Slashdot Mirror
NYCL Responds to RIAA Accusations
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that when the RIAA decided to run away with its tail between its legs in the long running Brooklyn case against a home health aide who has never used a computer, UMG v. Lindor, it decided to take some parting shots at the defendant and NewYorkCountryLawyer, asking for 'discovery sanctions,' and blaming them for its inability to prove its case. Today NYCL gave them his response, accusing the RIAA lawyers of persistent misstatements of fact (PDF) throughout their motion papers, and of flouting the rules and misstating the law (PDF). Although the RIAA's motion papers took a number of shots at NYCL's copyright law blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People,' NYCL confined his response on that subject to a single footnote."
I'd say more than that, NYCL is a bona-fide Freedom Fighter. Thanks, NYCL -- you're my kind of hero!
Caveat Utilitor
I decline to enter into a point-by-point rejoinder in defense of my modest foray into "blogging". Suffice it to say that (a) my law blog is irrelevant to the motion, (b) plaintiffs' counsel themselves rely upon the blog in the course of their legal work....(c) many in-house university counsels and student legal services offices refer their students to it ....... (d) many law schools and colleges use it in their curricula ..... (e) many
reputable organizations have found the views expressed in it to be worthy of further in-depth
consideration...... (f) it has been cited in law review articles.....(g) plaintiffs' counsel are not candid
about their real problem with the blog, which is that its existence interferes with their tactic of
attempting to conceal the litigation events and prior inconsistent statements they don't want
others to know about, from judges, litigants, and law enforcement authorities
Emphasis mine. He then goes on to give a specific example of why the RIAA hates his blog, basically because it exposes the stupid things they do to the world.
Must be a fun job to use the law to destroy evil. Kind of like that old movie The Rainmaker. If I were Ray Beckerman, I would feel like I were in a movie.
Qxe4
Here's a guy who has single handedly changed my opinion of lawyers. Certianly he has friends here, I'd give him a dollar. But at the same time his existence speaks badly of other lawyers. The question is: Why are there not more like him? We all recognise the RIAA are effectively an extorion racket. Why do more not speak up and take on these criminals? Leading by example may not be enough. If I were NYCL my focus would be converting more of my peers, raising an army against the RIAA. A one man battle is heroic and all, but sooner or later we all need help. It's time other lawyers saw which way the wind is blowing and get behind this leader.
I'd say more than that, NYCL is a bona-fide Freedom Fighter.
One man's Freedom Fighter is another man's Terrorist.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
We salute you, sir.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I know I shouldn't respond to this, but am I the only one that read it and thought most of it didn't sound half bad? I always thought public service was a good thing.
"You may recall that when the RIAA decided to run away with its tail between its legs in the long running Brooklyn case against a home health aide who has never used a computer"
Maybe I'm thinking of a different case, but I thought Lindor decided to settle?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Having their business charters revoked, all copyrights automatically reverted to the artists, liquification of all other assets, outstanding payments to employees and other liabilities paid, and whatever is left put into trust to help fund music education and arts advancement programs?
That should just about do it.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Being stressed, bashed, scarred, and abused is part of life.
True, and people should have some amount of thick skin. But...
When people stress others without caring for their well-being and (more importantly) without a valid reason and do so repeatedly, that's where it becomes chicanery and where I think it's reasonable to step in.
Whether we're talking about schoolyard bullies or corporate dragnet litigation, there should be some way of stopping chicanery. Lawsuits are not like an abusive spouse: you can't just divorce it.
Looked at the Skinnerian way, when people harass you, we need you to have some way of punishing them. Otherwise, as symes said (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1022819&cid=25690283), you become stressed out with bad effects to your health.
Shame me for using anecdotal evidence all you want; I know what ten years of near-constant bullying can do to you. When you feel universally hated and persecuted, you don't have the most fertile ground for developing social skills; what you do have is fertile grounds for developing social anxiety.
When on top of the endless bullying your cries for help go unanswered, you learn that you can't rely on anyone when you're in need, that no one cares about your well-being, and that people in practice have the right to mistreat you however they want.
I do not want to be expected to tell my children that "this is a part of life".
My wife's father, a Vietnam Veteran, once said to me that it is every Americans duty to serve at least once in the armed services. My knee-jerk reaction was to bring up rights and such but I do agree with him. Think of how much better off the average family would be as well as the country as a whole with that kind of training and education per individual.
A pipe dream I know but I found it a very interesting statement.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
He's probably been busy saving the world :)
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."
How would NYCL react to his being cast as Jack Nicholson?
I don't really care who they cast as me, as long as they give me a nice fee -- like maybe 5% of what Jack Nicholson gets for a movie.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
if you don't know where your junk is by now....
Dude...check the username.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/
I felt a mixture of nausea, crushing fear, despair, and helplessness as I watched evangelist children being brainwashed into thinking the devil was controlling the evil government (until Bush, that is), that the government was trying to take Jesus away from them by taking him out of schools, and that their "time" would come.
These days I get the same feeling from reading Slashdot posts on the RIAA.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Duty implies a moral obligation - not a requirement. Your father-in-law is right, everyone should feel morally obligated to serve their community. Your knee-jerk reaction is a result of the misinterpretation of what the definition of the word, duty, is.
The problem here in the good ol' US of A is that we have, as a society, been struggling for equal rights so long that a large majority of us have forgotten what a moral obligation to community is - we're too focused on whether or not we've been wronged in some way.
I very much appreciate your "pipe dream" footnote.
Aside from the deterioration of the US military through reorganization whose design goals seem to focus on saving money, military service just isn't rewarding any more. Veteran's benefits have been wantonly slashed, despite the hard evidence that the WWII G.I. Bill produced a renaissance by providing a free college education to everyone who served. The pessimistic focus seems to mirror the canard of welfare cheats. I leave the irony of military recruiters targeting the poor as an exercise for the reader.
That being said, I found my own service experience useful in that it forced me to grow up and to recognize that I had been squandering my potential. If nothing else, the US military will teach you just how badly it sucks to take orders from someone less intelligent that you are. I count myself fortunate to have realized this before the age of twenty, and to have taken action by the time I reached twenty-two.
Not only did I get a college education on my own dime, I found that there were more than a few loopholes in the educational assistance program. I tired of fighting the bureaucracy and just did it on my own. In fairness, I did use the VA loan benefit ten years later.
I think that the problem is the mistaken belief that the common work-avoidance mentality of service{men,women} persists into the post-service, civilian experience. Some minority will game every system. That doesn't make it wise to turn it off.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I think the key point is here:
A motion for sanctions under [] shall not be filed with or presented to the court unless, within 21 days after service of the motion (or such other period as the court may prescribe), the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, allegation, or denial is not withdrawn or appropriately corrected.
It's a safe harbor clause for lawyers. You have to warn someone that you believe they have committed a rule 11 violation and then give them three weeks to fix it (or however long the court specifically resets the time limit to). It is only a rule 11 violation if they refuse to withdraw/correct it. I'm guessing that he has served (or soon will serve) them with such notice.
It's frustrating for us that NYCL isn't directly commenting on this issue here, but as we well know from the SCO case you're not supposed to go running around publishing legal accusations against the other side during a court case - if you a have a legal claim then you make it in court. Sometimes making such public statements is illegal, and other other times such statements are just a dumbass move that can come back and bite you in the ass in the courtroom.
The response NYCL filed directly asserts on page 18 that they "committed a most serious violation of Rule 11", so I expect we'll be hearing more about this soon. Ohhh.... I'm guessing probably the next 21 days or so :)
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.