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RIAA Case May Be Televised On Internet
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston case in which the defendant is represented by Prof. Charles Nesson and his CyberLaw class at Harvard Law School, the defendant has requested that audio-visual coverage of the court proceedings be made available to the public via the internet. Taking the RIAA at its word — that the reason for its litigation program is to 'educate the public' — the defendant's motion (PDF) queries why the RIAA would oppose public access: 'Net access to this litigation will allow an interested and growingly sophisticated public to understand the RIAA's education campaign. Surely education is the purpose of the Digital Deterrence Act of 1999, the constitutionality of which we are challenging. How can RIAA object? Yet they do, fear of sunlight shone upon them.'"
I really wish the motion would pass. Finally, we could extract soundbites from the RIAA's lawyers to show how ridiculous their position is.
But my guess is that it's not going to happen: it's a long shot. Allowing media in the courtroom is the exception, not the rule. What I wish for, I usually don't get...
15 years ago, I used to buy CDs. I couldn't listen to the tracks ahead of time, often 90% of the album sucked. But I had to pay the $15 anyway. Now I buy my music legally, online, but I often just buy one song (99 cents), the ones I really like.
Guess what, the RIAA's business is dying. They don't provide value anymore (if they ever did).
When that happens to a corporation in America, you have two options: Change your business model, adapt and become competitive again.
Or ask the government for a bailout. Dear RIAA, stop the lawsuits, just ask Uncle Sam for $100 billions. It's much easier and faster than your current approach.
--
Free and Fair, Friend or Foe?
Sunlight is feared by all those who would use darkness and ignorance to enslave those who cannot break free. Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem. Ehud
Televise. I keep seeing folks use that word in relation to the intertubes. I do not think it means what you think it means. Just because my monitor can show television programs does not make my computer a television. Perhaps the 'growingly sophisticated poster' was looking for 'broadcast'? /getoffmylawn
They'll just claim that the litigation process is a "trade secret." Woo!
-G
Whether it will admit it or not, the RIAA is an organisation which sets out to curb illegal (though sometimes justified) file sharing. Since their is no technological means to accomplish this (it's almost a form of censorship - it restricts what people may communicate to each other - and people don't like being told what they can and cannot communicate), they resort to intimidation and scare tactics. Clearly, if the proceedings were to be made publicly viewable, some of the mystery would be lost. Or perhaps the RIAA are afraid they might loose, and don't want to do so in a very public way.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
tele = at a distance
viso = to look at
so the word still works regardless of if you are using a TV set or a PC to view the video.
"How can RIAA object? Yet they do, fear of sunlight shone upon them.'"
Easy, they are like roaches. Ever notice how when you enter a room infested with roaches and turn on the light? The roaches immediately run for the shadows.
Due to bandwidth issues, RIAA has decided that distributing the court case by Bit Torrent is the cost effective way of re-broadcasting the trial.
Available only at, ISOHUNT, MININOVA, MEGANOVA, Pirate Bay and welcometothescence.
NYCL, or other informed lawyers:
Why is there such a disdain and avoidance to audio/visual recording and dissemination about court cases? Being in this day and age, we could have multiple angles, multiple audio streams, and court transcript, along with evidence log attached to each "case document". Torrents could easily disseminate these large files, allowing for a complete log and documentation where our laws and case law come from.
This is not how they do things in the real world. The defendants are going to have to convince the judge that there is some legal reason to broadcast the proceedings, and that they are not just trying to turn the courtroom into a soapbox. Good luck.
Although the RIAA may have claimed that the suits are "educational" in public statements, can those be used to influence court decisions? Or have they made that claim in previous lawsuits?
Put it on truTV / court TV
This is a job for Streaming BitTorrent.
Surely education is the purpose of the Digital Deterrence Act of 1999, the constitutionality of which we are challenging. How can RIAA object? Yet they do, fear of sunlight shone upon them.
It's clear that the IRAA hasn't found a way to get royalties from the broadcasters for their court appearances.
Let's say there's a hefty case, and it garners a lot of media attention.
Being the "original" organizations they are, various multi-letter tv organizations broadcast the trial far and wide.
Well, guess what, there's a mistrial!
Now they have to convene a new jury, and with the national trial pretty much the entire pool is contaminated.
