The opinion seemed to chide Judge Walker ("The District Court attempted to change its rules at the eleventh hour to treat this case differently than other trials in the district") for showing an overeager interest in the 9th Circuit's pilot program to broadcast trials and for seeing the gay-marriage case as, in Walker's words, "an ideal candidate for consideration".
The cable network, which broadcasts trials nationally with commercial sponsorship, plans to cover the entire trial.
According to the rules, which had been painstakingly negotiated to broadcast the trial live, the cameras may not be switched on until the judge walks into the courtroom.
A federal judge today rejected a cable television network's request to broadcast the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who the authorities say was meant to be the 20th hijacker on Sept. 11 and is the only person charged in the attacks.
Multi-Choice, the company that owns the show, backed him when he and a commercial radio-news station asked the National Prosecuting Authority and Pistorius's defense team, last July, for permission to broadcast the trial on a spare Multi-Choice channel — 199 on the satellite-TV platform.
To that end, the students are trying to convince the presiding judge to allow them to broadcast the trial online; the RIAA object to this.
"We should broadcast these trials to the whole world.
The Heaviside layers got into the newspapers last month when a CBS TV program called "Opinions on Trial," broadcast in N. Y., came in clearly at the Indiana TV Laboratory.
The majority opinion did not directly address the possibility of delayed broadcast of the trial by video posted on YouTube or the trial court's own Web site, apparently because Chief Judge Kozinski never approved Judge Walker's proposals concerning them.
Party officials have pressed several Serbian television stations to broadcast the entire trial, which the judges said might run until 2009.
