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Ray Beckerman Sued By the RIAA
An anonymous reader writes "Ray Beckerman, known for questioning the RIAAs legal tactics (also for frequent Slashdot contributions), was sued by the RIAA over his blog Recording Industry vs. People. In question is the 'vexatious' claims that the RIAAs legal tactics is a 'sham.' Beckerman is quoted as saying that the litigation against him is 'frivolous and irresponsible.'"
I believe strongly in the idea of free speech, and don't much care for censorship or other speech restrictions. That said, on some level I think I can agree with the idea that lawyers are part of our legal justice system, and therefore to be held to a higher standard of conduct than we mere mortals. I mean, I have no problem saying the same thing about judges or police officers. I certainly believe they should be held to higher standards.
But the idea that the RIAA would say of Ray's blog, "Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions." is completely beyond absurd.
The RIAA has been conducting a multimillion dollar ad campaign in an attempt to paint copyright infringement as a crime in the same class or worse as theft, and further attempting to equate their inflated 'losses' due to 'piracy'. Ray might joke and jab more than is 'proper' or 'expected' as a lawyer, but in my mind, that makes him a better agent of the court, not worse. And I fail to see how this lawsuit is anything other than a legal attack upon Ray in an attempt to smear his good name and discredit him as a lawyer.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Honestly, this is a fortunate turn of events. This gentleman is at least capable of defending himself against whatever accusations RIAA is making against him, while at the same time consuming time and legal resources that the fuckwits at RIAA could be using to put another party in legal jeopardy.
In fact, since this is not the same as the boilerplate legal case that RIAA makes against thousands of consumers annually, it probably also consumed more resources. We should all be thankful that RIAA has chosen this course of action.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
This guy seems to have bothered you, I have never read his blog but, as you find it so threating there must be some value in it. Thanks for the recommendation.
Understanding complicated matters, such as law, is always hard because of the bad advice that goes about. I commend you RIAA for your services to education.
Let me be the first to point out what everyone's been thinking.
Thank.
You.
RIAA.
Morons.
I mean, honestly. We all are acting all high and mighty, but what we're really thinking is,
"What IDIOT up there thought it would be a good idea to sue one of the most competent, intelligent, LAWYERS who has already expressed a will to fight against their unsound tactics"
Lets take odds, who wants to bet they try to pull out of this the minute someone realizes what they just did, and someone is definitly getting sacked.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
In question is the "vexatious" claims that the RIAAs legal tactics is a "sham"
The best way to show that criticism of your valiant, righteous lawsuits is a sham is to sue the critic for being so irritatingly vexatious. Now I (and I imagine this goes for everyone else here on Slashdot) take the RIAA completely seriously. I suspect a million geeks just stopped filesharing a few minutes ago, and that the torrents of the tubes have all gone dead: Seeders 0, Leechers 0. The RIAA has won.
Except ... all sarcasm aside, this is really desperate.
Indeed.
Actually I wonder if this is just an extension of the RIAA's legal tactics to the lawyers themselves. Previously, they would sue people in order to intimidate them into settling and/or not file-sharing. Now, they are applying the same logic to lawyers: suing lawyers with the audacity to defend file-sharers, so as to intimidate other potential defense lawyers from even taking a file-sharing case.
As usual, even if the RIAA loses (or eventually drops the case), they "win" in the sense that they send the message that they are willing to make life hell for anyone who opposes them (including other lawyers).
Such a tactic from the RIAA is presumably illegal... but it's probably very difficult to prove in court that this is their intention.
they are some pest that needs to be eradicated for rational functioning of u.s. legal system. they need to be made an example of, for future generations.
to [mis]quote a movie:
"we're the US government. we don't DO that sort of thing."
seriously - we don't seem to make examples of bad businesses. in fact, we BAIL THEM OUT with taxpayer money!
don't expect the US legal system to 'fix itself'. doctors can't operate on themselves, in a similar analog.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Who will pay Beckerman's legal fees? An interesting question. I'm sure that Mr Beckerman is well aware that the lawyer wo represents himself has a fool for a client.
