Slashdot Mirror
New Hampshire Law Students Take On RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "We have recently learned that another law school legal aid clinic has joined the fight against the RIAA. Student attorneys from the Consumer and Commercial Law Clinic
of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire, working under law school faculty supervision, are representing
a lady targeted by the RIAA in UMG Recording v. Roy in New Hampshire. The case is scheduled for trial next Fall. That makes at least 4 law schools providing anti-RIAA defense services: University of Maine,
University of San Francisco, Franklin Pierce, and, most recently, Harvard. Hopefully many
more will follow. One commentator theorizes that this news 'will ... [encourage] professors and students at other law schools to take on hitherto defenseless people being pilloried by the corporate music industry.'"
We need more of this to happen! See, not all lawyers are bad.
Don't Tread on Me! Baby!
From TFS: "representing a lady targeted by the RIAA"
Are you sure it was a lady? We are talking about the Internet, after all...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Until this hits the masses the RIAA will continue its mad dog attacks and back room deals. Get this out there for everyone to see. Run an RIAA case in front of Judge Judy and then we'll see the changes that really matter.
/tag this +1 sarcastic please.
If you're spewing out copies of music, movies, or software, it's because information wants to be free and copyright infringement != theft... unless you're messing with open-source software. In that case you're a dirty fucking bastard who deserves to be strung up by the nuts. Social contracts only apply to the upstanding hippies who can't make a buck off their work. Pop artists who sell millions of copies of their songs and movies because people enjoy and value their work are clearly the soulless hacks here.
Why did it take this long for schools to fight against the RIAA? Ignoring the possibility that the RIAA might have been right * (which the majority of us would be arguing against, surely...), it just seems to be a perfect opportunity for any law students to actually practice law and earn some valuable experience on high profile cases. Were I a law student, I would salivate at the chance to be involved with something like this in the defense of fellow students. I'm surprised it took this long for law departments to get involved.
*And, really, it doesn't matter if the students being targeted were guilty. In our society, everyone deserves legal representation, even the guilty. Right or wrong, it's just how our system works. The law departments view shouldn't have been "this person is obviously innocent - we should get involved and help them". It should have been "these cases are high profile cases that will involve a lot of complex legal issues and will teach our law students a lot of valuable lessons that will make them better lawyers in the future. We should be involved." In my opinion, of course...
Are you sure it was a lady? We are talking about the Internet, after all...
Yes, it's a lady named Roy. Wait a second...
This guy's the limit!
Great, now this law schools are really delivering what they promise. High profile, real case of study against mayor law firms.
Lots of legal battles to teach their students the ways of the corporate warfare...
They students not only will have Harvard Law Student in their resume, also RIAA legal case.
For the fee this universities collect, they have found a new way to train legal sharks...
I should patent this "field training from school active model" :D
Â_Â
dont these people have a site they take donations for the effort, or we just donate to eff.org ?
granted, im gonna donate 10 bucks, but i do this frequently.
Read radical news here
BUT: "Circumstantial" does not mean any of the following, about evidence: (1) inadmissible; (2) insufficient to prove a fact in court; or (3) unreliable. You can be convicted of murder based on nothing but circumstantial evidence, if it is strong enough. Otherwise, murderers who hide their victims' bodies the best could not be convicted. And the RIAA only has to prove infringement by a preponderance of the evidence, a much lower standard of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt as required for a criminal conviction.
This is about the RIAA's abuse of the discovery process and, in particular, its filing lawsuits for the sole purpose of collecting evidence through discovery. You personally can't just send me interrogatories without having a pending lawsuit against me, and you also can't file a lawsuit whose only purpose is to allow you to send me interrogatories. And that's what the RIAA is apparently doing...
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
I suppose it could be a printer...
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Taking the humanitarianism out of the equation (as wonderful as it is) this is the perfect opportunity for hands on experience. Lawyers usually only get to look at the same old cases that have been reviewed to death, but here is the opportunity go up against the same prosecutor in the same case over and over again. These are nearly scripted debate speeches. Sure, in a way you could say that is what a lawyer does, but this is uniquely different in that there are just sooo many cases, all with the same prosecutor fighting the same fight.
A class where students get into groups and provide legal council in different cases that almost all look the same? Computer science students can get identical computers, biologists can dissect many of the same species, but I don' think before the RIAA started going sue happy across the country was there such an opportunity to standardize a law class year after year fighting the same case in a real courtroom over and over again.
This is going to help real people, but realistically I hope it doesn't last long. I can just see it now: RIAA gets bailout from congress to save law school curriculum across country. HA!
