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Princeton v. RedState: lawsuit threatened over posting Kagan's college thesis
Citizen Media Law Project ^ | Posted June 18th, 2010 | CMLP Staff

Posted on 06/19/2010 6:54:11 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines

On May 14, 2010, Princeton University Archivist and Curator of Public Policy Papers, Daniel J. Linke, sent an email to RedState, a right-of-center blog, requesting that RedState remove a copy of Elena Kagan's undergraduate thesis from their web site.

Kagan, who was recently nominated by President Obama to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote her thesis, "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," in 1981, when she was a senior in the History Department at Princeton.

Linke's email explained that "[c]opies [of the thesis] provided by the Princeton University Archives are governed by U.S. Copyright Law and are for private individual use only." Linke further asserted that "[a]ny electronic distribution is prohibited."

RedState made Kagan's thesis available for downloading as a PDF file on May 13, 2010 in the body of a blog post entitled "BREAKING: We Have Elena Kagan's College Thesis" by Erik Erickson. After receiving Linke's email, RedState removed the thesis from its web site and provided the following explanation: "PULLED AT THE REQUEST OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY EXERCISING ITS COPYRIGHT RIGHTS."

Still, on May 14, 2010, the thesis was uploaded on Scribd.com, where it can be read in its entirety. The entire thesis is also available on infidelsarecool.com. Extensive excerpts from the thesis were published in Newsweek on May 12, 2010. Finally, the White House announced that it will make the document available to the general public, thus ending the impasse between Princeton and the online distributors of Kagan's thesis.

According to RedState, Princeton was trying to protect its revenue stream from hard copies of the thesis, which it sold for $57. Yet, according to Politico, "the copyright in the thesis likely belongs to Kagan, not Princeton."


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: kagan; princeton; socialism; thesis

1 posted on 06/19/2010 6:54:12 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

From the article:

“Finally, the White House announced that it will make the document available to the general public, thus ending the impasse between Princeton and the online distributors of Kagan’s thesis.”

http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/princeton-v-redstate


2 posted on 06/19/2010 7:01:03 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines
Elena Kagan and her Socialist 'hero' Cass Sunstein

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org

PROFILE: ELENA KAGAN

When it was announced in 2008 that Cass Sunstein would be joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Kagan said:

"Cass Sunstein is the preeminent legal scholar of our time -- the most wide-ranging, the most prolific, the most cited, and the most influential. His work in any one of the fields he pursues -- administrative law and policy, constitutional law and theory, behavioral economics and law, environmental law, to name a non-exhaustive few -- would put him in the very front ranks of legal scholars; the combination is singular and breathtaking."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2398
_________________________________________________

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org

PROFILE: CASS SUNSTEIN


3 posted on 06/19/2010 7:01:44 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: ETL
it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

The majority Dems in the Senate will vote her in, despite statements like this. We are screwed.

4 posted on 06/19/2010 7:12:17 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator (Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: VRW Conspirator

RINOs too, I would imagine.


5 posted on 06/19/2010 7:21:54 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: ETL
These people are monsters - killers without conscience.
6 posted on 06/19/2010 8:07:51 AM PDT by Noumenon ("Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he has grown so great?" - Julius Caesar)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines
Yet, according to Politico, "the copyright in the thesis likely belongs to Kagan, not Princeton."

Actually, if you write a thesis for college, it is quite possible that the college will claim the rights to the paper.

You might have rights to distribute yourself, or maybe not.

There was some employee of Princeton who reviewed the paper; if you were publishing, that professor would likely put their name first on the paper. I have a published paper that has my professor first on the list, since he was the teacher in charge of the course for which we wrote the paper.

7 posted on 06/19/2010 10:00:28 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: CharlesWayneCT
So would Princeton allow us to purchase a copy, and then distribute under Fair Use for study?

Why didn’t a Pubblie just enter it as a record in the confirmation committee, making it public?

8 posted on 06/19/2010 1:40:24 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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