"Is there a reason you want an album and then won't pay for it? Just GO BUY THE CD or BUY THE MP3'S. If the artist intended for you to have th emusic for free, they would put it up on their myspace account for download. Since they DON'T, PAY FOR IT!!! "
I've tried saying that here before, but you run into a brick wall of nitpicking denial. Somehow the idea that it's not physical media makes it impossible to steal. Or it's the record companies that lose out, the artist gets shafted anyway. Or real artists should just want their music listened to. Like there are no costs involved in creating music.
I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that while I believe in intellectual property rights, most people around me don't. Of course the vast majority of those people have never tried to make a living by producing something for the mass market.
thank you.
this is obviously an attempt to harass him. these lawyers should be de-barred (or whatever the correct term is).
It wouldn't matter. Unlike college students, lawyers have both the experience needed and the money to take these cases to court. Given the RIAA's shaky prosecution tactics, I wouldn't be surprised if not only every lawyer being sued in this manner takes the case to court, but a number of them are secretly wishing to be sued just to make an example out of their opponents and get their name out.
Mr Beckerman's time is not valueless, and sadly human cloning is still not possible so he's also a finite resource. These RIAA asshats are clearly aiming to distract him from the fine work he does. If he's too busy fighting on his own behalf they'll remove one of their biggest threats. Their strategy is sound.
/. to tangibly show support: with cash for a Beckerman defense fund. Does anyone know how to set that up?
I'm reminded of the adage that a person who represents themself in court has a "fool for a client". Is this a case where someone like the ACLU or EFF could help Mr Beckerman? Maybe he will need to hire a lawyer to handle this nonsense so he can continue fighting the good fight? If the latter is the case then maybe it's time for
All,
Mr. Beckerman is, as most of us know, one of the most respected members of the Slashdot community. He's posted many, many stories and innumerable comments, all with great insight and actual legal information from a real lawyer (yes, HIAL). Over quite a long time, he's become one of us, and he probably has the highest karma in the history of Slashdot. He's done a great deal to help us all, and now it's time to return the favor. There are a lot of comments here about how dumb a move this is on the RIAA's part, and how they'll finally get embarrassed by NewYorkCountryLawyer himself. I happen to agree.
However, Ray is only one man, and the RIAA has the means, and probably the will, to throw so many of their lawyers and arcane procedural motions at him to make his personal life a living hell. So it's time now that we thank him and make it clear that were behind him. As for how, that's up to you. Maybe send encouraging emails. If he comments here, reply with your support. Spread the word about the RIAA trying to sue a legal critic into silence. Please, everyone who's been enlightened, informed, and amused by Ray's comments here, do your part in return.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
When people will be looking back at the madness, deceit, lies and coercion that has become so commonplace with some of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics, someone like Ray will stand as an exemplary model of integrity and fairness, refusing to simply kowtow to the unreasonable demands of a group of corporate entities who have demonstrated that they are utterly unable to serve their original mission (i.e.: be creative in providing the public entertainment in changing times) and re-invent themselves in the face of a mutating marketplace and technological tools, by providing the public with easy, ubiquitous and unencumbered access to their catalogs of copyrights, and have instead made it their new specialty to sue those who could have been their best customers.
Being slapped with such silly and pointless lawsuits over a blog is just a mark of how desperate some of those behind these campaigns of harassment really are, and can only serve to highlight that they are slowly running out of options of who else to blame for their own demise into obsolescence.
Hang in there!!
Z.
In reading between the lines, I think it is important that he is not being sued for calling the Media Sentry investigations Illegal. If the RIAA thought they had a case in which to sue, I would have expected an attack on this. The silence is deafening.
I wonder if Ray can keep his blog entries up if he simply stated the line in contention as in my opinion.
