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ACLU, EFF, & Others Fight RIAA for Debbie Foster
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a landmark legal document, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, and the American Association of Law Libraries have submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the motion for attorneys fees that has been made by Deborah Foster in Capitol Records v. Debbie Foster, in federal court in Oklahoma. This brief is mandatory reading for every person who is interested in the RIAA litigation campaign against consumers."
Curse that dastardly ACLU for victimizing the poor RIAA! Shame on them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Of course she should be awarded legal costs. Why? Because, no matter what side of the debate you are on, you must agree that the RIAA is using the lawsuits to harass people. That is an abuse of process.
If they had just looked at the case, and dismissed it when they realized it had no merit, they would have been fine. Dismiss much, much later, and the harassing nature shows through. No one but themselves to blame.
All is paradox. Retired lawyer, so this is just one more layman's opinion.
What effect will this have, if any, on the other RIAA cases currently going on?
NOt living in the US, I'm not sure how the legal system entirely works in the States, but could this, assuming she wins her suit, have an enjoining effect on the RIAA in other cases that have brought with similar (lack of) evidence?
Would be fantastic to see them crushed down.....!
The ACLU is one of the few organizations that works pro bono, and then expects to get legal fees from the state if they win. To me, that is very shady business.
It may seem shady business to you, but that is the way the rules are written for cases involving . . .
(C)ivil (L)iberties.
And the ACLU did not make those rules, the state did. And I'm glad they made them that way.
KFG
The RIAA lawsuits indicate an underlying problem with this legal system. A lot of cases, not only regarding copyright infringement, are being settled out of court, because a defendent hasn't got the capabilities to fight back. Any company with sufficiently deep pockets could launch any bogus case, and leave any defendant powerless to react.
/very/ slim chance any artists will see a penny from that money. It's corporate bullying. Why won't US senators and pressure groups worry about that instead of a computer game (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/11 /000227)?
For instance: How many people are presently incarcerated without having had a fair trial (not counting any Guantanamo Bay style prisoners of course, that's a different story).
How many people have ponied up cash to SCO because of their outrageous claims about Linux IP? This sounds a lot like the bullyboy who takes your lunch money.
Yhe RIAA can't honestly think they will stop filesharing because they will have to sue millions for this message to effectively be driven home to Joe User. And the few thousand quid they win on each case will barely cover the administrative and investigative costs they make, so there's a
Didn't anyone else realise that to prevent an organisation bullying the defenceless, one must group together. Just like a Workers Union (in their original form), the only way to defend yourself is safety in numbers. Lets not forget that the RIAA is essentially a union for the already powerful music companies, they become more powerful by uniting.
By uniting the elements opposed to them the RIAA loses some of its advantage, even more so by breaking the back of one of it's most pointy sticks, the dodgy litigation techniques, so far no one has had the knowledge or money to attack this but lets hope this is the beginning of an effective counter-attack.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
If our "modern democracies" were modern and democratic, maffia organizations like RIAA, MPAA, and every country's respective digital terrorists should be illegal. Only those profiting from these pests want them to exist, but who cares for what's good for citizens, let alone what citizens want.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
You forgot to mention that your not a lawyer. Doing pro bono work does not mean your doing it for free. It means your doing the work for free if you lose and for money if you win your client money. Of course they will try and sue for lawyers fees, its the right thing to do. Lets say the ACLU wins a lawsuit of a case they did pro bono. This means the winning party now has to penny up the money but thankfully the ACLU goes after the wrongful party for money and does not panalize someone they defended just becuase they won.
Basically what im saying is that by sueing for lawyer fees after winning pro bono work to protect people's civil liberties they are also protecting your pocket book.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
If you take a step back from the whole shebang, one can't help but be astounded at how badly the RIAA has screwed itself over in this particular situation. How do you take a situation where any other party would be completely and absolutely in the right if they said they didn't want you stealing their labor/product and turn nearly every sensible person aquainted with the matters at hand against you?
It's like a rape victim taking the rapist to court and proving to be so vile and vicious as to turn the public in favor of the rapist (real mass pirates, not individuals, in terms of metaphor), and get pro bono law groups to back up the sonofabitch too! Astounding, I say. Well, that's what happens when you screw over everyone you come into contact with and try to crucify the innocent instead of behaving civilly about the matter and going after real pirating rings. Silly suits, instant gratification in greed and money will mean your doom... particularly when you have nothing to do with music itself, aside from litigating and controlling it for profit.
I tell you what, if I were in charge of any company with a product line that could be easily pirated, I'd be suing the RIAA for making piracy more publicly acceptable through their corporate grotesqueries of lawsuits and such. I'm sure you could find a lawyer with a sharp enough tongue and wit to word it quite well.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
I'm not a lawyer either, but are you sure? I think what you're describing is "contingency", where you work for free if you lose and take a cut of the winnings if you win.
As far as I can tell "pro bono" really is "for free". At least in the US it's not common for the judge to award legal fees; it has a chilling effect on poor people suing rich people. It's SOP in Great Britian, IIRC, but IANAL.
Things were so much easier when we just used ducking stools and pointy sticks to decide innocence or guilt.
One wonders if the law exists to keep lawyers rather than the other way around.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
its past 6am and im tired...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
From what I understand contingency fees are for when the layer is represnting a plaintiff who is suing somebody else for money -- and the lawyer gets a portion of the award (if any). The lawyer getting paid is contingent upon winning.
