Susan Illston
Encyclopedia
Susan Yvonne Illston is a San Francisco
, California
-based judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.
, Japan
. She is a graduate of Duke University
(B.A., 1970) and Stanford Law School
(J.D., 1973). Prior to her appointment, Illston served in private practice first as an associate, then as a partner at Cotchett, Illston & Pitre in Burlingame
, California
from 1973 to 1995.
On the unanimous recommendations of Senators Barbara Boxer
and Dianne Feinstein
, Illston was nominated by President
Bill Clinton
on January 23, 1995 and confirmed by the Senate
on May 25, 1995 by majority voice vote.
that the company's software, which was intended, according to the company, to allow consumers to make backup copies of DVD
s by "circumventing" so-called "copy protection
" methods, was illegal under Federal law. She issued an injunction
at the behest of several Hollywood studios and ordered 321 Studios
to stop selling their product. However, despite finding that the software violated Federal law, she ruled that copies made by consumers (of their own legally purchased DVDs) were, in fact, legal. She wrote in her opinion, "It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put...Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions [of copyright law]."
, to three months in prison.
.
, could sue the school for free speech infringement.
trails in California
's Mojave Desert
. Illston found that the BLM had violated its own regulations when it designated the routes in 2006 without adequately analyzing the impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the endangered Mojave fringe-toed lizard
. Illston called the BLM's plan "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit damage to sensitive habitat and pointed out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed." The court also found that the BLM had failed to follow route restrictions established in the agency’s own conservation plan, resulting in the establishment of hundreds of illegal off roading routes during the past three decades. Illston ruled that the plan specifically violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).
America LLC v. George Hotz
, et al., in which Sony claims that Hotz's jailbreaking
of the Sony PlayStation 3
violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
. She has granted Sony permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video about the jailbreak and to read their comments, plus obtain access to IP addresses, accounts, and other details of visitors to sites run by Geohot. The access granted by Illston extends even to those who had not downloaded the jailbreak code.
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
-based judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San...
in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.
Biography
Judge Illston was born in TokyoTokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. She is a graduate of Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
(B.A., 1970) and Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School is a graduate school at Stanford University located in the area known as the Silicon Valley, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. The Law School was established in 1893 when former President Benjamin Harrison joined the faculty as the first professor of law...
(J.D., 1973). Prior to her appointment, Illston served in private practice first as an associate, then as a partner at Cotchett, Illston & Pitre in Burlingame
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
from 1973 to 1995.
On the unanimous recommendations of Senators Barbara Boxer
Barbara Boxer
Barbara Levy Boxer is the junior United States Senator from California . A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives ....
and Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....
, Illston was nominated by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
on January 23, 1995 and confirmed by the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
on May 25, 1995 by majority voice vote.
DiLoreto v. Downey
Sitting by designation of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1999 Judge Illston wrote the panel decision in DiLoreto v. Downey Unified School District Board of Education, 196 F.3d 958 (9th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1067 (2000), which held that an athletic fence which a public high school made available for commercial advertising is a nonpublic forum from which religious messages could be excluded without violating the first amendment.321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
In February 2004, Illston ruled in 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
321 Studios v Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc., 307 F. Supp. 2d 1085 , is a district court case brought by 321 Studios seeking declaratory judgment from the court that their DVD ripping software, i.e...
that the company's software, which was intended, according to the company, to allow consumers to make backup copies of DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s by "circumventing" so-called "copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
" methods, was illegal under Federal law. She issued an injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
at the behest of several Hollywood studios and ordered 321 Studios
321 Studios
321 Studios was a privately held company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri with a sales office in Berkeley, California. The company was a leading provider of DVD authoring software, including the highly controversial DVD X Copy product line of DVD copy software...
to stop selling their product. However, despite finding that the software violated Federal law, she ruled that copies made by consumers (of their own legally purchased DVDs) were, in fact, legal. She wrote in her opinion, "It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put...Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions [of copyright law]."
US v. Arnold
In August 2006, Illston sentenced Patrick Arnold, the chemist who developed an undetectable performance-enhancing drug for BALCOBalco
Balco can refer to:* the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative - a controversial sports medicine/nutrition centre in Burlingame, California.* Balco balcony systems who develops, designs and manufactures balcony systems and glazing solutions....
, to three months in prison.
US v. Bonds
In March 2009, Illston presided over a perjury case involving Barry BondsBarry Bonds
Barry Lamar Bonds is an American former Major League Baseball outfielder. Bonds played from 1986 to 2007, for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. He is the son of former major league All-Star Bobby Bonds...
.
Kyriacou v. Peralta Community College Dist.
In April 2009, Illston ruled that two students who were threatened with suspension by their community college, the College of AlamedaCollege of Alameda
College of Alameda is a two-year community college located in Alameda, California.The college is part of the Peralta Community College District and was opened in 1968. The college has been located at its campus at Atlantic Avenue and Webster Street since 1970...
, could sue the school for free speech infringement.
Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management
In October 2009, Illston ruled in favor of environmental groups that sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a 5,000 mile expansion of off-roadingOff-roading
Off-roading is a term for driving a vehicle on unsurfaced roads or tracks, made of materials such as sand, gravel, riverbeds, mud, snow, rocks, and other natural terrain.-Off-road vehicle:...
trails in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
's Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
. Illston found that the BLM had violated its own regulations when it designated the routes in 2006 without adequately analyzing the impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the endangered Mojave fringe-toed lizard
Uma scoparia
The Mojave fringe-toed lizard , is a species of medium-sized, white or grayish, black-spotted diurnal lizard in the family Phrynosomatidae. It is adapted to living in sand dunes in the Mojave Desert. It ranges from Los Angeles County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County in California to...
. Illston called the BLM's plan "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit damage to sensitive habitat and pointed out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed." The court also found that the BLM had failed to follow route restrictions established in the agency’s own conservation plan, resulting in the establishment of hundreds of illegal off roading routes during the past three decades. Illston ruled that the plan specifically violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).
Sony v. Hotz
, Illston is the presiding judge in Sony Computer EntertainmentSony Computer Entertainment
Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. is a major video game company specializing in a variety of areas in the video game industry, and is a wholly owned subsidiary and part of the Consumer Products & Services Group of Sony...
America LLC v. George Hotz
George Hotz
George Francis Hotz , alias geohot, million75 or simply mil, is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, contrary to AT&T and Apple's intent...
, et al., in which Sony claims that Hotz's jailbreaking
Privilege escalation
Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, design flaw or configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user...
of the Sony PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
. She has granted Sony permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video about the jailbreak and to read their comments, plus obtain access to IP addresses, accounts, and other details of visitors to sites run by Geohot. The access granted by Illston extends even to those who had not downloaded the jailbreak code.
Publications
- California Complex Litigation Manual (1990)
- Insurance Coverage in a Toxic Tort Case, A Guide to Toxic Torts (1987)