The stating an opinion as fact is the basis of the action. His opinion may indeed be fact. It would be interesting if the RIAA lost and it was proven in court to be fact. I think the RIAA may have a tiger by the tail on this one.
The truth shall set you free!
It wouldn't surprise me if this ploy by the RIAA was simply an attempt to distract Mr. Beckerman, who has become a bit of a thorn in their side. If he's busy defending himself he won't have time to defend other RIAA victims.
Really? A troll? Differing viewpoint sure...but I don't read it as trolling so much.
However, the issue at hand isn't so much the payment aspect. The RIAA has demonstrated that it is a cartel, engaged in anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices. They have their business model from the 1950s and they will see everyone in the nation financially ruined before admitting it's outdated and they need to change it. It employs underhanded tactics that are an abuse of the legal system, use unlicensed investigators in clear violation of state laws, and show very little in the way of ethics in their prosecutions. Attempting to interview an underage child at their school in defiance of the parent's wishes can never be excused for a private entity.
Also bear in mind, NONE of the lawsuits filed target the people who downloaded the files. Their entire campaign relies on the "making available" theory that putting files into a download folder is copyright infringement, so these are the people providing the uploads. These people could very easily have full legal license to the music they are being sued for, and in fact many of them do. This is not a redistribution license, but to say they "stole" the music is to confuse the facts of the cases. Given the lack of computer saavy some people have, they might not have even realized they were sharing the files, as the courts have determined before in these cases. The RIAA simply doesn't care...
Throw on top of it the idea that copyright is intended to enhance SOCIETY in the long-term and the farce that idea has become and you see a strong civil disobedience movement against a system that long ago ceased serving the people's interests. When you don't serve the greater good, as it were, don't be surprised when things don't go the way you want them to go.
clearly, you hate freedom. i must kindly ask you to get the fuck out of america, not for your nationality of origin, but your diametrically opposed to our values views.
Someone might have believed that line 10 years ago, but considering the state of the US at the moment, it is obviously just flamebait. The American government certainly doesn't value freedom, and the citizens aren't doing anything about that, so how can you claim that freedom is at the core of your values? Is this the freedom to have a gun and be able to say whatever you want, as long as you don't actually do anything about it, like have a non government-sactioned protest (which is pretty much the dumbest idea ever)?
which is totally what she said
AIG won't default. AIG has plenty of assets--the problem with AIG right now is liquidity, and that's what this loan is supposed to cover (operating income while the assets are made liquid). If the money's out more than a month or so I'd be outright shocked.
And the federal loan is first on the repayment list.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
This is completely off-topic, but an important enough discussion that I think it's worth chiming in anyways.
Yes, many will feel the pain either way. However, I think the most fair and equitable distribution of pain and accountability follows the plan of letting those investors that propped up AIG take the fall for its bad business practices.
I feel much the same way about bailing out fmae and fmac. Sure, people are losing thousands of dollars in their home "values" and their retirement investments. However, the drops in home prices are a natural market balance that reflects a lowered ability to pay. More accurately, it better represents the real ability to pay, when the mortgage balloon game is ended. Today thousands of homes sit on the foreclosure market, rotting away from the inside out and developing crippling mold issues that ultimately can completely destroy the value of a home. Yet, the banks refuse to unload these homes at a price that would move them off the market immediately, choosing instead to let them rot to maintain their inflated prices. Let us not forget that from 2000 -> 2005, home prices DOUBLED. Their prices prior to this "collapse" were in fact inflated, are still inflated, and taking out the exhorbitant mortgages to purchase them at their inflated value, was a mistake.
So lets summarize - banks are holding houses they aren't willing to sell for what the market will bear, plenty of people need homes and don't have them, and the government solution is we need to bail out the poor, poor bank at the expense of said non-homeowners?
NO.
One can argue how taxes should or should not be used, but I think we can mostly agree taxes should not be used to redistribute wealth to the wealthy.
