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U.Maine Law Clinic Is First To Fight RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "'A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution' says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of two University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (PDF) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's 'making available' complaint as mere 'conclusory,' 'boilerplate' 'speculation.'"
Arista always shows up as the bad guy. Remember, it's all the big industry shops that are suing, boycott them all!
common thieves. fucking faggots.
it was a stupid idea to sue university students, especially universities with law schools.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Most schools with legal departments seem to have simply backed down. The RIAA still gets much of their purpose accomplished.
I live in Maine; I enjoy the shoveling. But this has to stop.
The RIAA is simply protecting their rights. Can you blame them?
Just settle or admit that you are wrong. The RIAA is doing the right thing by protecting their intellectual property. Even though the only record label represented by the RIAA that doesn't try to sell all crap is Warner Bros. (Madonna is the only musician with any talent and by far the best singer ever), it is still wrong to make unauthorized copies. It is like stealing from a thrift store. It is mostly junk (except for Madonna, she is the best!), but it is still wrong. Downloading music without paying *does* cut into the profits of the labels and artists (all of the artists deserve further pay cuts for low quality product except Madonna). If you couldn't obtain it for free, you would pay for it. It is capitalism working without proper regulation such that those who invest time and money (time is money) into a product can't earn a profit. I think there is somewhat of an inelastic demand for music. If you raise the price by cutting out the free stuff, you will still see demand.
Anonymous Coward Sig 2.0:
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Madonna has the best voice and content creation ability.
I give this thing twelve months before the federal government stops allowing student loans and federal aid of any and all kinds from being spent on students and services for this school.
Wow, I didn't know the RIAA posted on
I feel honored, can I have your autograph (please pay no attention to the small print)
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
You see, the RIAA could focus their efforts on developing innovative ways to market music. What if they could come up with something even more convenient and irresistible to millions of consumers than Apple's iTunes store? What if this innovative marketing brought in so much money that piracy would represent only an immaterial portion of their bottom line? They would look like heroes and every company would flock to imitate them.
But, you see, they fell into the trap of thinking that lawyers and litigation could solve their problems. They declared legal war on an entire population. Whenever there's a war, whether a legal one or a physical one, everyone knows how it begins, but nobody knows how it will end. Nazi Germany started war on the entire world, thinking they were big, mighty, and unstoppable. And what happened? In the end, there was devastating destruction throughout Europe, tens of millions of lives destroyed, and the country in the worst shape of all was Germany. Why?
You know once somehting is publically broadcast there is no controlling it. Try as you might, the public domain is the public domain!
Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit' Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said shit
Slightly off-topic, but I often see people mentioning Harvard hasn't been targetted by the RIAA.
It's not for legal reasons. If you use any P2P software, Harvard IT shuts off your access; you're blocked on a DHCP level. You get three "strikes" before this happens- unless you're on wireless, in which case, you're booted right away.
Please help metamoderate.
what i wonder is if it's a conflict of interests for the RIAA to represent the record companies. they are supposed to be a union of the artists to represent the artists in negotiations with the record companies, right? i wonder if they could be disallowed from representing the companies at all on this basis.
I doubt this'll benefit anybody (and neither that it'll end well for the anti-RIAA party).
Finally some is fighting back. Hopefully they'll be the first of many. Until that point though, I agree with sethawoolley, boycott them. Always Jamendo for your music fix and hopefully Pandora will be providing a record label filter so we don't have to listen to RIAA supporting music.
On a minor note, what happened to the college funded music setups? That would've been nice to have a networked repository of music we could access at any time and just have it included with tuition and fees.
Finally, some justice in this world! I have been literally watching the world fall apart these days. With all the pointless lawsuits, government wiretapping, etc., I had just about lost hope in the legal system. But finally, some justice! How much should they sue for? I think we give them what they gave us: $1,000,000 per person affected by the RIAA, and an additional $9,250 for each law they broke in the process. The RIAA are getting pwned! :)
What a university provides to students is usually geographically restricted high speed access to the Internet. There's a heavy investment in wire and routing, but the university doesn't necessarily put a lot of file servers and storage in sync with that. Most often the university's own research computers are behind firewalls, and their administrative systems invariably are. Some mail services are frequently offered, but the storage amounts are generally much smaller than even free sources such as Google or Yahoo. So in that way, a university network is more similar to a common carrier's systems, like the phone company or snail mail, than is a commercial ISP's. It's designed to deliver information, not to be a static source.
Wouldn't it be interesting if, a few years down the road, all this gets thrashed out in the court system, and the legal decisions are essentially that the university systems don't enjoy any of the protections of common carrier status, but commercial ISPs do? All carriers are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Who is John Cabal?
I surmise that it is because 90% of the execs are not creative. At All. They couldn't dream up an innovative marketing idea if their professional life depended on it (it does).
It's ludicrous/tragic that people this unimaginative have managed, for so long, to persuade millions that they are essential elements of our cultural and artistic life.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
As I've aged (I'm 41), my interest in contemporary music has waned to the point that I've almost completely lost interest in "modern" music.
The only stuff I listen to now is my classical collection, which I built up over a few years in my 30s.