Pro bono (pro bono publico) means that the lawyer is not charging the client. Pro bono does not mean that the laywers can't get attorney's fees awarded to them by the judge.
It's funny, I was actually thinking about the other side of the injustice that court settlements encourage: failure to fully prosecute people for crimes. With a settlment, especially a plea bargain, never get the satisfaction or the social benefit of the guilty being fully punished for their crimes.
Worse yet, we lose the notion of a person being specifically innocent or guilty. As the parent alluded to, plea bargains / settlments encourage a justice in which people are rarely treated as exactly guilty or innocent, but rather innocent-ish or guilty-ish. Punishment ceases to be a binary thing, but ends up being applied with a sliding scale depending on how strong the prosecution's/plaintiff's case appears (which translates into bargaining power during settlement/plea negotiations).
Equally bad, perhaps, is that it masks the problems of a system in which the current legal processes / rules lead to such expensive lawsuits / criminal proceedings that only rich individuals or corporations can typically experience a fully fair day in court. And as the RIAA has shown, in civil cases a rich plaintiff gets something far beyond a fair day in court.
Has anyone figured out a way, either a simple tweak or radical change, to provide civil/criminal justice without these attendant problems?1. The **AA has filed suit against more than 18,000 individuals for copyright violation.
2. The amicus curae is only for award of legal fees to one of the defendants, who was declared not guilty.
3. A lot of lawyers are going to get rich, since a big proportion of the 18,000+ will win.
4. The legal system allows a single rich entiry, the **AA to go after thousands of individuals... many of whom often settle despite being not guilty, because of the costs involved.
5. It is illegal for a large group of individuals to join together and engage in disruptive activities.
6. This brief does nothing to set right points 4 and 5.
7. And so, while lots of lawyers might probably get rich, nothing else significant is likely to happen.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I don't know about you but I feel like Tivo and MythTV are a part of my family. I love those guys.
When the RIAA learned that the person they sued was probably innocent, they switched their claim. They now claimed that she was liable because she owned the internet connection over which the infringement occured.
So, I have a wife and two adult university students living at home. The RIAA asserts that I am responsible for their online activities. That means that I have to read all their posts and emails. I don't think so.
The RIAA has already lost their case. What we are arguing about here is that they should pay the defendant's legal fees. What we need is for the court to decide that the RIAA's theory about secondary liability never had a basis in law and that their case is essentially frivolous.
On Groklaw there has been some discussion of frivolous cases. There are punishments for lawyers who bring frivolous cases. If the RIAA's lawyers were sanctioned for cases like this, that would really make them think twice before going after the obviously innocent.
This is a lot like the McLibel case in the UK. McDonalds were using the UK Libel laws to shut up various media outlets including the BBC and some newspapers by threatening to sue if they published information that painted McDonalds in a bad light. All these organisations decided to not publish or broadcast the information. Then a volunteer organisation wrote a pamphlet about the things that McDonalds do wrong, and got sued. Two of the members of that organisation refused to settle out of court, and decided to defend themselves against the million dollar lawyers that McDonalds hired to take them to court.
e x.html
What proceeded was the longest ever court case in British legal history and in the end the court agreed that indeed, McDonalds do, quote: "exploit children with their advertising, falsely advertise their food as nutritious, risk the health of their long-term regular customers, are "culpably responsible" for cruelty to animals reared for their products, are "strongly antipathetic" to unions and pay their workers low wages."
From http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/verdict/ind
So not only can uninformed consumers not make a good choice, but when people try to inform consumers of FACTS, money-laden corporations can shut them up most of the time. So on the whole, markets don't work properly in these cases because no consumer can be adequately informed about absolutely every product that some corrupt corporation is selling.
Likewise with the RIAA Mafia, most people cannot afford to defend against them or have the money to inform the public of the other side of the story - i.e. how the damage that RIAA claims P2P causes is largely exagerrated.
It's only the free market fundamentalists that think markets are sacrosanct, and "informed" consumers can defeat corrupt organisations through consumer power, despite the wealth and power of some of the players involved. Unfortunately, there appears to be rather a lot of those in America. No wonder the Middle East thinks America's corrupt.
"The RIAA lawsuits indicate an underlying problem with this legal system. A lot of cases, not only regarding copyright infringement, are being settled out of court, because a defendent hasn't got the capabilities to fight back."
Here let me translate what you really wanted to say. "All the copyright infringement cases are without merit, and the organizations pressing these cases are just being big meanies. So says the court of public opinion".
"Any company with sufficiently deep pockets could launch any bogus case, and leave any defendant powerless to react."
Oh,gee. Read summaries much?
If this case is found in favor of Ms. Foster, Racketeering Influence Corrupt Organization (RICO) charges and lawsuit should be filed against the RIAA.
An interesting item, since I am into Japanese Anime, there is an interesting movie called Interstella 5555 where a record executive kidnaps a rock group from another planet and then brings them to Earth and makes a lot of money off of them.
Can they get Cravath, Swaine and Moore to provide some input into the brief also? They've provided several wonderful briefs in the SCO vs IBM case. If anybody can present a watertight legal argument, CS&M can. I'm just a bit worried that the brief as it stands contains too much emotive language and spends too much time appealing to the judge's sense of "the greater good".
IANAL, but IMHO judges don't care about "the greater good" unless it's a claim before them; I expect this judge will ignore all the emotive arguments and get right down to the question of whether it's legal to award attorneys' fees to the defendant, including whether the appropriate standard for awarding has been met.