I think things are fine. This clearance sale on housing is bringing the price of a home back into the range that a young couple starting a family may be able to afford one on a real income. When the next generation can buy homes, the price will stabilize. And maybe the younger generation, which is currently piddling away all their money the Middle East, will learn something from the older generation, which did the same thing in the Far East, and instead invest their money here at home, so that when it's time to retire we don't have to resort to robbing our children.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Actual there are very good non racists reasons to ahve a national language.
Cost.
Once you interpret a document into one language, you must do it for all languages. This is very expensive.
Culture division.
Creating segments of the population that has difficulty communicating with other segments leads to an US v Them scenario; which leads to civil unrest.
A cheaper and more long term solution is a more widely available English language courses.
Encouraging people to speak the language.
Many people with 'Mexican' decent in California are multiple generation and speak English.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Expecting people to learn the dominant language is not bigotry, it's a reasonable expectation of a person putting in effort to work with society. I don't have anything against some random immigrant into the US. Good for him, I hope he does well for himself. If he chooses, however, to not attempt to learn English, which is the de facto national language, that's just plain rude.
If you want to let rude people who don't want to put forth the effort to work together with our society be accepted in our nation, that's your problem. I, for one, want people who actually give a damn, and try to become better citizens.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Have you been to Spain recently? There are more British expats in some parts than native Spanish people, and they really do expect to have their every whim catered for. English speakers are one of the most arrogant groups in the world, linguistically. The fact that our language is dominant in many areas puts us at a natural advantage.
But let's get this into perspective. Slashdot is on the Internet; it's not a country. Someone who posts here with less-than-excellent English might be posting from Mexico, or Lithuania, or Uganda. They're not refusing to learn the language of their country of residence, they're just not great at the language Slashdot chose for its website.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I wonder if Ray can keep his blog entries up if he simply stated the line in contention as in my opinion.
"in my opinion" is not a magic word that lets you defame people with impunity.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
I'd agree, but to allow these banks and insurers to go under would result in a massive cascade of bankruptcies that would plunge the entire world economy into a depression, forcing people out of their homes and out of their jobs. Then we'd see the re-emergence and re-popularisation of radical politics like fascism and communism. There's a good chance we would end up in another war, possibly a big one since that's what happened after the great depression of the 1930's.
So although I agree in principle, I'd rather see a bailout.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
There shouldn't be a financial industry! Industry produces and commerce sells. Finance == value. You can print money, but that actually causes all money to lose value, which is the opposite of what a finance "industry" should be doing. There's a lot of financial commerce happening, though; our money is being bought from us at a deflated rate and sold to the rich for even less.
You sir, are a naive tool. The financial industry provides the capital upon which industry is built. Without it, the only people with enough capital to create industry are the rich.
You'll have that sometimes...
Don't be silly. The US government doesn't spend taxpayer money when a ridiculously overblown problem is presented, the US government spends DEBT.
We're basically handing our kids money to companies. Don't worry though, all the middle-aged losers who are spending the money will be long dead before the time comes to pay most of it back.
It's been a long time.
If their culture stands between them and learning the language, then yes, ditch it.
Their culture is of zero worth (as mine is), and that much importance. Culture is just tradition, which is stuff we do for no good reason. (Or it wouldn't be traditional, just reasonable. Canadians shovel sidewalks, but not for fun or culture, but because they get covered in snow.)
Of course, they can follow whatever cute little traditions their people traditionally have, no matter how stupid, like cutting down a perfectly good tree to celebrate the birth of a space ghost. But these things are worthless, and we shouldn't cater to the traditionalist's demands for "respect" for their culture or we'll still be chopping down trees for this in another two-thousand years. Nutty old crap is nutty old crap.
All it takes to create industry is ingenuity and drive, the money comes (should come, rather) later.
