Prof. Volokh offers initial thoughts on this brewing dispute between MBTA and some MIT students who planned a presentation exposing security flaws in the MBTA cards.  MBTA sought and obtained a temporary restraining order.

The dispute of course presents interesting legal issues, but I wondered about something elese.  How much publicity did MBTA's lawyers think the TRO would get, and how did this play into their calculus.  (How do you anticipate something like this?)  In some sense this could end up being similar to the Wikileaks case where unanticipated publicity and public outcry surely influenced the outcome (and tempered aggressive action by the bank's lawyers).  On a related note, how influenced are district court judges by public outcry (including law prof. blogger criticism) of their decisions. 

For some reason, my impression is that the tech community has been hugely successful in marshalling criticism of decisions and actually influencing the ultimate outcome of cases.  I don't know if that success is owed to organizations (e.g., EFF) or individuals (D. McCullagh) who are very active and influential, or to the fact that bloggers naturally are inclined to discuss these types of topics that are perceived as affecting them and the topics are widely disseminated and more prone to garner media attention.  But one thing is for sure, if you are a plaintiff's lawyer pushing for an aggressive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or the Copyright Act, you are playing on a slightly different playing field as far as the publicity your case can generate (many times against your wishes).  There's almost a blogosphere level invisible amici that you have to contend with.  Or so it seems.