Quote:
Originally posted by IvySpice
Depends what you mean by public. Courts can have semi-private proceedings or protect privacy in other ways. This is going on right now with some al-Qaeda suspects, but it happens more commonly in trade secret cases....
The judge, law clerks, and opposing counsel would still see the unredacted documents, but they WOULD be bound to be quiet about it; if they revealed anything, they could be disbarred.
The bigger problem I see with a copyright protection suit is that the simple fact of its filing would be public, and that alone would draw lots of attention to the offending web page (or whatever) in the meantime.
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Again, IvySpice, I agree. When I said "public," I meant pretty much what you said: The documents themselves might very well have to be made public -- I have some doubts that a court would be willing to treat a ritual as a trade secret, although redaction might be a little more likely (especially if one gets a Greek judge). But even if the documents themselves are not made public or are redacted, the lawsuit would still require the fraternity bringing the lawsuit to reveal ritual secrets to the uninitiated (judges, law clerks and other court personnel, and opposing counsel) and would require that fraternity to draw (probably unwanted) attention to itself and its desire to keep its ritual secret.
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