Slashdot Mirror
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)."
I bet he had a fun childhood.
Before those of us here who love to download copyright films and music at no cost start cheering these men on who challenge the RIAA, let's remember that Lessig doesn't want to abolish copyright, but simply restore short terms. He is not our ally in ensuring we can get whatever media we want whenever we want for no cost.
Is anyone surprised that the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats is resquesting more time? It takes a LOT of lawyers to succesfully bully and threaten an entire all-star team of intellectuals college professors well-reknowned in their fields as opposed as a single young student. You don't just steamroll a group like that with a single "cease and decist or we'll ruin you" email.
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
Free Martian Whores!
I might stop being spitting mad.
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.
I want to own my own shit again!
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. You just wait.
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.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Are they perhaps trying to postpone the trial long enough so that the class has finished it's term and the 'defense team' has moved on to a new subject?
----- - The beatings will continue until morale improves
Yeah, well the manufacturers of that shirt might sue you if your picture is taken wearing 'their' shirt. It happens with cars.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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.
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 ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"I'll get back to ya on that!"
Didn't someone just recently copyright that phrase?
I hope the RIAA gets sued!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wierd Al Yankovic, among others, have complained that they make less off digital downloads than regular sales. The problem is that the record companies haven't changed their royalty system to accommodate digital sales and probably won't. For physical media, record companies would deduct from sales for things like manufacturing and distribution out of the artists' royalties. With digital sales, there are not any real manufacturing costs and retailers like iTunes Store absorb the distribution costs. But the record company would still deduct these costs from royalties.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Obviously they're postponing trials because they are busy drafting a Federal bailout of the music industry.
The Govt. created the Internet, they owe the record companies some love. $30 Billion ought to do it.
No one in their right mind on Slashdot should want to abolish copyright. As authors of free software under licenses like the GPL, we actually depend on copyright law to keep our creations free.
But what we're keeping them free from is mainly compilation copyrights.
The problem is that software couldn't be safely released into the public domain because somebody else could fix a bug or make a useful mod, copyright the fix or upgrade, and everybody else (including the original author) are hosed. They can't fix or upgrade it in the same way themselves without being in trouble. So putting software in the public domain means losing, not just control of its future (which is OK), but possibly the use of future versions (which is not).
GPL and other "free" licenses head this off by keeping the copyright alive, using it as a bludgeon to prevent others from capturing the freed software, while allowing its use by those who agree to leave it free, including its future versions.
But while killing coypyright would kill free licenses, it would also kill the thing they were created to prevent. Yes you wouldn't be able to use the copyright underlying the license to force somebody who didn't distribute the upgrade source to chose between releasing it or stopping distribution of the object (and paying big penalties). But then he couldn't use copyright to keep you from reverse-engineering his object code and distributing equivalent source, either. B-) With the original problem solved we could dispense with open licenses and some of their additional downsides (such as mutual incompatibility).
(Granted GPL has since been upgraded to provide some protection against patents, which WOULD be lost. But that's a kludge providing very limited protection. Meanwhile software patents are being attacked separately.)
= = = =
Having said all that:
My own opinion is that copyright (with reasonable term, without a ban on reverse-engineering, and without junk like "look and feel", "interface operation is a 'performance'", and "similar function is a derived work") is the right protection for software. It bans straight copying, giving adequate time for original developers to get a product established in a market before clones can appear and imposes adequate development costs on cloners, without setting patent-style boobytraps for others who independently develop the same ideas.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"I guess when congress sells you a few new laws every year, delaying is a pretty smart business tactic."
I'm not so sure the Obama administration is going to be rubber stamping MAFIAA legislation.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I had posted that story to a photography forum I'm a member of and someone took the initiative to contact Toyota's legal department. They're backpedaling now on their original claim:
Translation: We found a couple of legitimately infringing photos on your site but rather than give you specifics we decided to be lazy and just order them all down. We figured you'd just roll over and take it, but then you had to spread the word. Now we're facing a ton of bad PR so we're going to limit our claims to just those originally infringing photos.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
words evolve in meaning and use, and you need to get used to it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Are you working on legislation which would lock up all of those content thieves who get up and go to the bathroom instead of watching the commercials thereby depriving the starving artists of their hard earned income?