Definitely not a good thing.
Transparency is good, but it also brings up questions of fair due process if what I stated above occurs while abc or fox (depending on the political implications of the case) are spewing continuous implications of guilt.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Television returns! The breakfast tails television. Television rebuilds RIAA into the counterpart. Television washes into the ocean.
... heaven forbid ! We can't have what goes on in court broadcast to the masses, they might realize how fragile the whole system is. How the courts are not there to establish truth, but to ascertain guilt (not innocence if you recall, we're all innocent until proven guilty) - two very different concepts. If people realized that their rights were trampled upon routinely by corporations, they would rebel, and the capitalist system - as it currently exists in the U.S. - would be in jeopardy. The power structure would collapse, and there would be chaos. It wouldn't be pretty for anyone, and we'd all end up living under Sharia law before you know it.
You have been warned.
Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem.
Possible definitions:
Yuni
From Virgil's Aeneid, Bk II.354
Quoteland forum / Mechreg
"The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised."
- Gil Scott-Heron.
One of the cases where a semicolon would be beneficial, no?
I don't recognize it, but I presume it is a quote from classic or geek literature.
sprinkle them with borax = dead roaches
Have you ever seen a reflection of Dracula in a mirror?
No, because he has no soul.
Have you, or will you ever see televised pictures of RIAA folks.
No, because they have no souls.
Read the fine print in your camcorder manual: "This device is not able to capture images of folks with no souls."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Possibly, although I can't see any way to merely insert a semi-colon and turn that into a grammatically and linguistically sound statement. It's really just missing some words to make that happen.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
If they play music as evidence during the case, would everyone watching the broadcast online get sued?
...its not like Americans will watch this instead of American Idol. But I and everyone else who knows what is happening(ie all of /.) will want to see this and memeize it to death(that would be 4chan).
and now excuse me while I'll write comments at youtube again..
unfortunately, Courtroom View Network is a subscriber-based service (read John Shin's supporting declaration), so only the paying public who already knows about the case will be able to view it. Granted, many people never watch CourtTV either, but a case such as this with issues that interested much of the general public has the potential to gather LOTS of viewers, educating a large segment of the population (both on the RIAA's agenda, and on their actual tactics).
I fear that the hurdles put up by making people subscribe to CVN's service will influence many to not bother "tuning-in", especially in a culture where people are accustomed to "surfing", and previewing TV channels and websites before committing to the entire thing.
What, no "The Revolution Will Be Televised" cracks yet?
RIAA only tries to hurt people in US, why they do'nt go to South America countries like Peru where the sale of ilegal music CD's and DVD's or movie DVD's is normal?, you can go to any mall and all the stores only offer "pirate" cd's or dvd's, When I went there couldn't see any legal music store. A peruvian guy told me that Bluckboster had to leave the country because nobody rented movies, when you can get the dvd for $0.50 cents, but those overseas don't count, only the american people, the ones that can pay easier and are closer, my policy? I forgot when was the last time I bougth a music Cd.
"Think about how the RIAA lawyers feel."
Hi Mom! I'm on TV!!!
*back on topic*
I was under the impression that court proceedings were open to the public by default, and required extraordinary circumstances to be closed to the public.
Televising the court proceedings would only scale up the 'open to the public' concept IMHO, but I can also see some of the downside to this:
1. the tendency of our news media to spin, slant, edit, and sensationalize everything to try increasing their audience.
2. the ability to influence public opinion (due to #1 above), which can in turn influence the court's decision.
3. the whole thing turning into a media circus, as per the likes of Jerry Springer-type shows.
Without specific, strict guidelines for this, more harm than good is possible. Some of those guidelines necessary could in themselves be considered unconstitutional.
I don't know which side of the fence I'm on in this debate.
In an ideal world, transparency and openness is desired. But in this world, the chance of skewing trial results is just too high to be acceptable, IMHO.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I would like the motion to pass so I can watch the RIAA face plant as they try to maintain such flimsy cases in the face of common sense and reason.
The fact that they have stopped pursuing any additional Individual cases shows us just how futile their efforts really are... even they recognize it.
Do they have any more legs to stand on?