I purchased a few high quality imported CDs from brick-and-mortar stores, and downloaded a bunch of albums and and tracks via KaZaA Lite in the 90s.
I haven't downloaded any music in at least the last three years.
Get the fuck off my lawn.
There is a world of difference between the law school and the law office.
How about we wait until we get definitive victories on appeal and in Congress?
The federal criminal code was revised to remove any doubt that an infringer could be prosecuted even when there was no financial gain.
The statues could be just as easily revised so that "making files available" to the P2P nets becomes sufficient to establish infringement as a matter of law.
You have your law degree. Where do you find gainful employment? The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency.
The employer who has his own IP to defend and is least likely to feel sympathy for the kid who lost his free movie fix after the RIAA had a word with his school.
Do law firms really have all that much IP to defend personally? Firms care about competent practice of the law. And I think it's would be a quite impressive credential indeed for a law student to take on a media cartel and win.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I'll take you up on that.
{Later, on Flyer}
"New Band starting. We have the C, E, G set, the D,F,A set, and some of the flats. We're looking for a fresh new talent who specializes in B, Minors, and Sevenths. The local law firm has sponsored us with a left over "Treble" from a Treble Damages suit. We can't afford a Bass Clef, so we're using the open source version 'Atlantic Bass'.
We have purchased Octaves 3 and 4. We use Pitch Altering software when someone wants us to perform the US National Anthem. However, we're in a squabble from the owner of Octaves 2 and 5, who says our shifted notes sound exactly like theirs, and they want us to stop."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Thats a joke. The courts are not about to let college students steal copyrighted material. You people who believe in this nonsense are just making it worse for yourself.
Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic
Oh lord. Good luck, I personally wouldn't want to be represented by a law student. Or a law professor, for that matter, most law professors I've met practiced for a very short period of time before going back to academia.
U.MAINE!
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No. The answer for most will be some sort of "law consultancy".
Only a very few will go to work directly for some corporation
and only the dregs of the class will end up in government
service.
Law is one of those college degrees where "go work for yourself"
is a very common (and commonly considered) option.
Most law students will end up working for some variety of law firm.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think the blog post on p2pnet gives this motion to dismiss a lot more credit than it is due. The basic crux of motion's the argument is that Bell Atlantic v. Twombly (Decision Here) raises the pleading standards for what a lawsuit must allege to a level that the RIAA's complaint, as currently written cannot meet.
The argument used does not challenge law suit on any substantive legal ground (i.e., the law underlying the complaint), but rather on procedural grounds. That basically means that the motion alleges that that RIAA/MPAA failed to meet a proper standard of proof with respect alleging enough facts to merit a suit.
I externed at a Federal Court this summer, and we saw plenty of these motions with this same argument for many different types of cases. Most of the time this procedural error was the fault of some idiot lawyer forgetting to check the validity of the case law cited in some boilerplate form complaint that the submitting firm had in their document library. The cases were usually dismissed, with leave to amend the complaint and refile one a sufficient complaint could be drafted. This is not "groundbreaking" will not stop the RIAA cold in its tracks. They will file another suit once they tweak their complaint to meat Twombly's new standard of proof.
I wish the students luck in fighting the suits against them and hope they win, but this is nothing more than a legal pothole, not the roadblock that the summary makes it out to be.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Sounds a lot like a little hot dog stand in Van Nuys, CA in the 70's called Law Dogs. On Wednesdays, you could get free legal advise from the law students working there with the purchase of a hot dog. You do get what you pay for.
You are overlooking something here. Just as a really cool computer project will help grad students with CS degrees on their l33t skilz for their 'real world:I have done this shit for real' additions to their resume....same here for these law students.
:)
Ray has it right, and as usual is more eloquent than I:http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=397436&cid=21794320.
All I am asking is for you to look outside of your own perspective here for a second, and really think about this.
"The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency."
Yes, you are probably spot on with this. I don't discount your viewpoint, as sadly you are mostly correct. But I also feel like I had to point out the good side of this as well.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
As young as the /. crowd is, you wouldn't think they would be so jaded already!
Point is, history has many good observations about the enthusiasm of college students for a cause.
Wow, if there was some way to harness the energy of 'students campaigning a cause', then most of the world's energy problems would be solved...but it could slow down our planet's orbital velocity so we fall into the sun....Hmmm...
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
As a music lover and someone thats used the internet for about 9 years now I still see the main problem being that there still isn't anywhere decent to buy music from legally.
Sure there's iTunes, but I don't want an Ipod, and I dont want it in MP4, and I dont want their MP3's!
If I'm going to pay for digital music I want my audio in something like FLAC or APE, thats lossless, and the quality that I would get if I purchased the CD... or at the very least I'd like it in V0 MP3 so its near perfect quality.
The first person to create a legal site where I have freedom in the format I can have and stocks rock and metal music will make an absolute mint off me as I'm still yet to find such a site!
The idea is pretty young, and they haven't produced that much music, yet. I think once/if the idea catches on it would be quite a blow to the RIAA. Personally, I think it's an awesome idea and was wondering what you folks thought.
Its not that mainers want to fight the RIAA, they are just all too poor to pay.