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."

Comments

Let me clarify my position.

[palegray.net]

Please, your Honor, don't take what I actually said to heart. What I really meant to say was a complete reversal of the actual meaning of what some may interpret to be a broadly misunderstood fabrication of opinions based on statistical evidence to the contrary.

Re:Let me clarify my position.

[X0563511]

<defense style="chewbacca">But that does not make sense! </defense>

Re:Let me clarify my position.

[mabhatter654]

this is how a good many high-profile criminal cases are argued by DAs everywhere. Misrepresenting the leagal status of your case is almost universally allowed now days. Most things we worry about here... like being charged kiddie-porn or terrorism or hacking are delt with the same way.. half truths by prosecutors trying to "invent" crimes and trying to bend laws to fit instead of knowing how to charge you with breaking the appropriate law (which would be a slam dunk). Prosecutors routinely try to bring in non-relevant evidence, in a trial over 1 or 2 illegal pics they might put the worst stuff they find that might be in your cache and use that to bait the jury and confuse the issue of "morality" with which pictures break the law and WHY. Police do the same in their "reports", I've seen police reports with ""'s that a person said this or that when it wasn't what was said at all, but what the police THOUGHT was the answer they wanted to hear... and not the facts.

Fact is that the present jury system is DESIGNED to REMOVE the jury from the facts. Designed to obscure facts of a case from the Jury, while crippling their ability to ask for facts or have the appropriate laws relevant to the case pointed out to the. Juries are treated as a bunch of dumb slobs to beg to push the Blue button or Red button so they can go home. The civil system is even worse as all the cases "waste the courts time" so incentive to pull big stunts and baited arguments is in full effect because the jury just has to "agree", it doesn't have to make LEGAL sense!!!

appeal?

[tsstahl]

Is any of it grounds for appeal?

perjury ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:perjury ?

[palegray.net]

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.

Against Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I make an illegal copy of my CD when I play it...

[speculatrix]

.. because copies exists not only on the CD but also (1) in the digital bitstream being processed by the digital processing in my home cinema amp, (2) another in the sound pressure waves in the air, and (3) a further one in my brain as it listens.

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.

Re:Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter.

[Steve1952]

Thomas has claimed on her website that her computer developed problems, and that she brought it in for warranty repairs months BEFORE she was notified that she had been targeted by the RIAA. It was her dealer that replaced the hard drive.

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.