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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.'"
Wait till they graduate. Right now they're idealistic and assume they can change the world.
Don't Tread on Me! Baby!
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...
See, not all lawyers are bad
Ray is my third favorite lawyer, right behind the lady who handled my divorce and the gentleman who handled my bankrupcy. When you need a lawyer, you NEED a lawyer!
The only "bad" lawyers (a) work for corporations or (b) are suing you. When you need a lawyer, one will save you far more than (s)he costs in fees. If you need to sue (say an uninsured drunk driver puts you in the hospital), one will tell you if you have a case or not. Here in Illlinois lawyers generally charge 1/3 of a settlement, or 50% of a judgement if it goes to court.
In an auto accident here, you get 3x the medical costs for "pain and suffering". If you have $10k in medical bills, the doctor(s) get(s) $10k, your lawyer gets $10k, and you get $10k. Without a lawyer you'll be lucky to get your bills paid.
Free Martian Whores!
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?
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 :)
I swore off biting trolls but dammit, I guess I'm relapsing. Guess I need trollbiter rehab.
If you're spewing out copies of music, movies, or software, it's because information wants to be free and copyright infringement != theft...
If I'm spewing out copies of music, movies, or software, it's because the writers WANTED it to be "spewed out", like most file sharers. Like Lessig said in his book, of the three kinds of P2P, only one can possibly harm the artist, and the other three actually help. P2P is no more a threat to the entertainment industries than the VCR and cassette were. It's only a threat to the established but outmoded business practices. Everyone else from musicians to film makers are using P2P constructively.
Information doesn't want anything. I guess you could anthropomorphise and say "information wants to be free like compressed gas wants to escape", or you could just say "when information isn't free, neither are you."
However, copyright infringement is indeed not theift. Neither is smoking dope or jaywalking. Extortion IS theift, which is exactly what the RIAA is doing, Mr. Record Company Executive (you guys must get some killer cocaine to be such greedy, selfish, heartless bastards).
unless you're messing with open-source software
No, it's still not theift. It's copyright infringement.
The rest of your incredibly stupid rant is beneath discussion. Go back under your bridge.
Free Martian Whores!
Why just cases vs RIAA? Now THAT is a pretty damned good question! It might just be that the tactics of the RIAA's legal team are so reprehensible that people are volunteering to fight them. If you are a judge or know one, you should perhaps help point this out to them.
It has always been my thinking that Harvard law school very rarely ever comes out on the wrong side of a legal issue. It is their business after all. That term Preponderance of evidence would seem to apply here when so many law schools are weighing in on this issue, and doing so against the RIAA legal team.
It would seem to me that this should be seen as a very bad omen for the RIAA et al. When all the kids circle around and start picking on the class bully, things normally get sorted out, and the bully gets a black eye or two as needed. I think that is what we might be witnessing in the greater stage of legal theater.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
dont these people have a site they take donations for the effort, or we just donate to eff.org ?
Yes you can! Go here to donate to the Franklin Pierce Law Center. Let them know why you're doing it, too, because you appreciate the courageous work that their law clinic is doing on behalf of Mavis Roy.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
When you need a lawyer, you NEED a lawyer!...
And when you DON'T need a lawyer, you still need to pay a lawyer! Because they write laws that ensure that they get paid even when you don't need them.
(I needed some work done reg. my immigration and I approached a friend of mine who works as a paralegal. Even though the work was trivial and she was more than capable of doing it, she told me that it was illegal for her to do that as she was not a lawyer.)
The only "bad" lawyers (a) work for corporations or (b) are suing you.
You've been fortunate.
Here's one anecdote in contradiction with your anecdotes: A friend of mine had a divorce lawyer that dropped him 6 months in and 1 week before court because they discovered that his wife had done one of those "free first appointments" with them 7 months prior (she apparently did that with all of the local divorce attorneys so that he would have a hard time finding representation). They kept his money and because of the "old boys club" of lawyers in his town he had to go out of town to even find an attorney who was willing to sue the first for his money back.
