RIAA-fighting Maine Law Professor Speaks Out

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an interview with Jon Newton of p2pnet, Prof. Deirdre Smith of the University of Maine says that 'our students are enthusiastic about being directly connected to a case with a national scope and significance'. The UM Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic is the first law school legal clinic in the U.S. to have taken on the RIAA, to have the opportunity for hands-on experience fighting the RIAA's effort to rewrite copyright law. Smith went on to say that the case is probably one of the first intellectual property cases the clinic has ever taken on, and that if it proceeds further, she expects to also 'draw on the considerable expertise in IP among members of our faculty and the Maine Center for Law and Innovation, another program of the Law School'. "

Comments

meh deux

[stoolpigeon]

i had another five minutes. read the footnotes of this article. The links were to an mpaa site and they have been pulled - but there has to be a way to track down stuff like Valenti, "International Copyright Piracy: Links to Organized Crime and Terrorism," Testimony before The Subcommittee On Courts, The Internet, And Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives. It also says Valenti joked about wanting Dmitry Sklyarov executed. well - i'm gonna go do some other stuff - but you may want to think about a new approach on this issue because saying that you are awaiting requested examples from the 'other side' is basically saying 'i have built my position on ignorance of the publicly available facts.'

Re:Nice initiative but...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Not necessarily. THe defense they are mounting at this point is essentially pure issue of law. No facts to try to dispute, no witnesses to depose, no jury to persuade... all things that an experienced attorney will excel at over a novice. Pure law and legal theories OTOH, are the bread and butter of the academic legal environment. The students may not be as efficient at research in the subject area as an attorney who has 20 years experience in IP law and knows the leading cases by heart, but they are more open to theories and arguments to research that may be out of the mainstream (for now). They are devoted to the cause and will spend hundreds of hours pouring over research and caselaw that a practicing lawyer will not spend. The RIAA can't spend the other side into the ground because they are not racking up billable/noncollectable hours. Exactly correct. Except the part about "theories and arguments...out of the mainstream (for now)". In my opinion it's the RIAA that's premised its legal position on "theories and arguments... out of the mainstream". The brief the Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic filed is (a) superb, and (b) conservative. It's the RIAA lawyers that are the radicals here.

Re:uhm (Re:meh)

[stoolpigeon]

you don't care about the facts.
 
these businesses tried to pass copyright law inside anti-terrorism legislation. that's not a strawman. it's not lame. you are saying that the author imagined that this was an anti-terrorism bill?
 
as i insist? i don't insist anything. Jack Valenti testified before the government in an investigation entitled "International Copyright Piracy: Links to Organized Crime and Terrorism". Are you going to tell me that he wasn't there to talk about copyright and ties between piracy and terrorism? the name is a straw man imagined up by whoever chaired the subcommittee?
 
you asked for examples. i was bored - took ten minutes to find you a couple and you then turn around and say they aren't examples at all. i see in other parts of this thread you've equated violating copyright with murder. at the same time your original post i replied to says that the statement certain legal whores who allow or act to bring certain types of "private lawsuit" is alluding to the riaa as terrorists. so gaining the right to hack people's computers in an antiterrorism bill is a straw man - but the words private lawsuit in quotes is a satisfactory allusion to terrorism. you live in a weird reality. and the funny thing is, you just haven't done any homework. google riaa and terrorism. you will find hundreds of hits where people clearly and definitively state that they believe the actions of the riaa are terrorism. you can drop your weak example. why i'm helping you out with that, i don't know. you should really do the work yourself.