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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."
And for this we gave up duals?
First, its duels and not duals. If you only post one short sentence then you could at least spell it correctly.
Secondly, duels were slightly more prone to cheating than the American legal system. When I say slightly, I mean by an infinitesimal amount. The real problem was that cheating in a duel were much more desirable and not subject to later remedy as there wasn't much of an appeals process available in the dueling system.
However, I would venture to guess there were far fewer frivolous duels than lawsuits.