Which leads to the real problem with lawyers - the bar. Lawyers are "self-regulating" which we should all know by now is an inherent conflict of interest that inevitably leads to corruption, regardless of what industry does it.
In an auto accident here, you get 3x the medical costs for "pain and suffering". If you have $10k in medical bills, the doctor(s) get(s) $10k, your lawyer gets $10k, and you get $10k. Without a lawyer you'll be lucky to get your bills paid.
Your last sentence is telling. How much of that is because of the way the system works? The system that was setup by, is run by, and is regulated by lawyers?
"The only "bad" lawyers (a) work for corporations or (b) are suing you."
Oh man, you couldn't be more wrong. There are many, many lawyers out there just aiming to make a quick buck on someone who "NEEDS" a lawyer and doesn't know how to pick one.
My father hasn't had to deal with lawyers much, and he picked a bad one. It ended up costing him a LOT of money without actually fulfilling his 'need'. The lawyer was good at one thing: Convincing the client to stay with him instead of going elsewhere. No matter what I said, my father refused to leave and find a better lawyer, even after admitting that the guy wasn't doing the job.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Lawyers are "self-regulating" which we should all know by now is an inherent conflict of interest that inevitably leads to corruption, regardless of what industry does it.
Professional engineers are self-regulated. State boards of professional engineers, the exams, all that stuff is run by engineers and for engineers. In Florida, for example (which is typical of most states), the only government involvement is a few laws that give the Board its power. And medicine is not all that different.
My cousin is a bad lawyer under category (c) "Lawyers who you know are bad because you know them". The stories he proudly tells about using courtroom dirty tricks are astounding. One of my favorites is the "jar of marbles". He currently works for a large hotel chain defending them against suits brought by workers they've cheated. In one case, the suit alleged that the hotel would only promote white men to management. He argued that the fact that all management was white men could be pure chance. He produced a jar of marbles that were 10% black and 90% white and said "is it not possible to reach into this jar and, by chance, pull twenty marbles and not pull one black one, just by chance?" The plaintiff's attorney objeted at this bullshit and the objection was sustained, and the jury told to disregard that little bit of irrelevantr statistics; but (as he proudly related) "I kept that jar of marbles on the defense table, right where the jury could see it, for the whole trial--- and we won". Even if it was lack of evidence that caused him to prevail, the fact that he is proud of that marble shit just goes to show what kind of dickhead tends to become a lawyer--- or maybe, what kind of dickhead becoming a lawyer tends to turn you into.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
the fact that he is proud of that marble shit just goes to show what kind of dickhead tends to become a lawyer--- or maybe, what kind of dickhead becoming a lawyer tends to turn you into.
Isn't there a third possibility? Like that some lawyers are jerks? Just like there are some jerks everywhere else in the general population?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I'm most saddened when I see artists give in to the brainwashing the music executives do to them and come out against it.
Most performers today totally get it... and can't wait for their recording agreement commitments to be over.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
care to explain why Cory Doctorow's Little Brother sells well despite being on the internet? Look it up and read the introduction for his excellent reasons for doing so.
Everyone is listening to the RIAA's bullshit, good thing we dodn't listen to the MPAA when Heston said "the VCR is to movies like Jack the Ripper is to women." Logical, reasonable, but dead wrong.
No artist has ever starved from having his works given away, but many have starved from obscurity.
Free Martian Whores!
Interesting, one of the things blamed for declining CD sales was the increasing use of concerts by artists to make money. Content producers often do want monetary recognition of their work, though this is not universal, but the truth is that they are screwed over more by the content controllers than by P2P. Associations such as the RIAA were not formed in order to protect artists, they were formed because protecting artists was profitable and they wanted money. They protect artists whether they want it or not.
How does someone find a good lawyer, except by chance?
The only reliable way is through referrals from people you know. I.e., networking. E.g., if you need a personal injury lawyer, but the only good lawyer you know is a real estate lawyer, ask the real estate lawyer to help you find a good personal injury lawyer. If you can't do it through a good lawyer, reach out to friends, business associates, etc., whose judgment you respect.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Like if you had a jar of marbles and 10% of the marbles were jerks?