I also expect the judge to try very hard to make the narrowest possible ruling. Judges don't like setting precedents; the bigger the precedent, the less the judge likes it. This brief strikes right to the heart of the Adversary legal system, namely that poor defendants have little access to the courts and can be easily abused by rich plaintiffs. The judge will want to stay way clear of upsetting that status quo.
Wow. 18,000 people sued, settlements between $3K and $11K. That's over $100 million!
The ACLU gets money from donations to the ACLU Foundation. At any rate, the government should have to pay legal fees if the ACLU does win against them, since they have thus proved in court that the government abridged everyone's freedom. Doesn't sound shady to me; sounds more like justice.
Because they don't fight for your right to carry a gun?
To answer your question, "they don't dare." If they do anything at all to interfere with corporate power they get their "campaign contributions" cut off and can't get elected.
The technical term for this relationship is "Fascism."
Get used to it.
BillyDoc
First, why do people in the US have to fight for legal fees when they win a lawsuit? When will it become an automatic part of american civil law? Responsibility for all legal fees when a case is lost will certainly put the brakes on the litigious culture of the US and all its frivolous lawsuits.
Second: "Though the RIAA has the right to enforce its copyrights through lawsuits and settlements, it does not have the right to do so against people it knows or reasonably should know are innocent."
The RIAA may be stupid, but that doesn't mean it is entirely wrong, and not all of its lawsuits are misdirected. Copyrights put paycheques in peoples' pockets, including software designers, game designers, graphic designers, and countless others.
In a sense, the RIAA is going to bat for all these people, and that is a double-edged sword. Their idiotic approach to defending copyright has caused at least as much damage as it has prevented. They need feedback from people/industries with a vested interest, feedback other than "RIAA sucks!" or "Music should be free!", and they need to listen to that feedback.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
There are two major problems with this...
a) Cities are GOVERNMENTS that are quite capable of
dealing with the "burden" of a lawsuit.
b) An American GOVERNMENT has 0.0 business showing
any sort of public favoritism to any particular
religion, PERIOD.
Sensible Xian fundies are actually the FIRST people
to object to the sort of shenanigan you are defending.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Recently, when I appeared in court in Warner v. Does 1-149 in Manhattan, Judge Owen said, in words or substance, "so they want to find out this person's name and address so they can take his deposition, what's wrong that?" I responded, in words or substance, "No, judge, that's not what they're going to do. They don't want to take this person's deposition. They are going to sue these people, bring lawsuits that wreck people's lives." The judge then said to me "what are you talking about, wreck people's lives?" I proceeded to tell him how these lawsuits affect the poor people that are targeted, and he cut me off, did not allow me to finish, and said that because I used the term "wreck people's lives" he wouldn't believe anything further I could say.
It was therefore quite gratifying to me personally to read the following passage in the amicus brief:
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I used to buy $200 or more of CD's a month. I have over 1500 CD's in my collection. I used to make dubs to tape and then to other CD's when I upgraded my tape player to a CD player in my car. I did it for 10 years or more.
I used to listen to music all the time, a diehard avid fan. Then, in say 2000, 2001 when music content started taking a nose dive into the trash and the possibility of getting arrested for listening to music that I copied from my own collection of CDs, I gave up music. Do you think I want to spend $200 a month or more to eventually get aressted for it?
If you could get arrested for watching TV, would you continue to watch TV? With Tivo that may be possible one day and then I will give up TV also.
Who are these RIAA, MPAA rocket scientists b@st@5ds, that can't understand that?
Nathan
The author isn't familiar with this crowd.
Power to the Penguin!
From the motion:
And inevitably, that would be the fatsest way to deal the **AA a blow -- if everyone sued wrongfuly joind together in a class action civil suit and sued them for an outrageous amount of money. They wouldn't get the outrageous amount of money, but the trouble with this whole process has been that there's really no mainstream publicity of the matter. A class action suit might change that. Of course if you really wanted to stick it to the **AA, sic NY Atty General Spitzer on them.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
You (and all the moderators, and most of the repliers) either missed the line saying "amicus curiae brief" or more likely didn't understand what it means. The ACLU, EFF, et al, are *not* Ms Foster's lawyers. They are outside parties with no direct financial stake in the outcome.
However, they do want a particular outcome: sticking it hard to the RIAA. Therefore they have filed their own legal statement trying to aid Ms Foster (and her lawyers, whoever they are). Whether they succeed or not, they don't get any money from anyone in the case.
I've always wondered what would happen if you saved yourself the money for attorneys' fees etc. by just showing up in court and telling your side of the story in 100% not-fancy language.
Say you're the JMRI guy, being sued for patent infringement. If you were allowed to speak in plain English, the case would last 5 minutes and cost nothing:
"Your honor, you can see that my software was released before their patent was even filed...""Hmm, that seems about right. KAM is pretty-much owned and should pay $100,000 in punitive damages.
I know; the team of lawyers buries you under a mountain of papers, discovery motions, etc. Why can't you say:
"Your honor, they're burying me in discovery motions, etc. to intimidate me into settling. Please make them
stop."And so on. Just wondering.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
They're suing for the Rights Holders, which is a different beast- and they're suing people indescriminately
left and right over this BS. No, I don't think that illicit file sharing (and there's a distinction there)
is right and that "Music should be free!) but in the same breath, suing the customer is rarely a good thing
especially when the person in question obviously didn't do what they're claiming. They're setting the
financial bar high enough that people just "settle" out of court instead of defend themselves.
Who do you think gets to pocket the money from these settlements and lawsuits? The people making the music?
