Reply #6: Not in my case.

[Liberty Belle]

My landmark infringement case, representing authors all over North America against the publishing industry, got kicked down by the Supreme Court back to a lower court. Why? Because Sotomeyer had to recuse herself, because of a really bad decision she made on this issue in a lower court.

so 10 years in court now and we're back to a mid-level court which could throw the whole thing out.

I had a dead-bang winner of a case and chose to represesnt all writers in a class action. A newspaper stole 500 of my stories that I actually had paid to register my copyrights on, one of the few writers who bothered to go through that legality. They sold them all over the internet to various databases that were charging for downloads. When I objected, they tried to force me to sign a contract GIVING them ALL RIGHTS RETROACTIVELY to everything I'd ever written for 10 years as a freelancer -- for not one penny of extra pay. If I wouldn't sign, they said I couldn't write for them anymore. That was my major source of income, but I told them to go to hell and brought in National Writers Union. The case merged with cases by other major writers' groups, against most major newspapers and databases in the US and Canada.

It settled, but one jerky writer who never bothered to register his works thought we didn't get enough money for him so he appealed - and an appellate court tried to throw the whole thing out, saying we should never have included the great unwashed and unregistered.

So for trying to do the right thing, I'm now flat broke ten years later, with no work and no money. The Supremes should have decide din our favor, and I'm pretty disgusted at how this all went down. So no, I'm no great fan of the new justice. If Rehnquist wouldn't recuse himself from voting on a case involving Cheney after he went duck hunting with the VP, Sotomeyer should've stayed on and righted this travesty of justice for writers everywhere.