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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'. "
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'.
Of course they are. Just not personally.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
He is clearly trying to strike a blow and trying to destroy the very foundation of our society, which is intellectual property. And if he is successful at undermining that, in any way, he'll attack physical property. And using brainwashed law students to help him do it, thus also destroying our future. This man has no shame!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
While it's debatable whether this challenge has much of a legal chance - from what the lawyer the lawyer types I've spoken to told me, it's not much of a challenge - the simple fact that this defense sets a rather important precedent - that schools shouldn't bend over without fighting it out first.
i guess this really frightens no talent hacks, if people get to hear their trash before buying it, they'll fade away pretty quick.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Doesn't having a law college student handle your court case feel like having a med. college student do surgery on you?
like the RIAA stepped in something squishy right over the top of their shoe, and they're at that point where they're praying it's just mud, and afraid to look down.
How did they ever get caught pulling their crap at a university with a whole faculty devoted to making lawyers? Can't you just see it...all those sweet little law students looking hopefully up at them, like a school of piranha that have learned how when their owner taps on the tank, a pork chop will be along shortly?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I wonder how many of those students will end up working on the other side once they graduate. It would be kind of like a hacker working for a security company. They'll be more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of all the arguments and could demand premium salaries in this area of law.
Good for them, but contrary to what was written, the problem is not that the RIAA is re-writing the copyright laws. The problem is that RIAA is exploiting the anachronism of our current copyright laws. The laws truly do need to be re-written to incorporate creative works that are not strictly analog and paper-based, and that should be the goal.
if people haven't brought up examples it is because they don't care to respond, not because they don't exit. i don't even care too much about this issue, but i read your post - spent 5 minutes on google and found this. it is a bit long so i'll throw the relevant part into my post.
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Hollywood) recently introduced the P2P Piracy Prevention Act (H.R. 5211). This law essentially gives any copyright-holder the right to break any existing law while engaging in technological measures (such as hacking) in the course of protecting their content. They must give prior notice to the government, but there is no approval is required, and the government must keep secret any notice it receives. Large copyright holders sought this immunity in the counter-terrorism bills that greatly increased penalties for hacking, but the absurdity of equating file sharing to terrorism forced them to withdraw their bid that time. The chances of success are hopefully slim, but it's hard to tell.
so in 2002 copyright holders tried to gain the ability to completely ignore the law to go after those they thought to be violating copyright and tried to do so under the auspices of counter-terrorism. like i said, it took 5 minutes to find that with a google search on the words "copyright violation equated with terrorism".
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Less misused. More inflated so it doesn't really have any meaning anymore. Everyone who commits a crime today that goes beyond petty theft is a terrorist. Someone running amok? A terrorist. Someone bullying is terrorizing. Nobody is afraid anymore, everyone's in terror. When you watch the news, you have to get the impression that under every other bed, a terrorist is lurking, and a splinter cell of Al Quaida is running the laundry on the ground floor.
When you keep plastering people with terror here and terror there, they will first be afraid, then notice that you're crying wolf, then they'll start ridiculing you by applying the term you wanted to use to frighten them to anything that is considered remotely "bad", in a mocking way of exaggerating, just as much as you did.
With "you", in this case, not necessarily being you, but whoever uses a far too strong and powerful term to describe something that's anything but as horrifying as it is being made.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At this point someone over there at the RIAA/MPAA have got to realize they are pissing off/on the legal minds ,business leaders and congress critters of tomorrow, this must be making them spot. It's one thing to get the little old lady who's grandson was over at christmas and installed limebearfreezemule and began downloading all his favorite songs, then left with the software starting everytime(and sharing!!!) granny went online; her only hope is to pay for a lawyer and that is not likely to happen, she'll be dead in a few years anyway... IT IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT thing to sue those who are in the process of learning the law or (choose on of the others i previously mentioned), they will be in their prime to fight back soon enough and will do it with great force. My name is Innigo Montoya, you have sued my father, prepare to die.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
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.'
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Warning: nitpicking bellow.
Professor Deirdre M. Smith is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maine School of Law, and the Director of the Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic. The University of Maine School of Law is actually a part of the University of Southern Maine, which is a part of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine, which has a flagship campus in Orono and a few other campuses, is also a part of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine are separate. Therefor, Professor Deirdre M. Smith is not "of the University of Maine".
