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RIAA's 'Misspeaking' May Have Affected Verdict
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "David Kravetz of Wired.com covered last year's Capitol v. Thomas trial gavel-to-gavel. It's worth noting, then, his article saying that the RIAA's recent statement — that Sony's top litigation lawyer 'misspoke' during the trial. She said that making a copy from one's own cd is 'stealing', which (in his words) may have caused a major miscarriage of justice. Wired further points out that later on in the trial, during the RIAA's examination of Ms. Thomas, 'On the hard drive she [turned] over were thousands of songs Thomas said she ripped from her CDs. The RIAA's Gabriel suggested to jurors that copying one's purchased music was a violation of the Copyright Act. Gabriel, for example, asked Thomas whether she had ever burned CDs, either for herself, or to give away to friends.' Gabriel, the RIAA's lead attorney, apparently misspoke too — prejudicing jurors along the way."
There's a great essay, "Against Intellectual Property," by Brian Martin at deoxy.org ( http://deoxy.org/aip.htm )
Martin attacks the very idea that intellectual products can be considered property at all: "The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to." He demolishes many of the standard rationales for IP and cites many abuses of it, such as: "The neem tree is used in India in the areas of medicine, toiletries, contraception, timber, fuel and agriculture. Its uses have been developed over many centuries but never patented. Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials. In this way, collective local knowleilge developed by Indian researchers and villagers has been expropriated by outsiders who have added very little to the process.5
Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Ehar, "Intellectual piracy and the neena tree," Ecologist, Vol. 23 No. 6, 1993, pp, 223-227."
I recommend this essay highly.
IANAL, but I asked this guy Google about it and he directed me to this site's page on the legal definition of perjury, and here are a whole lotta case files related to the issue. Some investigation might be merited.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Before the DMCA, I believe all of what you just described was acceptable as "fair use".
After the DMCA, it's still alright for actual CDs, but many other things (movies) are copy protected, and it is illegal to break copy protection for any reason.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The problem with that is it breaks down.
I buy a CD, copy it, then some time later sell the original. According to your revised law I haven't broken the law even though 2 copies now exist.
Copyright law in most countries does make it illegal to format shift. I don't know how it is in the US but in the UK for example it's illegal to use a VCR to record a TV programme - however nobody ever prosecutes (because it would be silly) so the law is effectively meaningless.
She also claimed this part of the story was not brought up at the trial. If so and if true, it seems to me that her defense attorney really dropped the ball here.
If Thomas' lawyer didn't pick up that lie by Sony's lawyer to convince the jury that Sony would lie about consumer rights and RIAA rights, then Thomas' lawyer should be fired.
Thomas should get a new trial, with a new lawyer, and the two old lawyers should pay for screwing up the entire trial.
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make install -not war
can a lawyer be disbarred in the US for "mispeaking" under oath and saying something untrue about the legality of a defendant's conduct
While we are on it, can the Judge be dismissed, seeing as it is the Judge's responsibility to keep the jury properly informed about the law. From a website about jury duty: "It is your duty to accept what the Judge says about the laws to be applied to the case, whether you agree or disagree with the law." Now if the judge failed to correct the "misspeaking" of the Sony attorney, they the Judge implied that the Sony attorney was in fact correct, demonstrating gross incompetence on the part of the Judge as well. They should both be disbarred.
We are all just people.
[copying] of software code in RAM in order to run that software... is why software vendors are able to require "licenses" in order to use their software even if you don't copy the software.
Not true.
US law, Title 17 Section 117 explicitly states that installing software and running software do not constitute infringing copying. The European Union has an equivalent law, as does most ever other country on earth.
You absolutely positively do not need any sort of license at all to install and run software. Just as you do not need any sort of license at all to read a book. An EULA is a contract offer. You are perfectly free to decline that contract offer, and it is absolutely positively not copyright infringement to go ahead and install and run software anyway.
EULAs are contract offers, and publishers use a a few non-copyright based tactics attempting to corner you into agreeing to them. For example they try things like arguing "we printed on the outside of the box that there is a contract inside, and that by buying the box you are accepting the contract on the outside of the box saying that you accept the contract inside the box". And on that basis, it would be absolutely valid for the supermarket could sell you tomato with an EULA sticker on it. It would be absolutely valid for them to sell you a box of cereal with an EULA inside the box (thats one hell of a "secret toy surprise!" inside).
These alternate legal tricks attempting to trap you into an EULA are sometimes upheld in court, and sometimes tossed out on their ass in court. Legally, EULAs are a total crap shoot. But they are absolutely not legitimate upon any basis in copyright. Just because someone slaps the title "EULA" at the top of a contract offer does not mean that it is actually licensing you anmything under copyright law that you actually want or need.
About the only time you have an EULA that genuinely is licensing you valid useful rights under copyright is when some company buys something like a "site license" that allows them to buy just once physical copy and use that one copy to install onto five machines or onto a hundred machines or onto ten thousand machines. A license to create multiple copies is indeed copyright license.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
here is the law
is a PC a "digital audio recording device" it is certainly capable of being used that way, -- but -- that is NOT it's primary purpose. A PC HAS NO PRIMARY PURPOSE it is a general purpose machine.
now if you put a sound card in your PC and announce that your PC is your Music Library system then that is just something you are saying
copyright law was intended to protect the right of the owner to regulate the manufacture and distributions of copies of the copyright material.
what we need is the law clarified with the addition of a paragraph on computers and networks
if you post any material to a web site or on a P2P share you have published that material and if the material is copyright protected then you have trespassed on that copyright and can be charged with a crime.
it is the duty of the Congress to clarify the definition of a digital recording device it is not up to the court to wreck someone life with a test case. If the law is NOT CLEAR then the defendant must go free and if there is any remaining issue that has to be refered to the Congress -- NOT to the Court. The court does not make the law only Congress can do that and it's about time this trouble with "juducial activism" got straightened up too.
It's only "infringing" if it breaks copyright. Copyright is a limited set of rights granted by law to the creator. preventing people from making "fair use" copies is not one of those rights.. so it's not infringing on anything.
Fair use isn't a right. Its a defense. You make a copy, you get charged with infringement, you defend your copy as fair use. You hope you prevail.
Copyright law itself doesn't define fair use as a right, it recognizes that some infringement for fair use is allowed, and gives a set of guidelines to assist with recognizing fair use. But essentially each non-authorized copy is an infringement waiting for a lawsuit... and when the lawsuit comes, fair use is waiting as a defense... but until something has actually been ruled fair use and a precedent is set, its legal standing is essentially unknown... we know a lawsuit can be brought, and we know fair use is a credible defense strategy... but we don't actually KNOW how it will turn out.
Ripping a CD to a PC has never been ruled on. So there is no precedent confirming that fair use is recognized. You and I can think its "clearly obvious" that a fair use defense would prevail (and I think it would)... but until it actually does...we don't actually KNOW.