Good law schools should really take advantage of this opportunity. I think schools could be judged by this for how up to date they are and how much they really care about their lawyers getting real experience in the classroom.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
We need the IT students to be the expert witnesses too :)
Could have been worse. She could have been named "Seigfried".
[yeah, I know Roy is her last name]
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Four kinds of P2P, not 3. That was a typo, sorry
Free Martian Whores!
We have recently learned that student attorneys* at the Consumer and Commercial Law Clinic of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire, have joined the fight against the RIAA, [...]
*Student attorneys are law students working under the supervision of law school faculty members.
We should all stand up and thank the lawyers of the RIAA and MPAA for providing their wonderful volunteer work to train the lawyers of tomorrow.
Did the lady being defended by valiant students and faculty actually infringe on RIAA's intellectual property?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Now how long before the RIAA starts filing protests on how public money is financing the cases against them (and the need for Congressional action to Stop That Now), or targeting those schools providing such assistance for "enhanced enforcement" actions?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This won't be a serious public issue until it shows up on an episode of Boston Legal. And they better hurry since that show is in it its final, truncated, season.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The Righteous Inquisition Army of America will know the full extent of public scrutiny once the whole of North America sees Denny Crane get sued for a million dollars because his next door neighbour uses his unencrypted wifi to use his limewire to download Metallica's latest!
to sue the engineer who did a crap job.
You do need a lawyer to sue another lawyer.
It is great that universities are waking up to the abuse, but why did it take so long to figure out that RIAA dragnets are bad? Universities, as entities of their communities, funded by the public, should be stewards and protectors of the public when this type of crap happens. Don't universities gather great amounts of intellect? If so, how come they couldn't see that the RIAA was abusing the US legal system and others around the world? What a bunch of cowards! It must be safer to wait and see instead of influence. WTF do we fund research in universities except to create new theories, modify old ones, and throw away those that are irrelevant. Isn't this referred to as progressive? I am curious as to what is encouraging them. This would have been, and still is, an excellent exercise for law departments and budding new lawyers. The similarity in corporate entrenched culture that becomes stodgy and universities failing to be decisive and lacking of leadership seems oddly similar. Take a risk and be leaders in our communities.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most sales people are satisfied with much less "profit" from their customers. 50% is ridiculous. So is 30%. They wouldn't be viewed as such scum if they took a smaller piece of the victims pie. Kudos to these schools however for taking on the RIAA. Hopefully they don't plan to profit on it other than the satisfaction of stopping the RIAA from twisting the justice system.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Isn't there a third possibility? Like that some lawyers are jerks? Just like there are some jerks everywhere else in the general population?
I went along to a bunch of court appearances and watched an acquaintance of mine suffer at the hands of the "wrong" attorney during his divorce. The wrangling it took just to get that attorney to go away so he could use another lawyer was really surprising. Thankfully his next attorney was really good, and a great person. I know now who to call if I ever need a lawyer for courtroom work.
If I hadn't seen these lawyers in action and I was staring at the phone book looking for a lawyer, I wouldn't know which one to pick. They're both qualified, and experienced but one was a big jerk and the other a great attorney. How does someone find a good lawyer, except by chance? It's not like everyone around me deals with lawyers all the time and I can just call up a friend or coworker for a recommendation.
Heck, even finding a good car mechanic can be challenging, let alone a lawyer. Thankfully I can work on my own car. Legal documents and court procedure, not so much.
Putting moderation advice in your
Rightly or wrongly, the legal profession enjoys somewhat the same level of public approval as your average used car salesman. The fact that law students fighting the RIAA are looked on as the good guys shows you what complete douchebags the RIAA really are.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Mini Monster Golf should see if they would help with the lawsuit that Monster Cable brought against them for having the audacity to use the word 'Monster' in their business name.
The Jar of Marbles trick isn't new, or at least I don't think it is.
I remember hearing fourth-hand about a trick Clarence Darrow used, back in the old stogy days. When he wanted to distract the jury he'd embed a long sewing needle into the end of his cigar. The ash would burn down to the stub, but would not fall off the end of the cigar because of that invisible support. The jury, riveted to the scene of the immortal cigar ash, would completely ignore his opponent's testimony.
I know this is a true story, because my second step cousin-in-law's brother told me he could document it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Yea, in the age of computers?
"You are you. Who is the other party? Mrs. Despicabwiggin? Hmm. She is already in our client file for some reason. Oh Yes. She was here last week. Let's discuss this problem."
1 minute at $600 an hour is $10. A lot better than whatever got racked up instead.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
some people are strong in soul enough that they dont lose their idealism.
Read radical news here