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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...
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.
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.
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?
Perhaps yes. But last time I looked, Harvard Law School did have a sufficient number of new applicants to keep Prof. Nesson's CyberLaw class quite full.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"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'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.
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