Both OpenCourt and Diorio have filed legal briefs replying to the arguments in the briefs filed on October 17. The District Attorney’s office did not file reply briefs.

OpenCourt filed legal briefs yesterday leading up to a November 8 hearing before the full Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

“‘Equal justice under law’ is the inscription on the face of the court building. It is time that we the people had equal access to the process by which that justice is meted out.”

Instead of following the guidelines for requesting a redaction that were developed in consultation with the DA’s office and at the request of the Court, the Norfolk County DA’s office filed a motion to the Court, asking them to order us to redact the conversation from our archives. They said the redaction would be “necessary for the safety and privacy of the assistant district attorney and all Norfolk District Attorney’s Office employees.”

The central issue at stake is a First Amendment question of whether the court can order a news organization to redact material that has been presented to the public in open court.

Today we are launching public access to the video archives of our court live-streams. It’s been a long road here.

WBUR has decided to extend our voluntary suspension of posting the project’s archives past the May 18th date we had originally set, pending a full meeting of OpenCourt’s Advisory Board.

All of you legal eager beavers who tune into our live stream right when it goes online every morning may be wondering what exactly you’re hearing as the judge rises to the bench.

We are happy to announce the launch of OpenCourt, a pilot project which aims to open the workings of the justice system to the public using digital technology. Today is the first day we’ll be live-streaming the proceedings from the First Session of the Quincy District Court south of Boston.

One of the most shockingly difficult parts of our project was getting adequate broadband into the courthouse, which was built in 1972 and had the IT infrastructure to match. Project Director Joe Spurr recently wrote a post on the PBS MediaShift blog on our travails and the lessons to be learned about how essential broadband access is.