These BATHROOM BANDITS must be stopped.
Just because the law permits something, doesn't make it right to take advantage of it, when it's a stupid law. The law allowed slavery and slaveholders got rich off the sweat of other human beings, until time, circumstances, and war finally put a stop to it. All the slaveholders had to do was free his slaves to avoid the consequences of war.
The law currently allows ridiculously long period of copyright protection, while technology allows individuals to undermine the stupidity of current law. All copyright holders have to do is to put their works into the public domain (or a Creative Commons license).
See the analogy?
I've been to the land of bad analogies, they have some extremely nice fjords.
I'll bet if Weird Al were to sell his digital downloads directly on his own webpage without RIAA support he'd have a different opinion on the profitability of digital music sales. Especially if Steve Albini's numbers are correct.
Al is probably earning about 2% of each sale. I'd be pissed too.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I would feel sorry for the Georgia slaveholder, he'd already (however rightly so - since it was made illegal) lost property that he'd paid for. But since he was doing something completely legal for years, society had made it illegal, it's okay for government thugs to destroy his home and and food/income as well? In the land of bad analogies that is /., your analogy truly stinks.
Just because something is legal does not make it right. He still deserves what he gets.
There you go again foisting your morals off on others.
He does not deserve what he gets, and the type of bullying you're suggesting amounts to something quite worse than what the RIAA does to the people on the receiving end of their bullying.
Forcing him to comply with the law is one thing, basically killing him by destroying his ability to eat is as bad as it gets, it's tantamount to murder. In fact, they are basically murdering him and his whole family (children and all), as well as anyone else who depended on him.
When freeing the slaves, the government should have done what they are required by law to do whenever they take property, they can force a sale, but they still have to pay whatever they can convince a judge is the fair market value for it. That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
And just so your high and mighty "morals" don't get too out of control, remember, most of the culture you likely benefit from was built by societies that allowed slavery or other types of indentured service. If you're a religious nut I'll also remind you that Paul, from your New Testament sent the runaway slave back to his owner.
The copyright environment sucks.
I was using a torrent to download a linux distro the other day. I was actually concerned about being "tracked" by my ISP as a file pirate.
This is so wrong. Corporations are using private law backed up by copyright statute to create a Kafka-esque "guilty because we say you are guilty" environment. Oh, sure, they don't have the power to imprison you, but with the courts they do have the power to bankrupt you with lawyers fees with no credible evidence.
I'm serious, people need to start fighting back, and not just in the courts. Who says they get to make the rules? What they are doing is not fair, it is not civilized, and it is not human. The fight, therefor, need not be either.
If every lawyer and executive that works for a RIAA company gets egged every day on the way to work. If every car they own gets its tires slashed. If every time they are in a starbucks, someone pours hot coffee on their suit. If every time someone sees one yells at the top of their lungs "CRIMINAL F(*&CK GET OUT OF HERE." Maybe they'll start to see that the money they are being paid to ruin people's lives will in turn ruin theirs.
We don't have the money to fight them in court, but we can ruin their lives just as easy as they can ruin the lives of innocent people. If they don't have a conscience, perhaps we should perform that function for them. I'm not calling for violence, not at all. I am calling for wholesale property damage. Break everything they own when ever they get it. They feel perfectly comfortable wreakig financial havoc on people, we should feel the same until they stop.
Author/editor Eric Flint (of the Baen Free Library fame) wrote a whole series of wonderful essays on copyright as editorials in the "Jim Baen's Universe" magazine. You can read them all for free (and I urge you to go read them.. he make a whole series of great points).
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
How is it possible to hold a copyright on Happy Birthday? The lyrics change every time you sing it.
What does their copyright look like?
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear *
Happy birthday to you.
Or have they filed millions of copyrights?
Copyright 2234257612, Happy Birthday to You, Aaby version.
...
