Slashdot Mirror
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'. "
Isn't it a tad tacky for NewYorkCountryLawyer to submit an article that quotes him in the text? I suppose, this being Slashdot, that no one will end up reading the article.
And NYCL, this wasn't meant as a dig. And, I was glad to get your opinion in the article.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
A lawyer fighting for the average American? Not a chance! However, this is a great opportunity for the rats to feed on each other... and for once I actually hope the lawyer wins (against the RIAA that is).
I am open source, and Linux baby!
The great thing about this country is that you can disagree with anything. However, disagreement doesn't make you right.
This professor is a hack. Most her career has been spent as a lapdog from someone else not even practicing law but clerking or advising. She stayed in fields where there was a gimmick that played on some sympathy. Disabilities where the old gimp would carry more weight then the law. Now there are people with a bigger gimp she can latch on to and that's what is happening.
More likely, what is really going on is that some *iaa associate gave the University of Maine some money, she is setting precedence for shady evidence collection techniques by challenging them and loosing. Who would ever question someone who won against a lawyer who is also on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence- over the collection and presentation of evidence in a RIAA case. This is nothing but a scam like the early EFF was. There is a reasons other schools aren't doing the same and students aren't asking why.
She may be a good person, might even be a well know person. But any prestiges she carries it tightly attached to coat tails of the people that were great in the field of law. She has not made a name for herself in the field of law, I'm having trouble finding any landmark case she ws listed as an attorney on the winning side of.
You can have you high hopes and disagree. But that doesn't change anything. A 2bit hack relegated to teaching is still a 2 bit hack.