If you think that, you'd be mistaken- it's the lawyers and the RIAA member organizations that see this
money. That's not going to the bat for anyone save themselves- and it's not about the violations, it's
about control.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No, it's not justice.
Suing the government is not like suing you. The government doesn't have a job, it doesn't make money. Every penny that they pay out comes out of all of the taxpayers pockets. There is absolutely nothing just about it.
The situation is a lot more of adding insult to injury. First some stupid ass politician/DOJ flunky/civil servant fucks me, then the American Civil Liberties (but not the second ammendment!) Union comes along and reams me out with a dry corn cob.
Thank you, Frankie, for straightening those early commenters out.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I really don't understand your first paragraph at all. The ACLU is an organization with a long history of fighting for civil liberties. Why would you slam them because once in a blue moon they actually get paid a small portion of the expenses involved in their work, instead of the money having to come from their contributors? And why is it wrong for someone who is proved to have violated someone else's civil rights to have to pay all or part of their attorneys fees in vindicating their rights? And why is it wrong for our laws to occasionally shift the attorneys fees to the guilty party, in order to give legal aid lawyers, litigants, and others an incentive to take on a cause where the other side has much more money? Attorneys fees statutes are equalizers between big and small, which is what our country -- and our courts -- are supposed to be about. Contingent fees, and fee-shifting statutes, are the one small exception, one small dent in the rule which otherwised prevails more often than not in the U.S.: whoever has the most money has the best chance of winning in court. I.e., they are a step up from the law of the jungle, that might makes right. Would you have us step down? If not, you shouldn't slam them for fighting the good fight and once in a while getting a little bit of their fees paid back.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Christmas is a Christian holiday. Anything they do to acknowledge it would be showing favoritism. How is giving city employees a paid couple of days off any different than putting up a nativity scene? Or putting up Christmas lights around town?
If the majority of people in a city want a nativity scene they should get a nativity scene. It's no more an egregious expenditure of public funds than a dog park (ie. a place where people can take their dogs and play with them off leash.) Or a skate park. Or flying flags on the fourth of July.
Atheism is a religious view. Allowing the lunatic fringe to demand that public life be entirely devoid of any reference to god or religion is just as much a violation of people's 1st amendment rights as requiring prayer in schools.
From the Brief:
the RIAA has wrought havoc on the lives of many innocent Americans who, like Deborah Foster, have been wrongfully prosecuted for illegal acts they did not commit for over a year
It's basic sentence construction, yet they couln't manage it. And we wonder why they argument against the RIAA's tactics isn't being clearly heard.
It's the only Informative post in this entire part of the thread.
what option do they have except to sue everyone?
Oh, I dunno, how about properly investigate the defendant before filing suit?
If pirate kingpin's lawyer is not a moron, they will show cause to subpoena tons and tons of records of other 'pirates' that the RIAA have identified, and then ask pointedly why Jane Citizen wasn't sued.
Hm, could it be that Pirate Kingpin has cost the recording industry several orders of magnitude more in losses than Jane's casual downloading, and her P2P downoads might have even inspired her to buy more music?
:(){
Why is that when an alternative opinion is presented contrary to what the editor's might hold to be true, then the "offending" post is scored negatively? You guys are fascists. Score THIS. How's about keeping an open mind on this "open" website. Besides, it's common knowledge that lawyers are the scum of the earth. I didn't just make that up.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
You are allowed to make copies of music you own for the purposing of listening to them, that's an important part of fair use. The record companies would rather that you weren't aware of any fair use provisions, but if you own a CD you have the right to copy the data on it into any other format and listen to it. What's illegal is taking the CD, making copies of it, and giving (or selling) those copies to other people.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I don't think these organizations should be illegal, just reigned in a little bit (OK, a lot). The RIAA was actually started for a good reason -- to create standards for phonograph records. The "RIAA curve" was developed by engineers from different record companies so that 33 1/3 and 45 rpm records would have the best sound possible. All record companies created their albums according to this standard, thus ensuring any album from any label would have a consistent technical sound quality (of course, the quality of the artist is not assured).
Hilary Rosen was actually a popular figure around college campuses before the whole mp3 thing started. Back in the early to mid 90's, there was a move in Washington to censor what was being recorded. Hilary and the RIAA fought this and "took the fight to the people." The end result was the warning labels that are found on some cds.
That said, both the RIAA and the MPAA are way out of line when it comes to copyright, and have been for years. Jack Valenti compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler (the VCR ended up creating one of the most lucrative markets that the movie industry ever had) and the RIAA has fought digital music tooth and nail. These lawsuits are the worst -- instead of actually addressing the problem, they have hurt innocent people and have turned their customers into the enemy.
I have no problem with organizations that exist to make things better for both their industry and their customers, but when said organization attempts to abuse either or both in an attempt to prevent the market from evolving, then it is time to penalize (or disband) said organization. Perhaps trade organizations in Washington should be treated like Fraternities at University -- obey the rules and all is well, get out of line, face sanctions or even closure. The way the RIAA is pursuing these lawsuits definitely should warrant a review.
Beware of Sleestak
I believe the attorney fees would have to be paid by RIAA, not by "the state", if the petition for attorney fees succeeds. I responded here because I agree that frankie's was the first post to clarify part of the discussion. But this seems like another important point missed in the preceeding discussion.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm also not British, but perhaps someone from across the Pond can confirm my vague understanding that English courts have a "loser pays" rule in civil litigation. It's a policy designed to discourage frivolous lawsuits, and it somewhat counteracts the incentives of contingency fees (but that's another thread for another day, since contingency fees had no relevance in TFA and were introduced in the fuzzy discussion above).