Oh, and the p2pnet article linked to in TFA looks like it has a poorly resized picture turned black and white pulled from this website: http://mainelaw.maine.edu/faculty-details.aspx?facultyID=18
Why would it be tacky for me to post an important story from p2pnet that happens to quote me? Usually I'm posting important stories from my own blog which quotes me even more heavily.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Restricting myself only to stories that have appeared on slashdot, and which I remember immediately off the top of my head:
1) Boston freaking out over homemade lite-brites of cartoon characters. (2 guys arrested)
2) The TSA freaking out over a girl with a small LED art project attached to her sweatshirt. (1 MIT student detained)
3) Someone getting a home-repaired or modified device confiscated at an airport over a resistor sticking out of its casing.
Of course this is entirely irrelevant, because you requested examples without a "good" reason, and anyone with a reactionary bent, opposed to even the slightest non-conformity, would find any of those examples perfectly within reason.
If I might say something slightly more on-topic to this story, I am sympathetic to your position. I imagine being a well intentioned believer in IP would be extremely frustrating right now, and I'll give your intentions the benefit of the doubt. While I am completely and utterly opposed to the *AAs current methodology of protecting their IP, I remain sympathetic to their plight. I understand that they are trying to exercise their rights any way that they can, in the face of a technology that makes it virtually impossible (any discussion of legality aside).
I sincerely (truly and honestly) suggest that you try to Get Over It (tm). You may very well be right. Most of slashdot, admittedly myself included, could be morally and ethically backing the wrong pony. It doesn't matter. Unless by some miracle something like trusted computing happens (and even then I have serious doubts), there is absolutely nothing that you, the government, lobbying groups, legal groups, or any deity can do about it. Even people like my technologically disinclined little brother's even more technologically disinclined friends know how to get whatever music they want from the comfort of their dorm rooms. And they do. And they will continue to. It is a fact of life at this point.
I always thought it was a dig on that anti-piracy campaign that went something along the lines of "When you download movies off the internet, you're supporting terrorism."
The most complete article I can google up comes, oddly enough, from Kuro5hin.
Some Guy named Rick McCallum shot off his mouth about how Piracy and Terrorism are the same.
I don't know about the states (I'm living in Germany with the Military, so the only english-language TV we get here is AFN) - but the anti-drug campaign that runs along similar lines is still going strong here, with a bunch of kids talking gravely about how they helped kill police officers and fund criminals when they're doing drugs is still going strong.
There is a (small) amount of support for the arguement, physically pirated discs (as opposed to bittorrent downloads) - are usually pressed by organized crime in Asia. A bit of the money they make off that probably ends up in the hands of one terrorist organization or another.
Same with Drugs, the Poppy fields in Afghanistan provide the vast majority of funds for the insurgency there.
All those law courses and no time to take a single economics class?
Well, that'll teach you. =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm a poor business man.
What would you expect from a country lawyer who winds up in Manhattan?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
My understanding is, they wanted an exception, that would apply to their activities — to prevent the anti-hacking provisions of the law from applying to their own investigations. But it is not, unfortunately, uncommon to see even completely unrelated bits attached to legislation these days — it is called "pork-barelling".
Without reading the transcript, I can't draw conclusions. I'm surprised, you can.
The people in the article are lawyers, who are trying to help those accused by *AA of piracy. Even if you still think, the pirates themselves may be (unduly) labeled "terrorists", the lawyers defending them are perfectly safe from the accusation. The only time, a (real) terrorist's lawyer was herself convicted of crimes, was for very real help she provided her client in communicating with his followers "in the wild". The jury deliberated for 12 days and convicted her on all five counts.
Whatever your opinion of Lynne Stewart, no other lawyer has gotten into this sort of trouble. Even if Jack Valenti would like to portray pirates as terrorists (and I have not seen any evidence of this), insinuating, that the pirates' lawyers will be accused of "terrorism" is completely unfounded.
Indeed, they aren't.
No, I don't. But if such is your understanding of my other posts, I can see, why you are so mistaken on the original challenge.
You should've read the entire post, which tried to substantiate, why those "legal whores" may be seen as terrorists.
My weak example uses a (highly moderated) Slashdot post — not some left-of-the-wall lunatics' site...
Because you are an honest man, who argues in good faith and is ready to accept the other side's argument. Whereas *AA themselves were accused of "terrorism" (wrongly, of course), no examples of them calling a student file-sharer "terrorist" exist. The frosty-pister I responded to made a completely unjustified claim.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.