wry1

I'm not a lawyer (I've got ethics), but one of my good friends is a lawyer and from what he's told me this can go one of a few ways.....

First, the RIAA can appeal the 3-Judge ruling to the full court of appeals - a 12-Judge panel. Much like the Supreme Court, they can choose to hear or not hear the arguments. If the RIAA appeals it to the full court, and they opt to hear the case, then they may choose to uphold the 3-Judge panel's ruling, overturn the ruling, or modify the ruling. Oh yeah, those same 3 Judges are going to be part of the 12-Judge panel.

If the RIAA doesn't get the results they want from the full Court of Appeals (meaning they either don't get a hearing or they lose there as well), or if the RIAA wins there and Verizon chooses to appeal, then it would be put before the Supreme Court. Whether or not the Supreme Court would hear arguments on this one is a crap-shoot at best; strictly speaking, there are Constitutional issues at stake here (primarily, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure), but the Court may feel that this is something that needs to be addressed through the Legislative or Executive branches and not touch the case.

So as you can see, there's an awful lot of things that can happen from this point. What exactly will happen, well that just remains to be seen, doesn't it?