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

For mainstream spin see...

[mcgrew]

I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.

But at any rate, for the corporate media spin on this, here are a few links:
Billion Dollar Charlie vs. the RIAA
Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case
Lawsuits Brought by Music Industry Are Unconstitutional, Lawyer Says
Law professor fires back at song-swapping lawsuits (AP)
Law Professor Takes on RIAA
Prof: Penalty unfair, will help with $1M download lawsuit
RIAA defendant enlists Harvard Law prof, students
Harvard Professor: File-Sharing Lawsuits Unconstitutional

Re:Before you start cheering them on...

[CRCulver]

The RIAA holds copyrights on recordings. The copyright on songs like Happy Birthday is held by songwriters' associations like BMI/ASCAP.

Re:first post

[BountyX]

Since I keep getting modded down, I feel compelled to provide userful information. I apologize for the way I stated my first comment, but the RIAA is the guardian of an industry so antiquated and oppressive that having sympathy for these guys is a little like feeling sorry for a Georgia slaveholder after watching Sherman's troops fire his mansion and scatter his livestock. Here's an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music -- the "talent" -- are getting royally screwed in the royalty department. It's been like that for years. Anyways, harvard has the court documents posted here for all to see.