You desperately need a dictionary.
Additional considerations:
- 18,000 is just the number of lawsuits filed. How many "settled" by paying some kind of greenmail before a lawsuit was filed?
- From TFA, the range of settlements was $3,000 to $11,000. The average is probably closer to the low end, but might be a few thousand dollars more, which would bump the revenue by 30% ++
- Most likely, there are several attorneys on staff but also law firms in every state that do the actual filings, appearances, etc.
- In-house attorneys probably don't make $250K even fully loaded (benefits, overhead, etc.), but this is offset by the previous point.
It may be just a guess, but who thinks RIAA didn't do a cost-benefit analysis of their strategy before they started down this road? Of course, part of that analysis would have been the revenue they think they're losing (including future revenue) by not contesting file sharing. No idea on that number"Pro bono" does not mean "for free." It means "for the good." It is, however, applied to legal work performed without pay.
I'm not much of a supporter of the ACLU, but there are many people who would not receive any justice at all if it weren't for pro bono work. You don't get a court appointed lawyer in civil cases.
Besides, the ACLU doesn't need court fees, they are supported by some extremely wealthy people. They're LAWYERS, after all.
My main complaint about the ACLU's tactics are that they often bring litigation against the govt entities knowing the govt would rather give in than pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs (fees that are never recoverable). Remember, the ACLU will get fees if they win, but won't have to pay anything if they lose.
Also, I think the ACLU is using the courts to impose a socialist political agenda rather than one based on the idea of long established American civil liberties. For instance, instead of truly supporting a separation of church and state, they have actually brought about a situation where the state is actively censoring religious expression on the (I think irrelevent) pretext of some state property being involved in the expression. The concept of a state "endorsement" of religion has been changed from the passage of legislation establishing a church to a student simply thanking God in a commencement speech.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!! That's hillarious
IMHO, they need to treat copyrights like sewage that leaves no room for free speech in the information age, rather than some honorable law that just needs clear boundaries set. The RIAA understands this is an all or nothing game and they are acting off that understanding, and so should we. We never got rid of the 55 speed limit by proclaiming that it was an honorable law that just needed better boundaries set, no we got rid of it because millions of people treated it like the worthless burden that it was eventually forcing the system to change.
Too bad the notion of Civil Disobediance is so unknown to Americans.
... all insisted on going to jail. Civil disobedience wasn't something they invoked in their defence, it was something they proclaimed not only as their right but as their duty. The whole point was to suffer the punishment to show the injustice. Otherwise, instead of staging sit-ins, MLK would simply have published articles and given speeches.
Too bad, indeed! You show a remarkable ignorance of it yourself.
The essential notion of civil disobedience is to disobey unjust laws openly and with the intention of submitting to the legal punishment, in order to show the unjustness of the law(s).
When Thoreau was imprisoned (I think for refusing to pay a sort of poll tax) he was visited in prision by Emerson, who asked "Why are you here?". Thoreau asked Emerson, "Why are you not?".
Regardless of the merits of the case being discussed here (and I have already stated my sympathies, above), it's very clear this has nothing to do with civil disobedience. Thoreau, Gandhi, MLK
I really hope that version of the brief linked to in the article is not the version sent to the court. The version I read is littered with spelling errors, incorrect word choice and unclear phrasing. It's actually a little embarrassing that such an "elite" team can't write a rather short document correctly.
I may not be a lawyer, but those lawyer are no proof readers either.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
We are citizens. I object to being branded "consumers". Language is where many battles are framed.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Weve found a witch! May we burn her?
Item 1:
"From this beginning, the RIAA gradually expanded its program, ramping up its monthly rounds of lawsuits to as many as 800 per month. To date, over 18,000 lawsuits have been filed against individuals."
Item 2:
"Because of the disproportionate financial and organizational power exhibited by the RIAA in its lawsuits, most defendants have settled rather than go to court. The settlements have ranged from $3,000 to $11,000."
Item 3:
"Absent the promise of an award of attorney's fees when the copyright holder unreasonably persists, innocent defendants have little incentive to risk the turbulent and uncharted waters of a protracted legal battle."
What's the often touted criteria for a criminal investigation? Means....Motive....and Opportunity.
$3,000 time 800 suits per month is a pretty tidy income....and that's probably conservative.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
What happens if a precedent gets set that the RIAA must pay legal fees is you get attorney's offering to defend the people being hit with these frivolous lawsuits right and left. If there is a reasonable chance for them to win, and they have a good chance of getting paid for it, there are enough hungry lawyers that would jump at the chance.
Even with the Atheists Communists Liberals Union doing this, I still don't trust them.
Here is why.
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked officials in a Detroit suburb to reject a proposal that would require businesses with foreign language signs to add English translations.
"We write to strongly urge you to abandon the measure as unconstitutional, anti-immigrant and unnecessary," the ACLU wrote to the city Thursday in a letter that was also signed by officials with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan and Latin Americans for Social and Economic Development Inc.
In May, Sterling Heights, Mich., Councilwoman Barbara Ziarko asked the city's attorney to prepare an ordinance requiring businesses with foreign language signs to have identifiers such as "bakery" included, the Detroit News reports.
Fire Chief John Childs supported the move, arguing that people passing by the site of a fire or other emergency could inform dispatchers about the location more easily if they could read the signs.
