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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."
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 being questioned as a witness for the side that pays her salary?
why the hell not?
Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter. The evidence was overwhelming, and unlike most of the RIAA's targets, Thomas was guilty and the evidence suggests she knew what she was doing was illegal (she destroyed her original hard drive).
Can we please redefine copyright law as being applicable only when a protected work is copied between two people? This way, reselling a used CD would still be OK (right of resale, copyright law does not apply). And making a copy from one media format to another, or a temporary copy to RAM, or a backup copy, or transcoding, would all be legal and not under copyright law either, because there would not be any exchange between two people.
I suspect that this is how copyright was originally intended to apply, and I think it makes more sense. Let people do what they want with their media, as long as they don't copy and distribute it to another person. Thats when copyright law should apply.
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Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital elecronics!
Sometimes I even violate copyright by singing along to a song without having bought a performance license! Even worse, I might sing the song at a different time, thus time-shifting/reproducing it! If I hum it in a public place, that compounds the crime because then it's a public performance.
Since I want to avoid becoming a career copyright-violating criminal, I am moving to Antigua, land of the free, land of RIAA-copyright-free.
Sadly, I wish everything I wrote above was bollocks, but far fetched and silly as it might be, it seems the Recording Ass of America don't see it as such.
if Cary Sherman and Jennifer Pariser have told the judge that Ms. Pariser "misspoke".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Of course, they'd also love to use the same idea the telecoms use for the internet: collect from both ends for the same byte. In this scenario, they collect from the radio station for playing their overblown crap^F^Flatest hits, and force all new radios made to 'feature' a credit card slot as part of the device. The radio won't work until you plug in the credit card, and by the terms of service of the radio, you cannot dispute the charges on your credit card bill. Scared yet?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The RIAA have felt this way for years and it has nothing to do with current CD sales. In fact, during the late 90's when CD sales were at record highs, their web site claimed that ripping a CD was illegal (they had the legal wherewithal to remove those statements fairly quickly once discussions started picking up about it around the 'Net). The RIAA's head mouth piece even opined that one should have to buy a CD for the home stereo and another for the car stereo.
This is the fantasy world that the RIAA uses as a lens to see the real world. It is their heart's desire to make the two worlds align perfectly where their fantasies become legally enforceable reality.
There's already the "tape tax" law from the early '90's, in which a tax on blank tape was distributed to the RIAA/record companies to supposedly be distributed to the artists who were losing sales to "home taping." It also applies to "audio CD-R's" that I don't think anyone uses anymore. They were needed on standalone CD recorders which were crippled not to record on standard data CD-R's. You had to pay the "tape tax" to record anything ob those recorders, even your own original music!
The RIAA's ultimate goal is to tax the bits coming out of A/D converters so they can "plug" the "analog hole" as well as having full control over of making digital copies of anything.
Tag lost or not installed.
When I buy a CD, I have PURCHASED the CD and the data contained on it. It is now my property. Period.
When you buy a cd, you puchase the disk and the music/data on it. You do NOT purchase a license to simply use the disk and listen to the music. That being said, if I buy a CD, then I should have the right to make as many copies of the music on it as I see fit, as long as I don't sell those copies to other people.
If the RIAA wants to start this whole EULA-esque crap, then they should state that you are not buying a CD, but rather purchasing a license.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
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.
Thank Christ someone finally pointed this out. This is another one of those non-story Slashdot stories -- it's just preaching to the choir and doing so in a rather questionable manner. Is the RIAA lawyer a douchebag for playing fast and loose with the language? Of course -- but that's why a defendant isn't alone in our justice system. That's why there's a defense attorney, part of whose job it should be to counter any bullshit from the accusers, and a jury whose job it is to see through both sides' bullshit. Of course the system isn't perfect, but that's how it works.
Continuing on that theme, Thomas was more a victim of a lousy defense and just plain stupidity. There's a lot more to what went into the verdict than one simple "misspeak" by a lawyer, and this "story" is blowing out of proportion just one part of the case.
When you or I do it, it's called "perjury".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
For CDs, that is still true. For DVDs, not so much. And I imagine it would apply to any of the bastardized CDs (Sony rootkit, etc).
This is because, as I said in my other comment on this thread, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. It doesn't matter that what you're going to do with it constitutes fair use; the act of circumvention is itself illegal.
So, in theory, if you have a CD with the Sony Rootkit on it, you're not allowed to rip it, because to do so, you'd have to "circumvent" the DRM by disabling AutoRun, or by using Mac or Linux.
This should hold for EULAs, also. All they have to do is provide built-in DRM which you have to go through to do anything. Then, they don't even have to declare what you can and can't do in legal terms -- anything the DRM explicitly allows you to do is legal, anything else is not.
And that, boys and girls, is the real reason for the War on Piracy: Control.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Many of these were tied to the lack of an expert witness. Nevertheless her lawyer should have addressed the last issue at a minimum.
what does this all mean? if you buy a music CD you can play it anyway you want for yourself. put a copy in your car put a copy in your ear, anyplace you like
BUT DON'T PUBLISH A COPY
if you publish a copy -- e.g. off a web site or network share off a P2P net -- you are outside of "home use"
publishing is reserved to the copyright holder by US copyright law, and guess what, Clones: you ain't gonna change that. The law will likely be clarified however.
1. The RIAA's leading precedent for its "making available" theory is the Hotaling case. Hotaling has been distinguished on the ground that the copies being 'made available' were concededly unlawful copies. If the RIAA can establish that copies ripped from cd are 'unlawful', then Hotaling case can't be distinguished on that ground.
2. If in their filesharing cases they can argue, as they did in Capitol v. Thomas, that the mere fact that a defendant has song files on his computer which he copied from his cd's is in itself unlawful conduct, it helps to make the defendant look bad. This was the tactic they used in Capitol v. Thomas. Jennifer Pariser testified that it is unlawful to make copies from cd's onto one's computer. And then Richard Gabriel roasted Ms. Thomas during her crossexamination over the fact that she'd copied cd's to her hard drive without his clients' permission. I haven't seen the transcript yet, but apparently neither the judge nor Ms. Thomas's lawyer picked up on the fact that the jury was being misled. This is the RIAA's game : taking advantage of unknowledgeable judges and overmatched, underpaid attorneys.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful