DoJ Supports Dismissal of Felten v. RIAA Case

phalse phace writes: "The EFF is reporting that the Department of Justice has filed a motion to dismiss the pending Felten v. RIAA case because it's "not ripe" and it fails to address serious First Amendment problems. (Yeah, like threatening to sue someone for presenting their research on digital music access-control technologies isn't a serious First Amendment problem.) The preliminary statement of the DoJ's memorandum states: "Plaintiffs have not been prosecuted under the DMCA, nor have they been threatened with such prosecution...""

Comments

How?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you file a motion to dismiss a suit you're not involved in? This sounds weird.

Re:How?

[Pseudonym]

It isn't an amicus brief. The Attorney General is a named defendant in the case.

Re:How?

[hey!]

OT, I guess, but am I the only one who things slashdot needs a legal editor to edit these kind of law stories occasionally answer a question like this?

Of course, the economic picture is probably not very rosy at Andover now, but one can always wish. Maybe some law firm would donate the services of a junior staffer. They might pick up some clients as a result of the notoriety.

Ummm. . . someone is confused?

[Christopher Cashell]

"Plaintiffs have not been prosecuted under the DMCA, nor have they been threatened with such prosecution..."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this whole thing come about because Felten was threatened under the DMCA, and told that if he published his research, he would be sued?

The guys at the DoJ did read the case before throwing out their opinion, didn't they?

Re:Ummm. . . someone is confused?

[larien]

Well, after some toing and froing, the threat was dropped and Felten was allowed to publish. However, the wording by the DoJ is either poorly written or deliberately misleading (take your pick). There is no current threat to Felten AFAIK, but he has been threatened (implied or directly) with prosecution.

Is anyone really surprised?

[Rinikusu]

No, really, I'm serious. ARE YOU REALLY SURPRISED?

The government has been shown to come down on the side of "big business" time and time and time again. Even in it's (in)action against Microsoft, it still benefits not you, not me, not Joe consumer, but Oracle, Sun, and Apple. It's getting to the point where *no one* cares. We've become desensitized to the idea of the government belonging to he who has the cash... You read the paper "Government sides yet again with major corporations" and just shrug it off. "What, a politician has been bought? NOOOO!!" Sarcasm will kill us all.

Yes, the government passed the wiretapping bills the other day. Privacy and freedom are disappearing in the name of "defending democracy and freedom". The Onion's story had it right.

It's mightily convenient. Look at Seattle and the Riots of 1999. There's a groundswell of people who are becoming fed up with what's going on. They don't know why, they can't agree on what to replace what we have with. It's akin to the Revolutions of 1838 (?) in Europe. Protestors without a clear and concise goal, they just know we're pissed off.

The new laws will affect the people who are fighting, in vain, to bring awareness to us all. They will now have to be more careful when planning "political action" (marches, protests, etc), else be labeled "terrorists." The corporations we despise now control the means to watch us. The corporations have gotten military sponsership. Adbusters will be equated to El Quaida. LINUX users will be labeled as "potential internet terrorists". You just watch and see. Ever notice how all these little script kiddies being busted are shown to have had "linux" machines? Linux is being equated to badness. They never mention Windows or Macs in that context, do they? Think.

Yes, the DOJ supporting throwing this out comes as no surprise to me.

I hope they throw out the case. If that doesn't wake you, the so-called last bastions of intellect and free market thinking, nothing will. Yes, you whom Jon Katz has labeled as "The world's future", this is your fight and you're about to lose. You're about to find out that you mean nothing to those with money. How does it feel? Maybe the hippies are on to something. Maybe those left-winger idiots are right. Maybe there is something rotten in this country and it's not the free-market. There is no free-market.

The faster they throw out this case, the closer we'll be to the end. Of what, I don't know. It's time for a change.

Jesus, I need to get off the decaf.

Impied threat.

[dackroyd]

It's a bit like the mafia coming round and suggesting to the business's in a neighbourhood that they ought to pay some protection money otherwise their business _might_ have a nasty fire.

Just because it didn't explicitly state that if you don't do what the large thuggish organisation wants (mafia/RIAA) then bad things will happen to you, most people would still feel enough of a threat to take the easy route and avoid any trouble.