He maintained that the issue has nothing to do with race.
"This is about response time," he said.
The city issued a statement Thursday defending the proposed ordinance.
"Any assertion that the city's public safety effort is intended as a restriction on the expression of cultural diversity is categorically denied," the statement said.
Valedictorian suing over speech cut short
When the school district unplugged the microphone of a Foothill High School valedictorian during her graduation speech, it flipped on the switch for a legal battle now headed to federal court.
Brittany McComb was cut off after she started speaking about the importance of religion in her life. Now, attorneys for the Rutherford Institute have filed a lawsuit in defense of the teen and free speech.
The June graduation speech has now turned into a legal fight over free speech. The Rutherford Institute claims McComb's First Amendment rights were violated.
Rutherford president John Whitehead calls this a clear cut case of censorship, but the ACLU disagrees and says Brittany tried to turn her podium into a pulpit violating separation of church and state.
"We're confident we're on the right side of this issue and we're confident when the dust settles we will prevail in this suit," said Whitehead.
Gary Peck of the ACLU says during a school sponsored event like a graduation, free speech rights are limited. And he says, in this case, Brittany crossed the line with her religious references. "This is about the ACLU objecting to students who use the occasion of their valedictory speeches to proselytize and that's not appropriate."
The ACLU will be taking legal measures to oppose this lawsuit. News 3 also talked with a rep from the school district but we were told they can't say anything about the suit because they haven't seen it yet.
A spokesperson says The Rutherford Institute isn't seeking any specific damages on behalf of Brittany.
ACLJ This Week - ACLU Attacks War Memorial
ACLU Files Lawsuit To Protect Voter Fraud In Missouri
Quote:
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Cole County Circuit Court, the seat of state government, claims the law violates a state constitutional provision against imposing costs on local governments without providing state funding, commonly referred to as the Hanthingy amendment. It seeks a permanent injunction blocking the law from being enforced and class-action status.
"Our overall concern is that the new law is going to leave people out who want to vote, who deserve to vote and who are qualified to vote," Anthony Rothert, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, said in a written statement.
The voter ID's are free, they are sending out mobile distributors, and allowing people who don't get them to cast provisional ballots. Laziness on the part of some
Rule of the majority is the rule of the mediocre. The mediocre should always be questioned for their motives as they are almost always dismissive to anything different than themselves and can turn destructive at the slightest provacation. Who the hell wants those sort of people to have any power, and frankly who cares what they want displayed on Christmas?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
You seem to be propagating the fallacy of simple majority rule. The law exists, in part, to protect the minority from the majority. The Courts have ruled, time and again, that so long as the nativity scene is not the only religious display, it's permissible. The problem usually arises when a municipality puts up a nativity scene and someone says, "Do you mind if we put a menorah up as well, seeing as Chaunakah is right around the corner?" and the municipality refuses to do so. That's showing favoritism to the majority, and that's why it's not legal.
A paid holiday (which in many places can 'float' if the employee would like) is given to every city employee regardless of their religious preference or lack thereof.
Public life needn't be devoid of any reference to 'god' or religion... George W. Bush makes plenty of Christian references while standing behind a podium with the Presidential Seal on it, but they're generally acceptable because he is not advocating that the government support one religion over another. You're welcome to talk about your religion in public, as a private citizen or as a non-government supported organization, but the government cannot establish or support any one religion over another.
And piracy is just the natural response to an oppressive technology. Yes, people just want free stuff too, but there are plenty of people such as myself who are more than willing to pay a FAIR price for their music and movies along with having a FAIR USE policy to go along with said music and movies. Buying a song from iTunes, using it as background music on a slideshow presentation of personal photographs put into iPhoto, then burning the slideshow onto a CD to share with friends and family only to have that song not able to be played unless iTunes is installed on the machine the CD is played on and also MY iTunes login needing to be entered on that machine and then only being able to do that a total of 5 times so if I had more than just a couple siblings it won't work for everyone even if I jump through all those hoops just to present a nice personal photo display to a few family members.[deep breath] Needless to say I won't ever pay for a DRM encoded song ever again. It's the principle people. DRM is evil.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
These organizations evolved into digital terrorism, and I don't think there's any need for them today. Standards can be developed as RFCs, within ISO, IEEE, or a number of alternatives that would be way better than a bunch of crazed, hungry, fat lawyers.
Law already protects copyrights, so there's no need for such organizations to exist; and seeing how they take illegal actions themselves and terrorize citizens with lies and unjust threatening, they need to be terminated, their lawyers disqualified, and all their resources expropriated by the State, to be distributed among the affected citizens to repay them, or donated to affected open source communities to help develop P2P and other technologies.
Hell, I still have some doubts regarding the goodness of copyrights. Don't think I'm a long-haired hippy communist, far from this, but software/media/art patents (and their holders) should be killed with fire, and copyrights should be ok if they weren't the excuse for lawware industries to attack and pest the world.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
How about agnosticism? Are we the "lunatic fringe," too?
The prospect is unlikely because the real world isn't like slashcourt, and the evidence required has to amount to more than just "my gut tells me". If the justice department is going after the content creators (a side note copyright infringement isn't limited to music)? Then I want them to use something more substantial than what this forum spews out.
But that's true, the government doesn't make money. The government TAKES money from the people.