How do you propose to buy equipment, rent office/factory/warehouse space, etc. without any money? Suppliers and landlords won't take "ingenuity and drive" as payment. If the subject of your ingenuity is something that's expensive to make, you'll probably need investors (i.e. a loan) to make it happen.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If you were advocating punishment for the AIG bigwigs, then I'd agree with you. Going bankrupt does not help you in any way. It causes a weakening of the financial positions of those invested in some way in AIG. The majority of banks, right now, are also having severe problems.
So what we end up with is a domino effect, where AIG fails, then someone else fails because AIG did, then others whose investments were dependent on both fail, and so on, and so forth, until you feel the effect anyway. The person who talked about investments and bonds is way off. This affects you if you do commerce with anyone at all. If you own a mud hut in the middle of Nebraska, and live on worms and seaweed, then yeah, you're not going to be bothered.
I don't directly own any bonds. I'm pretty sure my bank does. I don't know under what mattress my employer keeps its cash, but I do know it's dependent upon the financial system for economic stability. My employer's clients are large companies that also depend upon the ability to borrow money from time to time. And those companies are also dependent upon large numbers of ordinary people to have the wherewithall to spend large amounts of money, borrowing because the amounts involved are considerably higher than can be raised by stashing $100 into a jar every month.
And, for what it's worth, it's not like there's no return here. We didn't give AIG the money, we bought an 80% stake in them. Most analysts are suggesting that AIG can recover, and when it does it will be able to buy itself out of state ownership in a relatively short space of time, with the taxpayer making a buck in the process.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I don't own any bonds. I don't have any investments. I don't even own a credit card. So, why should I be contributing to keeping AIG alive?
Do you have money in a bank? Do you ever want to see that money ever again?
Correction is fine; telling them they shouldn't be here isn't. That clearer?
My appreciation of Douglas Adams is far deeper than yours.
And if I understand the news about AIG correctly, the stock is only taken temporarily as a security. So if AIG recovers and can pay back the money, these investors get off way too lightly as well.
The feds took stock warrants totaling nearly 80% of the company as collateral. The warrants are basically options, at anytime they can be turned into stock that the feds will permanently own. There is good reason not to make it 100%, no one wants the fed to actually have to own or oversee the dissolution of this company. It would be far better if they paid back the loan and went on to be a successfully company.
So if AIG recovers and can pay back the money, these investors get off way too lightly as well.
I don't agree with this. This is not entirely AIGs fault. AIG insured a lot of bad debt its true, however their current liquidity problems are also the product of fear (due to LEH, BS) driven increases to what amounts to interest rates on loans that they (like all banks/insurers) need. When these rates went up then AIG's costs shot up causing the recent problem. Nothing changed at AIG, its just that because of LEH/BS/etc the market fearfully drove AIG's debt costs up, prior to that they were fine.
Also keep in mind that the the Feds didn't write AIG a check for $85billion, they gave them a line of credit. The presence of this line of credit could make AIGs debt costs go down (remember they are artificially high due to fear) without ever actually using it fully.
Anyway I think seeing one's investment go from $70/share to $2 is probably PLENTY of punishment.
What about Morgan Stanley? The exact same thing could happen to them and they are currently turning a profit! Right now the market is so fearful that profit/loss doesn't matter. Should investors loose all of their money because a panic induced mob crashed prices? I certainly don't want to see profitable companies like Morgan Stanley go out of business and fire all of their workers because of a panicked crazed mob.
...or dyslexic, or badly educated because your teachers didn't care, or the child of illiterate parents, or just plain tired after a long day, or a potentially hyper-intelligent foreigner who just hasn't mastered English yet...
I'm not a fan of poor English either - I teach the subject at Oxford, so I'm probably more aware of mistakes then the average reader. But when someone is obviously a learner rather than a sloppy native speaker, let's give them a break, huh?
Would you rather participate in an inward-looking forum where only native speakers with the requisite educational level are allowed, or one where you have a far broader range of opinions and ideas which are sometimes marred by poor (but nonetheless understandable) language usage?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.