Or hopefully go to the police/courts to try to stop the mafia/RIAA from blackmailing them.

ps Made up word from the document - "justiciable"

False Economy

[t_allardyce]

DRM is a false economy. It artificially restricts what you can do with a number (digital data) in order to make money. Software is exactly the same: Microsoft Windows sells for big money to lots of people around the world, when in fact, they could cover their costs and make plenty of money even if they sold their products for a fraction of the price. The same applies to CDs, DVDs, and plenty of other things. Imagine an economy where CDs sold for almost nothing - these mega-corporations wouldn't exist and politicians would have to actually use their heads to run the government, instead of getting big fat checks and bits of paper telling them what to do.

The same could be said for drugs: why are they illegal? surely they are less dangerous than guns? The reality is, that if most drugs were legal, their market value would drop to nothing - you would see fields of weed like you see fields of maze. All the money thats made in the business would stop, and allot of rich people would become poor.

Re:No, not really, no its much worse actualy

[budgenator]

IANAL, but it goes something like this.
all digital inteactive devices must be security certified by the dept of commerce. Their definition of digital interactive device is so vage that it will not only include you automobile with its computer and radio, but even your microwave oven. Everybody is talking about it like its a content management scheme, which it is to a large extent and maybe that's what its intended to be but when you actualy read it, you see no verbage limiting it to content management. We are supposed to assume that the authorities are smart enough to know what the legislation meant. here's a link to the PDF (yuck) file it's a 4.586 Mb download. The thing that bothers me the most about it is how in the world is the DoC going to have the expertise to certify all of the software/hardware combinations? The only answer I can come up with is to contract with industry experts to do it, imagine have Microsoft employees certifying the security of a linux distro.

My crystal ball says that means passport technology will be manditory to see anything from a big-company website. When all of the significant content on the web is passport managed it'll get to the point when M$ will get brazen enough to change the EULA so that when you go to a protectected site, you will have unknowingly have agreed to pay Microsoft a fee for the passport service (you have to read the EULA each time you use it to know what you're agreeing to). The royalties are automaticaly deducted from your CC (number already on file at Microsoft) for fee for view content. and there you'll be stuck with Microsoft.

There is no way that Linux will ever be certifiable because we have both the source code and a complier. There will be no Linux to keep Microsoft's feet to the fire driving improvement for everybody and Microsoft's QC department will once again be a puppet for the legal and marketing departments. In short everbody loses except Microsoft.

Explain to me...

[Newer Guy]

Why is this case 'not ripe' while the whole Napster/file sharing/copyright thing is??
I mean we haven't had ONE SINGLE challenge to the (probably unconstitutional) DMCA yet.
Why is the DMCA then considered 'ripe'?
Is the Internet (at a whole 5 years old as a 'mass medium') ripe?
Seems to me that 'the man' wants it both ways...They want the 'net to be considered 'mature' when it suits them..and 'not ripe' when it suits THEM!
We are in a very dangerous time....a time where the tables seem about to turn. A time where the Russians advise THEIR citizens to be wary of the U.S.! A time where most of the world (and many of our own citizens) fear and distrust OUR government. A time where law enforcement can propose whatever they want (Constitution/Bill of Rights be damned) and Congress and the President say: "yup, yup, yup". A time where citizens' rights are secondary to corporate greed.
Finally, the obscenity of terrorism isn't just what happened on September 11th, 2001. It's what has happened in Congress since then.
My only hope is that the citizens of our great country wake up to what their 'leaders' are really doing TO them! If not, then we're truly screwed.....

A letter from the UN HC Human Rights

[Sara Chan]

The following letter appears in this week's edition of The Economist (it's online, but at a charge):

SIR - You correctly identify one of the key challenges for governments in dealing with the threat of terrorism--how to respond to the terrible crime against humanity committed on September 11th without undermining the very freedoms and liberties that the terrorists sought to destroy ("Liberty v security", September 29th). The attack was against more than just buildings and people. It was an attack against fundamental values that now, more than ever, need to be protected and reinforced.

However, in asserting that civil libertarians need to accept a balance between security and liberty, you underestimate the true balance already built into the human-rights system. The drafters of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and similar provisions in other documents such as the European Convention on Human Rights, may not have anticipated the horrific events of September 11th but they did provide for them. Existing human-rights law addresses the issue of competing values and allows some limitation of certain rights to respond to pressing public or social needs, but not so as to jeopardise the essence of the rights concerned.

In the past, the need to oppose terrorism has sometimes been used to justify unacceptable actions by states. I endorse Colin Powell's reported comments to the effect that global action against terrorism does not constitute a licence to violate human rights. Not only can the eradication of terrorism and the defence of our most cherished values be pursued simultaneously, indeed they must.

--Mary Robinson, UN high commissioner for human rights, Geneva

I'm glad to see some support like this.