(they do print money, but that's not the same thing.)
and you desperately need a kicking
Apparently I'm the lunatic fringe for wanting the government to have NOTHING THE FUCK to do with ANYTHING EVEN VAGUELY religious. I personally am religious, I can't prove a thing about what I believe in, that's why they call it faith. The government should base policies on facts in an unbiased manner. Their job is to enforce rights, and when rights collide decide where to infringe on one for the needs of another, that is ALL. The only place religion has in any sense is deciding which rights we care about. And even in this I would argue that we are better served by simply considering the consequences of picking one right over another (say protection over free speech), than via arguments who's only backing is unestablished dogmatic non-facts. In other words debate using non-facts as backing is not feasable because they are not universally agreed apon, and thus such are not valuable backing for considering putting actual laws into action.
Here's the deal. 1'st amendment rights say that we have the right to free speech. How is the government being disallowed from religous activity in any way limiting of YOUR right to free speech? The government does stand for you, and it shouldn't in the US, that's not it's job. There's a good reason why we don't live in a pure democracy and this is it. Here, in the US, we guarantee freedom for all (at least in theory), thus it is NOT a democracy, and the will of the people shall NOT be done except within the confines of the constitution. That way we are guaranteed enough rights to have any continued representation at all.
Without the constitution we would vote all of our own rights away within the week and have a totilitarian government all over again. The proletariate may rise up, but they are stupid, and will simply replace the current goverment with another dictator over and over again if given the option. At least under the current system it takes a few years for us to manage to remove all of our own rights via voting for people who will "protect us".
At least in the US it's not common for the judge to award legal fees; it has a chilling effect on poor people suing rich people. It's SOP in Great Britian, IIRC, but IANAL.
It is. It also doesn't seem to have any such chilling effect, really. You just have to put a limit on how much the costs award can be, and then it doesn't matter how much resources the guy you're up against has... you know how much you stand to lose.
I think you are misstating what is actually happening. The ACLU is a professional "fight the man" organization. Anytime you have a majority that holds a particular belief the ACLU fights against it. When the city of Salt Lake City sold the Mormon Church a downtown street that went through the church's property the ACLU threw a hissy fit because they made a quiet park out of it and don't want people ranting, raving and protesting on the now church owned property. The park is open to the public, the church just wants to keep a particular atmosphere.
At one time I respected the ACLU, but it became clear that in general they act mainly to allow people to not act according to a mature, respectful, and civil standard of conduct.
People do have floating holidays, but rarely will you ever find an employer who makes Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, etc. into floating holidays. Those are specific holidays that companies and municipalities recognize due to the fact that the majority of their employees will be taking those days and it makes more sense to shutdown for those occassions than to stay open with nothing getting accomplished. Additionally most city employees would not be allowed to work on a day when the city civic services have shut down and take their paid holiday on another event. But really my point is that the city is spending money on giving people time off to celebrate a Christian holiday rather than, for example, the Aztec Spring Festival.
OF COURSE the 80% of Americans who are Christian are being persecuted.
Every day, I see Christians beaten and left to die on fenceposts. I see churches being banned and forced out of town. I see scientists trying to force churches to teach evolution. I see those Christian bookshops being ransacked daily. There isn't a single Christian with political power. There aren't any Christian TV channels, or any on TV in general. I even see a major political party trying to pass a Constitutional amendment banning Christians from being married!
Man, they sure have it tough! It must be tough to be Christian in American these days.
From Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language:
FASCISM: A system of government characterized by rigid one party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism and militarism, etc.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
Also see: http:\\BreakTheLink.org
BillyDoc
Cravath, Swaine and Moore is indeed a top-notch law firm as I've also noticed in the SCO vs. IBM litigation, but I don't know that they're accustomed to working for free as a firm?
That said, individual lawyers may be required to do a certain amount of pro bono (free) work by various bar rules and whatnot (I'm not really sure about the details, but I seem to recall that it's one thing good lawyers are supposed to do). I can only hope that some of the excellent lawyers representing IBM would end up in a separate case defending innocent people from the RIAA & co.
These lawyers aren't "on staff". They're outside law firms. In most cases there are 2 firms, the local counsel, and the "national" counsel. They are probably all paid by the hour.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Here are two alternate links to the actual version submitted to the Court: http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=capi tol_foster_amicus at Internet Law & Regulation or http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Capitol_v_Foster/am icus_in_support_of_fees.pdf at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
1. Being hit with sanctions has very negative consequences for an attorney. It's not just the money. For a court to have held that a lawyer behaved frivolously will reverberate throughout a lawyer's career.
2. The granting of attorneys fees here will have a huge impact throughout the country. It will give more defendants the knowledge that they can fight back, and it will give more attorneys the knowledge that if they do jump into this fight and win, they may well get paid.
3. If defendant's lawyer gets her fees paid in full, it gives her the financial wherewithal to take on other similar cases where the defendant doesn't have enough money to pay the bills out of hand.
Bottom line. This is huge. And a substantial attorneys fee award here will send a shockwave through the corporate heirarchy of these greedy behemoths. They are already reeling from the public relations debacle they have engendered.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Attorney's fees are not paid by the state, they are paid by the losing party. For instance, in this case, the RIAA would be the ones paying the fees.
barzelay.net
Every time the ACLU or the EFF get involved in lawsuits, they seem to lose a lot. Why would a brief from them be "landmark"?
Also, I think the ACLU is using the courts to impose a socialist political agenda rather than one based on the idea of long established American civil liberties. For instance, instead of truly supporting a separation of church and state, they have actually brought about a situation where the state is actively censoring religious expression on the (I think irrelevent) pretext of some state property being involved in the expression.
