more, RIAA lawyers have now been installed at the top of the department of justice.

Precedent-setting rulings

If elevated,  Sotomayor will become the first justice to join the court, “with a history of precedent-setting rulings on cyberlaw issues,” says Wired, going on in 2002, she, “wrote a decision (.pdf) nullifying Netscape`s online click-wrap agreement, which demanded binding arbitration of disputes between Netscape and its customers”.

The same year, Sotomayor, “joined in a unanimous appellate decision on the 2001 Patriot Act”  limiting the application of the automatic gag orders that bind ISPs that receive an FBI ‘national security letter,” says the story, pointing out that among other cases »»»

As a New York District Court judge in 2007, the nominee ruled that The New York Times could digitize and sell freelancers` work, despite the writers` claims of copyright infringement. The Supreme Court reversed her decision. The court is current set to hear that case again, and Sotomayor would likely have to recuse herself from the rehearing.

She’s a smart and knows copyright law.

The question is: if she’s ever confronted with a case such as Jammie’s,  which is not outside the realms of possibility, or with any other entertainment industry copyright lawsuit, will she take the corporate side, as she did in the difficult and contentious New York Times dispute, or will she use her knowledge to drill through the lies and half-lies?

Stay tuned.

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CNN – Don’t go to war over Sotomayor, May 28, 2009
RIAA lawyers – RIAA help at the DoJ,  May 2, 2009
Sky News – Sonia Sotomayor – ‘A Bronx Tale’, May 28, 2009
Wired – Obama’s Supreme Court Pick Schooled in Cyberlaw, May 26, 2009
take on the RIAA – Jammie Thomas vs the RIAA: round II,  May 13, 2009