I may well be a day late and a dollar short for this conversation, but I can't help but throw in my two cents.

1. We live in a litigious, entitled society. People have some sort of dispute, and the courts and capitalizing on the problem are the first thing Americans think of. (Sorry for the broad, horribly inprecise generalizations. Of course there are exceptions.) Do most lawyers contribute to the problem? You bet. Are lawyers responsible for the problem as a class? I, for one, don't think so.

2. Like Whoknew, I see this project as pure, awesome potential. Sure, it's not Lexis yet. But give it a year, and somebody will come up with some awesome search tools, I have no doubt. What's more, the service as it stands is very useful. Of course it's nice to be able to search for a case you didn't know existed, but we lawyers look up specific cases more often than we let on. We find cites in legal encyclopedias, practice guides, opposing council briefs, cases we already have, etc., etc. We pay for those, too, especially for those of us who have pay-per-click plans through Lexis or West. My only serious gripe about the Public.Resource.org cases is that there aren't any page numbers! Surely, the original reporters page numbers must be public domain, too, as the response from West (http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/letter_to_west_response.pdf) seems to roundaboutly suggest. I know we should be using neutral paragraph numbers, but we aren't. What would be so difficult about throwing the page breaks and numbers in?

I think this device is incredibly utilitarian. Think your boss has spyware that logs every keystroke? Plug this in every time you step away from your desk, and set it to the maximum frequency. Voila! Your keystroke log is so big that your boss can't be bothered to find the real data buried in the useless data! (Assuming, of course, that your boss is lazy, and/or doesn't freak out about the entire thing. Both of which seem like fair assumptions to me.)

A direct quote from "The Blues Brothers," if I'm not mistaken.

@ #14:

There is a legal definition of newsworthy. I used it. "Of legitimate public concern."

And, yes, reporting and commenting on the news is "a good enough reason to violate copyright." Even if you put it in such inflammatory terms. Let's take it to the law in question. 17 USC 107:

". . . the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, . . . is not an infringement of copyright."

Then the law lists out some criteria we can use to determine whether this use counts as a fair one.

In any case, my point was that there isn't really a "newsworthiness scale." One thing isn't more newsworthy than the next, at least not as far as the law is concerned. It's a check box. "Is it news? Yep. Check. Move on." Tom Cruz saying crazy stuff = news. "Hosting the new Jay-Z album" = not "criticism, comment, or news reporting." Not by any definition.

@ Tikk:

I don't think anything about this is "unnewsworthy" (a/k/a "not of legitimate public concern"). Or less newsworthy than something else, or that there is any sort of legal scale of "newsworthiness" that Denton needs to worry about. See Shulman v. Group W Productions 18 Cal.App.4th 200.

"Thus, newsworthiness is not limited to "news" in the narrow sense of reports of current events. "It extends also to the use of names, likenesses or facts in giving information to the public for purposes of education, amusement or enlightenment, when the public may reasonably be expected to have a legitimate interest in what is published."" [Citing the 2nd restatement of Torts.]

Gawker posted a video that was interesting to the public (as evidenced by all the brouhaha) about a very public figure (or, as CSI would have it, The Biggest Movie Star in The History of Everything, Ever!). That's newsworthy enough. If "Denton was arguably an active participant in making the footage news" by reporting it, then reporters everywhere are in trouble. If, subsequent to Gawker's reportage, a meta-news story about the fallout became, itself, news, then that doesn't change the newsworthiness of the original piece.

I'm not saying Gawker will win, I'm just saying that Gawker's lawyers wouldn't have any trouble arguing their way out of your argument that this case leaves Gawker worse off than LANS. And, since they're lawyers, I'm sure they'll find some way to distinguish it.

Eww. Just . . . eww. And I like bananas! I think I need a Unicorn Chaser to cleanse my mind's palate.

Is it wrong that I got a little turned on by this?

I'm really excited about this. I've always been frustrated that we didn't, until now, have any practical way to get at case law, which is supposed to be all in the public domain, but through a pay service.

Question 1: How long before state case law becomes available?

Question 2: How long before Google makes a robust, lawyer-oriented search tool for this stuff and starts putting LexisNexis and West out of business?

That second one, "Radar Echoes from Titan's Surface," sounds like somebody on Titan's playing old-school Pole Position, or something. Man, what's the point of visiting other planets if they don't at least have better video games than us?

Man, I love the "Note to Mothers," too. I expected a legal disclaimer along the lines of "oh, by the way, sugar makes you fat." I forgot that we didn't invent the disclaimer until the 80s. Instead, it's a warning about the dangers of "exhaustion." "Play safe with your young ones -- make sure they get sugar every day."