Socialism is an economic system. It is unrelated to religion.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Normally, when I have been awake for a long time, and feel tired, I do not suddenly start mis-using simple words like your. Maybe that's just me.
Attorney's fees are not paid by the state, they are paid by the losing party.
.in this case, the RIAA would be the ones paying the fees.
"Court Orders San Francisco to Pay Legal Fees in Begging Case headed by ACLU"
. .
In this case the ACLU is not counsel.
KFG
First of all, EFF wrote the brief. The other orgs signed on. And none of them are seeking, or will get money. They are merely writing as amici curiae("friends of the court"), encouraging the court to award attorneys' fees to the people who did represent the woman. In legal cases, "interested parties" may submit briefs to the court, in a way helping the various parties with their arguments. That is what is happening here. EFF is writing to help the woman argue that she should be awarded the money she paid her attorneys to argue the case.
barzelay.net
And none of them are seeking, or will get money. They are merely writing as amici curiae("friends of the court")
Exactly. The ACLU is not counsel.
EFF is writing to help the woman argue that she should be awarded the money she paid her attorneys to argue the case.
Yes? I never said anything contrary to that. The OP expressed a general discontent about the way the ACLU handles its affairs and it is to that general complaint that I responded. They only act as counsel in those cases where the civil liberties of The People have been abridged. That is their raison d'etre.
"The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:
* Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.
* Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.
* Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
* Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs."
KFG
Ah, okay. Anyway, this is a case that the ACLU would conceivably take. The RIAA's groundless settlement factory is a due process violation.
barzelay.net
It has long been held that the copyright law has 2 purposes: one is to secure some compensation to the creator; the other is to ensure that the end product goes back to the public after a limited amount of time. Hence the old 25 year limit on copyrights.
Of course in today's climate, where a copyright can last for 75 years and is owned by a corporation rather than the author, both purposes have been pretty well smashed.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Threaten individuals with exorbitant fees for those who don't give in to demands? I think there's a word for that...hmmm...ah, yes! EXTORTION!! It'd be nice to see some criminal charges filed against RIAA executives, although it would never happen. The RIAA and MPAA are like modern day mobs.
In a PDF of a motion filing, Google is requesting over $11,000 in attorneys fees from Gordon Roy Parker, also known as Ray Gordon, a Philadelphia alleged self-publisher of books, after his claims in a federal lawsuit (prior slashdot article here) arguing Google's indexing of web pages violated his copyright (among other claims), were determined to be totally lacking even the slightest scintilla of merit whatsoever. The points made in Google's brief may be helpful in this case. As Google's brief says, "A party is improperly motivated if he does not have a good faith intent to protect a valid copyright interest... or if his intent was to 'vex and harass the defendant.'" Google's argument here seems to fit very closely with the improper suits RIAA has filed or threatened to file unless paid off, against people who were totally innocent, and give further reasons to argue for award of attorneys fees to the defendant when they successfully defend a bogus copyright infringement charge.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
That is is fine and dandy, as long as you pick only the winners. What I have had beaten into me is diversification of risk, unfortunately the same applies to the rewards. Seriously I hope that the mantra of well diversified and long term stock investment being a sure route to reasonable fiducial security holds out. I never had the income to invest before I was thirty, which seems about normal for most working class folks. I am nearly fifty now, turn such in late October, and twenty years of aggressive but well diversified investing in my 403 and 401 accounts were slow to start in the late eighty's but took off in the ninety's and overall were looking pretty good up to about 2000 with about a 18% overall average gain on my investments. The last six years has seen overall results as a flat line in the best performers and worst than flat in many funds.
So for my available lifetime of investment so far, 20 years, there have been less than half, 10 years, of aggressive growth in the values. Of the remaining there have been about 5 years slow, and 5 years flat to negative. I expect to try and continue to work and invest for about another 20 years at least, if possible, before having to tap my investments for income. However I am beginning to lose my faith in the 'professionals' involved in handling my 'managed investments' which often seems inept. I am also questioning my trust in their version of 'diversification', which often seems to be to be more like diversion than diversification.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
IMHO=in my humble opinion
I hope my point is clear: in the long run, the stock market is the surest thing in the world. And frankly, "what things will turn out to be valuable" isn't that hard - every company on the list above is still alive (though some have been acquired by other companies) after 35 years. And will of course still be around 30 years from now, and worth a lot more than they are now.
In my opinion, speculation is one of the major problems of our economy. Well, not speculation in and of itself, but that so much of our economy is dependent upon speculation. Under speculation, it is not enough for a company to make a profit, it has to increase the profit, or at least the gross, year after year and quarter after quarter or the investors get nervous because most companies are overvalued.
Yes, you can invest conservatively by investing in established companies. But the more a company is worth today, the less likely it is to double in value in a certain period of time, which is what people who invest in speculation are looking for. If you want to make a LOT of money, you have to invest in a relatively new company. What percentage of companies are still around 2 years after they go public? I don't know offhand, but it is something you really need to consider when making this argument.
There are no sure things.
It is usually a lot easier to make money through realestate than stock market investing. But it takes a lot more money up front, knowledge of what to do with it, and while it is mostly passive income, it does take a little bit of work here and there. It is not a sure thing, but realestate always has a tangible value, and people will always need a place to live.
Still, buying 100 lottery tickets is akin to throwing your money away, so it is a bad example in the first place. Also, those who invest a portion of their income instead of just spending it all, usually end up better off in the long run regardless of how they invest it. (Unless they have absolutely no discrimination in what they invest in.)
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.