Federal judge delays the public webcast of illegal download case

The recording industry's legal battle against a Boston University graduate student who is accused of downloading music illegally from the Internet will not be coming soon to a computer screen near you, at least not for a month.

The nation's first free live public webcast of a federal court hearing - one concerning a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America against Joel Tenenbaum, 25 - has been postponed until Feb. 24.

Six days after US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner granted a motion by the student's legal team to let the hearing scheduled for tomorrow be streamed onto the Internet, she issued a stay late Tuesday sought by the Recording Industry Association of America. The association has asked the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to block the webcast.

Gertner denied the association's request for a permanent stay, but said in a ruling late Tuesday that postponing the hearing will allow the appeals court "an opportunity to fully consider the petition before it."

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the association, said the group appreciated the postponement.

The group argued in court papers Friday that allowing the webcast flouted the guidelines of the Judicial Conference, which sets policy for the federal judiciary, and the rules of the District Court of Massachusetts.

The association also contended that a webcast could be prejudicial and misleading because "the broadcast will be readily subject to editing and manipulation by any reasonable tech-savvy individual" and that statements may be taken out of context.

But Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, a founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, who is defending Tenenbaum, welcomed the prospect of the appeals court weighing in on court webcasts.

"I can't imagine a stronger case for doing what [Gertner] is doing, which is opening up the federal court for this proceeding in this particular case," he said. "The Internet is so much a part of this case. It's the environment in which the infringement allegedly took place. It's the audience that supposed to be influenced by the statute. It's the generation of kids on the Internet. Instead of having a lone federal judge in the district court address the question, I'm delighted to have the judges address it."

On Jan. 14, Gertner said she would allow Courtroom View Network, - a New York-based company that webcasts trials, primarily in the state courts - to cover a key hearing in the suit against Tenenbaum, a doctoral student in physics who is challenging the association's copyright infringement case against him.

Gertner said that the case is of keen interest to the Internet generation and that the Web is the primary source of news for many young people.

Unlike most state courts throughout the country, including those in Massachusetts, the federal courts have banned cameras and recording equipment, because many judges feared such coverage would undermine the rights of citizens to a fair trial.

Since at least 1996, however, several federal trial judges in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, following local rules, have allowed some hearings in civil cases to be recorded and broadcast on television, Gertner said last week.

Recently, some judges in those courts have allowed Courtroom View Network to "narrowcast" proceedings on the Internet, but viewers, typically the lawyers and litigants, could only watch after paying a subscription fee, Nesson said.

Gertner's groundbreaking ruling allowed the Courtroom View Network to stream the hearing to the website of the Berkman Center, which intended to make it available free to the public.

That, as it turns out, is one of the things the association opposes. It said in court papers that the Berkman Center is hardly a disinterested party in the case and that its website is replete with propaganda against the recording industry that might taint a jury if the case ever goes to trial.

The appeals court said yesterday that the question of webcasting raises "subtantial and novel questions," and it has invited groups and individuals to file friend-of-the-court briefs by Jan. 29. The appeals court said it may hold oral arguments, as well.

Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.