Copyright 2234257613, Happy Birthday to You, Aaron version.
Copyright 2234257614, Happy Birthday to You, Abe version.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
they will see how few consumers (approximately 0%) are willing to purchase music for personal use under that kind of restriction.
Citation needed.
Their business model collapses, hopefully chapter 11 ensues, new management enters, abolishes overpaid execs.
Not in today's United States. Federal bailout. It's the new model for capitalism these days.
Incompetent execs? Outdated business model? Are you selling something that was great in the 80's but sucks today?
Federal bailout. After all, we can't have these overpriced incompetent execs making the unemployment numbers worse, can we?
I'm only halfway kidding. I would not be surprised if these sleazebags tried to dip into the new broken economy safety net of federal bailouts.
"OMG the pirates have taken our money! Help help help! NONE of this is our fault at all! Just because we've redefined music to be this thumping easily mass produced crap a trained seal and a drum machine could make and force DRM down our consumers throats (that is, when we're not suing them) doesn't mean a thing!"
I give about 60/40 odds that some RIAA goon will try this sometime before the current administration is replaced. You watch.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
To which publisher of DRM-free feature films are you suggesting the grandparent switch?
Feature films aren't food or clothing. You can live a contented life without them.
If you really can't go without them then I guess you don't really care about DRM that much.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Is what do these all these "expert" witnesses contribute to the case before the court?
The plaintiff will try to convince the judge that Tenenbaum downloaded 7 songs and owes them $1 million. The expert witnesses will try to convince the judge that Tenenbaum downloaded 7 songs and owes the plaintiffs nothing (or maybe $6.93).
In the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial," the issue before the trial court wasn't evolution, it was the teaching of evolution in the public schools in violation of Tennessee state law.
That was the position of the prosecution. The position of the defense was that the law was unconstitutional because it violated the teacher's (Scopes) constitutional rights (the law benefited a particular religious group). But at some point the trial became a media circus full of the celebrities of the age and the defense just made speeches (that as you point out were irrelevant).
The Music Industry wants to keep its cash cow alive for as long as it can (time is money) even if it requires very expensive lawyers to do it. But sooner or later (later if the Music Industry has its way), the digital music culture will start feeding on public domain music and independently produced and distributed music, then things will change geometrically. The most interesting factor in all of this is talent. How rare is talent? How much talent does it take to develop talent? The future may help answer this.
In my experience, talent is not rare. Being untalented myself, I am always surprised by it, but there are a great many very gifted people out there who have been underemployed, in the sense that they are not employed to do the thing that best utilizes their special talents. And the reason these very talented and creative people have not been able to make a living at their art has been the 'gatekeepers'... i.e. the MAFIAA. The internet and digitalization have made it possible for the 'gatekeepers' now to be dispensed with. In my view, we are entering a golden age of music, where there will be less 'megastars' but there will be more people making a living at their art, instead of having to take 'day jobs' to sustain themselves. Society will be the better for it.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Is what do these all these "expert" witnesses contribute to the case before the court?
The plaintiff will try to convince the judge that Tenenbaum downloaded 7 songs and owes them $1 million. The expert witnesses will try to convince the judge that Tenenbaum downloaded 7 songs and owes the plaintiffs nothing (or maybe $6.93).
Well spoken, danzona. I hope you get modded up for that succinct observation (and I hope I don't get modded down as 'redundant' for agreeing with you and for not being able to improve on what you said).
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
...And a lot of cars
Redundancy is good And also good.
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).
Ever tried Floola? It works great for me. Never had a need to use itunes since.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
I agree with you on what these copyrights cover.
But if one copyrights the fixes or upgrades to a software work, it gives them standing to claim that an equivalent fix or upgrade infringes their copyright.
Similarly, copyrighting a "compilation" of a set of otherwise free works - for instance, a Linux distribution - would give the holder of that copyright standing to claim that another, later, linux distribution was an infringing work derived from theirs.
Even if the claim is provably bogus the ability to assert it in court, especially in combination with the draconian penalties for infringement in current copyright law, is a major burden on the targets of such claims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way