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."

Comments

Quote of the moment

[Dannkape]

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...

Re:Get your own blog!

[Deadfyre_Deadsoul]

I imagine the RIAA is having seizures from this news.

Answer:

[azrider]

yes.

Re:you are going to lose

[coats]

The supreme lw of the land says "for a limited time". Tell me:

When does that encryption expire? For that matter, is the term of copyright "limited" in human terms? (Name ten works whose copyright term has expired in your lifetime.)

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.

Re:you are going to lose

[totally bogus dude]

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.