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University of San Francisco Law Clinic Joins Fight Against RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's litigation campaign has met resistance from the academic community before, but now it's been taken to a whole new level: the defense of RIAA victims who are not part of the college community. First the University of Oregon lashed out on behalf of its students, then it was the University of Maine's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic on behalf of its undergrads. Now, the University of San Francisco School of Law has taken the fight a giant step further. Its Intellectual Property Law Clinic's attorneys-in-training, working under the supervision of law professors, are going to bat against the RIAA by helping outside lawyers to defend their clients, pro bono. They reached out 3000 miles to get involved in Elektra v. Torres and Maverick v. Chowdhury, two cases going on in Brooklyn, NY, against non-college defendants. Two of the law students in the USF's legal program assisted in the research and preparation of briefs in these cases, opposing the RIAA's motion to dismiss the defendants' counterclaims. Thousands of honor students throughout United States law schools, most of them digital natives who actually understand the legal fallacies and technological missteps the RIAA is taking, and who can't wait to expose them, make a pretty good resource for the poor and middle class people trying to defend these cases."
Come on, NewYorkCountryLawyer, Slashdot isn't your personal outlet! Get your own blog.
Maybe something like http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/?
Is there a legal way the RIAA could be achieving their goals or is the mere concept of aggressively enforcing their rights under copyright law against regular folk something the legal system is currently stacked against?
I guess what I'm asking is, are they just lazy or just stupid?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The little funny quote at the bottom of the page at the moment read "What's done to children, they will do to society."
Would be great if this is the children that have been sued bankrupt for musicdownloads that finally (in time) sues the MAFIAA out of business. But being pesimi... erh, I mean, realistic, I'm not going to hold my breath...
This is a cautionary note based upon experience i have seen in the movies:
When you find a new super weapon and decide to use it to help the people, it almost always backfires.
We are cheering the fact that MORE lawyers are being created.
What will happen when they finish with the RIAA?
"It won't stop at anything, and it will never stop hunting you until you are dead."
liqbase
I think if I was a law student, I'd be very very happy doing this sort of work.
Actual cases with a lot of what every defence lawyer is looking for: Suspense, Lying, Cheating, Inexpert Witnesses, Corporate Greed, Perjury, Farfetched application of laws...
This would be great. You could probably make a TV series out of it even!
(Okay okay.. Some of this is tongue in cheeck, but the basic premise is obvious: This is great material for law students to study and participate in. They get a real life example of how screwed up and convoluted cases can get)
And maybe, just maybe this'll breed a generation of lawyers not hellbent on making Escheresque pictures out of the law.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
yes.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
It doesn't expire. The DMCA is unConstitutional on its face. The RIAA are trying to enforce an illegal law. Enforced by a corrupt judicial system.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Actually it's about the methods the RIAA is using. It's very important to do everything possible to prevent this sort of thing being seen as okay, or even normal, "so long as they're catching the bad guys". Just like it's not generally considered okay for the police to break the law in order to make an arrest, no matter how bad the guy they're arresting is, because it sets precedents of "acceptable behaviour" that are ultimately far more detrimental to society than the acts of even lots of individual bad guys.
Same deal here. If the RIAA can use these sorts of tactics with impunity, then so can everyone else with enough money. Even though some - indeed, probably almost all - of the people being sued did infringe on someone's copyrights, the harm they did pales in comparison to the harm these kind of abuses of the law would do to society if they became (even more) widespread.
It's not just the RIAA, but the fact that it's hard to show actual harm or even deprivation of income from copyright infringement seems to make this a more morally appealing battlefront than others.
Which "sacred human rights" you're talking about that the government is violating (which I presume to mean "is violating unconstitutionally")?
The constitution, albeit a fine document, is not the be-all and end-all of human rights; not least because it is somewhat limited in the people to whom it applies. While I will freely admit that the US gov. has a positively sparkling human rights record compared to some, I note that the country is still not party to, for example, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights among others.
Apologies for being somewhat OT here, but the difference between human rights law in general and the US constitution is an important one and I think it important not to blur the difference.
What interest me most is how this will evolve in the next generation of lawmakers. If these young people are going to step up against RIAA and win, who will be left to watch the RIAA propaganda videos like recently exposed on /.? Seems to me that RIAA with their complete propaganda machinery is no match for educational facilities :-)
Back in the seventies, we young people all smoked pot. Now that my genertation's rich people have taken over from the last generation's rich people, is it legal? Hell no, the assshats running things all deny ever having touched the stuff. Well, one famous asshat former doper claims he tried it once but never inhaled, as if he were talking to a nation of idiots. Well maybe he was.
But at any rate, I think when you in your twenties now are my age, your generation's rich people that become lawmakers are no more going to restore copyright to reasonable terms and legalize noncommercial copying than my generation's rich people that became lawmakers legalized the marijuana that nearly every single one of them broke the law smoking in the seventies.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Apologies for being somewhat OT here, but the difference between human rights law in general and the US constitution is an important one and I think it important not to blur the difference.
See, the trouble there is that the ICESCR isn't about rights, it's about socialism. A right that imposes a obligation on others isn't classically a right. ICESCR is full of "rights" like the right to paid vacations, welfare, social insurance, and "health".If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.