Lessig, Zittrain, Barlow To Square Off Against RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's case in Boston against a 24-year-old grad student, SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, in which Prof. Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, along with members of his CyberLaw class, are representing the defendant, may shape up as a showdown between the Electronic Frontier and Big Music. The defendant's witness list includes names such as those of Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Author of 'Free Culture'), John Perry Barlow (former songwriter of The Grateful Dead and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), Prof. Johan Pouwelse (Scientific Director of P2P-Next), Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Author of 'The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It'), Professors Wendy Seltzer, Terry Fisher, and John Palfrey, and others. The RIAA requested, and was granted, an adjournment of the trial, from its previously scheduled December 1st date, to March 30, 2009. (The RIAA lawyers have been asking for adjournments a lot lately, asking for an adjournment in UMG v. Lindor the other day because they were so busy preparing for the Tenenbaum December 1st trial ... I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam)."

Comments

Zit Train?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he had a fun childhood.

Re:Zit Train?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, once he hit adolescence I could see him going Quagmire with it: "You must be at least this fine to ride the Z-train! All aboard ladies." :D

Re:If they'd stop putting a bad taste in my mouth.

[moderatorrater]

I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.

That's absolutely reasonable. When you wear that shirt, you're representing Tommy Hilfiger and are, therefore, impacting the future sales of that brand. By wearing that white shirt after labor day, you're in effect saying that the Hilfiger brand itself is out of style, causing irreparable and immeasurable damage. This theft of future sales is obviously wrong and it needs to be stopped. Since there's no telling how many days you've warn that shirt in a damaging way, and there's no telling how many people were negatively impacted, I think it's entirely fair to set the minimum damages to $15,000 and the maximum at 2% of the brand's gross yearly earnings (even though the damages may be much, much greater).

Also, since clothing brands are named after the person who designed them, and by wearing them incorrectly, we're going to start calling the improper wearing of clothes "Assassination" instead of the more tame "bad style". The Designer Assassination Prevention Act of 2009 will set all of this into the law books. It's only fair, after all.

Re:If they'd stop putting a bad taste in my mouth.

[Shakrai]

I hate: 1. DVD's that lock you out of fast forwarding through the crap (long intros, FBI warnings, previews, etc). 2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place). 3. Anti-competitive prices on CD's, and music in general. There have been findings of fact showing anti-competivie behavior, but nothing done to stop it. 4. CD's that try to install crap on my machine (yes, you Sony). 5. DVD's that all prevent me from being able to make fair use of their content (using short clips for example) without becoming a criminal. 6. Retarded EULA's.

Easy solution: Don't buy any of that stuff.

I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.

Then we'll just get all of our clothing from Sweden like we currently do with all of our media ;)