Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 12:40:56 EDT
From: rms@ai.mit.edu
To: info-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Briefs?

[Someone asked if the League for Programming Freedom had filed
a friend-of-the-court brief in the Lotus case, and if any League
members had testified.]

The League did not file a friend of the court brief in the Lotus case.

There are two reasons to file such a brief: to make legal arguments
that the plaintif and defendant are not going to mention, and to
indicate the opinion of a sector of the public.

In this case, the defendants were making the same arguments we would
make. And the League is not yet large enough to be regarded as
representing community opinion. We need more members to do that.

A consequence of not having enough members is that the League also
doesn't have enough money to pay for the writing of a brief. The FSF
could pay for one, and I considered doing this, but did not because of
the other reasons.

It is not likely that League members will testify in court (as expert
witnesses, I assume you mean). Some of the people who testified told
me that they expected membership in a political organization to be
held against them; for this specific reason, they did not join the
League. This is strange, since political activity is supposed to be
one of the sacred aspects of American democracy, but I am assured it
is so. However, most of us are not needed as expert witnesses,
because a few prominent ones are enough. The rest of us can join the
League.

It is possible that someone representing the League will testify at a
Congressional committee one of these days, if enough people join.