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Their megabuck legal team convinced the judge to throw out the case before it could come to trial (by refusing to admit expert testimony). I'm appealing, but meanwhile they are suing me to make me pay more than $300,000 in legal fees to their lawyers

Sony and Random House assert in their legal filings that my blogging about the Da Vinci Code case, my posting of legal documents, expert witness analysis and a discussion of my own books as the originals in the genre constitutes evidence of "improper motivation" which they say justifies me being forced to pay .

Why didn't I sue them first?

As already mentioned on this thread, it's all about megabucks. Random House/Bertelsmann is the world's largest, multibillion-dollar publishing company.

Outclassed in the "all the justice you can pay for" category, I first wrote them a non-threatening letter intending to ask that they give me credit. I had no lawyer, no intention to sue then -- as now -- never any demand for settlement money.

Despite my private and non-threatening approach, Random House launched a thermonuclear "fuck off" fax at me threatening me with financial ruin should I pursue the issue. Their fax was so extreme that it was a big clue that some sort infringement may have happened and that they knew it.

Random House slammed the door on private and civil discussion. But, lacking the megabucks to buy the same measure of justice available to large global corporations, I turned to public disclosure and what better way than blogs, one of which was The Da Vinci Crock

I did this because a couple of years ago, before blogs were so common, I created an online forum called PatheticBell.Com (http://www.patheticbell.com/) concerning the misleading ads and promises of Pacific Bell (now SBC) DSL service. That forum collected enough information from angry users to support several class action lawsuits that brought fines and better service.

Because I had successfully used the Web to bring issues to the public's attention then, I saw no reason not to do so again. The public scrutiny obviously generated more heat than Random House could take, so they filed suit against me in New York where the judges are more friendly toward publishers than here in California.

The judge in question refused to allow my expert witnesses to submit their testimony then ruled in favor of Random House's request to deny a trial on the issues. I am appealing.

BIG APOLOGY: I am sorry for all the badly produced .pdf documents above!

The court filings are only available as CRAPPY .pdfs are scanned from printed pages.

Lawyers do this (instead of creating normal, CPU-sucking Acrobat documents) to make it impossible to text search their filings or to cut and paste from them despite the fact that they are public domain documents.

This

And don't forget the BMG side. One of the head shots will look familiar to those on the sonybmg.com management page. Wow what a list of products to boycott. You don't think in today's world - and in it's corporate mesh of interests - that you can just not buy some CDs, to get one's point across, do you? OK, you didn't ask, but if one *is* considering a boycott, then there's a lot more than music involved. HUA

Bertelsmann, one of the biggest publishers in the world, and owner of BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group) is a German corporation, and stands to benefit greatly from these "proactive taxes" (ie, corporate tithes). Don't neglect to give credit where credit is due.

The German parliament which has just adopted DMCA-style provisions to outlaw the circumvention of technical protection measures that control and curtail the fair use of intellectual property (and only needs the other House's assent for part of the new legislation) makes Germany the third country, following Denmark and Greece, to implement the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as the European Union Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.

This move, allegedly a "propaganda victory" dubbed "lex Bertelsmann" (after the giant media conglomerate expected to line their corporate pockets under the new laws) in furious disapproval by tech-savvy parts of the news media, makes Germany one of the early adopters setting an unfortunate precedent for further European countries like the UK and France whose citizens, and notably developers like Linux kernel guru Alan Cox, will probably not be spared from similar legislation for much longer either.

Although open-source researchers, cyber-rights activists and even the ruling Social Democrats' very own IT experts as well as hardware manufacturers underlined the severe dangers and inconsistencies of this new and doubtful philosophy extending copyright law to reduce many of the general public's rights to insignificance, in a debate focusing only on academic exemptions from the publishers' power grab, the opposition even tried to tighten the government's bill, ignoring widespread experiences of Chilling Effects such as censorship and assaults on the Freedom to Tinker during the past four years under the EUCD's U.S. counterpart of draconian "bad law and bad policy", the flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another overreaching implementation of the

You might also want to see how much other crap they own. There was a page I saw which listed all the companies, but I can't find the link right now.. :(

This case might make industry think twice about the DMCA if the copyright work in question were owned by, say, Bertelsmann or another AOL-Time-Warner competitor. But as the suit was brought by some puny individual (no offense, Mr. Ellison, but you're not a mega-media conglomerate) and the Right Side won, this won't change the opinions of Anyone That Matters.

From Bertelsmann's web site:

The history of the enterprise during the Nazi era has been under investigation since early 1999 by an Independent Historic Commission under the chairmanship of the renowned historian Saul Friedländer (author of the book "Nazi Germany and the Jews"). The results will be documented in a public report as soon as the investigation is concluded.

Does anyone know anything about this company's history during the Nazi era in Germany?

Hitler - with his minority of the popular vote in Germany would have never been able to maintain power without the support and cooperation of German business. Hitler's Germany tried to slaughter every jew and gypsy in Europe and started a world war that enveloped all of Europe, most of Asia, and North Africa. Citizens from current and former European colonies from every corner of the world fought and died and killed. Much of France, Germany, and Holland were flattened (Rotterdam).

National Socialists brought hell to the world. They have, in the view of many, pissed away their right to freedom of speech - they have shown that speech can, in fact, be dangerous and they had been experiencing a resurgence of popularity in some parts of Europe. Europeans don't want them back and both "the mob" and "big business" have proven that they are not up to the task of keeping nazism at bay in Europe.

Against this backdrop it is up to the technocrats and politicians to pass whatever legislation they can to make it difficult for the Nazis to publicize their ideas (in the process threatening Germanys minoritys)and do the best that they can to enforce it. It is up to the Germans to decide whether or not they want this material freely available. If they don't want it banned. Germans are not shy about making their political views known and going out and voting, demonstrating (or rioting).

While Martin Niemoller's "In Germany they first came for the Communists...." quote is lovely. The world is not black and white. Different situations call for different measures. The fact is that if they had come for the National Socialists in the early days they could have saved Germany and the world a lot of trouble.

Kiddy porn is not only illegal because kids get hurt in its manufacture (if that was the case a lot of other things would be illegal). It is illegal because it is a "thought crime" a taboo that just about everyone has decided that society can do without. Nazism has earned itself a spot next to "kiddy porn" as a "thought crime".

It has also earned it's place in Germany's national "killfile". Who are we to demand they remove it?

Here you can find the press release from Bertelsmann announcing the strategic alliance with Napster: http://www.bertelsmann.c om/ press/press_item.cfm?id=2461
Just an excerpt:
Napster and Bertelsmann will seek support from others in the music industry to establish Napster as a widely accepted membership based service and invite them to participate actively in this process.