Napster's only alleged liability is for contributory or vicarious infringement. So when Napster's users engage in noncommercial sharing of music, is that activity copyright infringement? No.
David BoiesIt was important for the Supreme Court to say itโs a matter of constitutional law that everyone is equal, to say everyone is entitled to the dignity that comes from being married to the person you love.
David BoiesThe very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.
David BoiesI think what it was about was the people's right to vote and have those votes counted. And if you think back through our history, an awful lot of what we've fought over, struggled for, is the right of people to vote. That's what the civil-rights movement was, at its bottom, about. At the fundamental level, democracy means a government in which the people vote.
David BoiesYou never know when you lose a case whether it was because the facts were against you, or because the judges had already made up their minds, or if you could have done something differently.
David BoiesI made a penny for each paper delivered every day, plus 2 cents for Sunday papers. I had 120 customers. For a 10-year-old kid in the 1940s, that was a lot of money.
David BoiesHere you have a new technology, and if that technology is going to work, you must allow people to provide central indexes of the data. It's just like a newspaper that publishes classified ads.
David BoiesIt is easy to be accurate if you have the freedom to be complicated, and it is very easy to be simple if you have the freedom to shade the truth. What's hard is to be simple and very accurate, and that takes work to figure out what are the simple truths that are going to sustain your case.
David BoiesBut I'd say my best boss was Tom Barr, who was a partner at Cravath, Swain & Moore in the 1960s. It's because I learned so much from him.
David BoiesWhen you think of Napster, you think of music. But the first thing that struck me was that this was an important case not only for the music industry but for the whole Internet.
David Boies