Slashdot Mirror
Judge In RIAA Test Case Calls DMCA Unclear
otisaardvark writes "BBC News has an interesting article about how the judge has chided Congress for being inept and unclear. There are repercussions for both sides; primarily that the initial verdict will take far, far longer."
"Verizon says it would be unfair to cancel users accounts unless the music companies concerned filed formal legal proceedings that would give the users a chance to fight back.
But the music industry says that would take too long."
That's just super. Now if they could just dispense with this habeas corpus nonsense, they could put all their customers in jail.
. . .that American citizens who're interested in the progress of American case law have to turn to British news corporations to hear it; while all Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc., can be bothered to report is Bush's latest wag-the-dog blather or Britney Spears' latest bra size.
It's no surprise to me that the media doesn't want the public educated about the ins and outs of the DMCA, but it is disappointing.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
In other words, the RIAA and MPAA will get a bone thrown their way, but hopefully common sense will win out over greed and we will have a fair and concise set of rules to abide by.
The Sherman AntiTrust Act harnesses government power and focuses it against corporations to protect voting citizens. The DMCA harnesses government power and focuses it against voting citizens to protect corporations.
You may as well compare the Voting Rights Act with a Jim Crow voting law: yeah, they each used government to determine who could vote; but the latter oppressed Americans, and was therefore morally wrong.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
The BBC is reporting that the Judge said the DMCA is ambiguous. This is not a ruling and hasn't set a precedent.
It's typical of the media to blow things out of proportion. And this happens to be one of those things.
Either way, what's really important here is whether or not the RIAA can demand a given user's name, phone number from an ISP *without* any form of a warrant or any form of legal proceeding.
This is something that not even the US government was allowed to do until recent legislation. (The patriot act tends to make things more ambiguous now, and the government can away with a lot more than before, but not as much as the RIAA wants.)
And don't look at that ambiguity as something necessarily good. It could be the nail in the coffin that lets the RIAA and others get away with such reprehensible violations of civil liberty if the courts eventually set the wrong precedents.
I agree that the judicial branch should not be legislating. The real problem, however, is that over the past decade, the legislature basically gave up on law-making. The DMCA is not the only vaguely (i.e. poorly) worded statute to issue from the bowels of Congress. The legislature is quite happy to crank out ambiguous laws under the rubric of "getting things done" and doesn't worry about being called on the carpet by the electorate since they can easily twist the meaning of whatever nonsense became law on their watch (looks at us, we outlawed starving children! woohoo!). The legislature is quite content to leave the heavy lifting to the judiciary since the actual pronouncement of a blank and white judgment tends to get you voted out of office.
If you want to limit judicial activism, make sure your legislature is passing clear and concise legislation. The judicial responsiblity is to interpret the law. The amount of interpretation they get to do is inversely proportional to the legal precision employed by the legislature.
"One of the things we're discovering is that people are not aware that that they are engaging in conduct which is clearly illegal," said RIAA lawyer Cary Sherman.
"clearly illegal". This from an industry that says not watching commercials on television is stealing and that making a cassette copy of a CD (that I own) for my car is "tolerated but not legal" behavior.
"If you got a letter from the RIAA saying we know that you're doing this, I'd say there's a good chance that you would stop."
In other words, they want to be able to threaten people with C&D's regardless of whether they have any proof of wrong-doing.
Verizon says it would be unfair to cancel users accounts unless the music companies concerned filed formal legal proceedings that would give the users a chance to fight back.
But the music industry says that would take too long.
Tough shit. It's called due process and is guaranteed by the Constitution. Deal with it.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
I'm not a Consumer, I'm a Citizen! Please keep the two terms straight.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
how surprisingly refreshing to see a judge doing his damn job, rather than caving to the political winds of whatever the current administration advocates
I hate sigs.
In 1803 they also articulated the doctrine of judicial review which holds that a statute ruled offensive to the Constitution cannot become law. This is not judicial activism; the judge is not "dictating copyright policy in direct opposition to laws passed by Congress." Rather, the judge is raising significant Constitutional questions about the law as passed by Congress. This is well within the role of the judiciary, and the claim of judicial activism here is either a mistake or a red herring.