If the RIAA side objects, then the fact that they lied about wanting to educate the public will be obvious to the jury (and as this discussion is before the trial proper, the lie will be the jury's first impression of the RIAA side) and of course if they don't object then out of context soundbites making them look even more evil/incompetent/devious than they actually are will be all over the net in minutes. Sounds like a win/win situation for the defence to me.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Hmm, I don't know. I saw the first one of these and I wasn't impressed. I don't think I'm interested in the follow up.
Since when did a trial attorney start coming into court so unprepared that he would even consider building his case on the fly?
Since when did a civil court judge begin allowing him to re-shape his case around factual disputes or legal issues that were not introduced and explored during pre-trial proceedings?
The geek is all too easily tempted into spinning a wildly improbable sequence of events into a yarn rich in technobabble that - in his mind at least - rises to the level of "reasonable doubt."
It is rather a pity to see such creativity wasted on a jury which only needs to decide which story seems more likely to be the truth.
"The revolution will *not* be televised"... It will be blogged instead...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
There are many cases where "public attention" really isn't such a thing though. In this case it's likely against the RIAA's interests to have too might light shone upon the way they go about their lawsuits and legal threats, but there are all sorts of other cases where the weight of the accusations alone - or perhaps other private details that come along with them - make them best suited for a private environment.
While some accusations might not have much legal weight in terms of deciding a case, etc, they're often enough to ruin lives and reputations. There are also plenty of private "activities" that - while legal - are sometimes best kept private.
If the RIAA wanted to play hardball in regards to a public trial, I could see them doing things like including the whole contents of a shared folder in among the MP3's given for evidence. I wouldn't really see the lawyers in question of being above such tricks.
Maybe the next case will be presented like"Ladies and gentlemen. As you can see from the shared folder of the defendants' computer, `greatest hits of Britney Spears.mp3` is clearly outlined in between `enormous dog c*ck.avi` and `hentai an*l tentacle schoolgirls.mpg`, proving that the defendant is a dirty copyright infringer"
In other cases related to personal issues (divorce, sexual/relationship issues or others) such charges are really not something you want the public seeing, because even if they're not true (or not illegal) they're still enough to damage one's reputation.
They didn't sell singles 15 years ago???
Yeah, well that was the era of grossly overpriced CD singles. They were sometimes UK £2 - £2.50 in the first week only for promotional reasons, but after that they were usually £4. 4 BLOODY QUID! And you can slap on an extra quid for today's money. £5 at modern conversion rates is over US $7 for a bloody single! I don't care how many bloody extra bonus tracks they slapped on to vainly justify the bloated cost. (*)
Cassette singles were cheaper, but not that cheap, and there was no good reason for the difference in price. Singles sucked in the 1990s.
(Cue cheap anti-nostalgia wavy video effect).
When I think back to the mid-90s, when the record business here had coalesced around the major chains like Virgin and HMV, but MP3 was still an obscure geek curio and major online retailers nonexistent... I remember how overpriced those f*****rs were. At their high-water mark, the cost of a typical full-price back-catalogue CD album was actually above the 15 quid ($22) mark. And they'd still be doing it if there was no competition.
Given the people who may well lose their jobs and- even more seriously- for what it says about our economy, I can't take any pleasure in the fall of Virgin (or Zavvi as the UK stores are now called). But they're the epitome of everything that was wrong with music retailing in the 1990s and early-2000s.
(*) Side note: What's the accepted method for showing a historical price in another currency in today's terms? Do I convert pounds to dollars at (e.g.) 1995 rates first *then* factor in dollar inflation. Or do I factor in pound inflation first then convert from pounds to dollars at modern-day rates?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Please tell me Judge Judy will be presiding. You can all imagine it now. Treating the RIAA like little children (which they are).
On another note, I can smell a slashdotting coming on if they don't have some mammoth servers!
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
ie...
Take the transcript, use it to create a teleplay - claiming fiction, while using 100% accurate transcription as the dialogue...
just a thought...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
"a growingly sophisticated audience" - is butt-ugly English. Surely, "an increasingly sophisticated audience"?
I believe that has been done in the past...
Years ago, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, had some law passed which banned television and radio from broadcasting terrorists, including Sinn Fein, the political branch of the IRA terrorists.
The end result was perhaps more damaging to the Government's position - They started by doing 'reenactments' and later when they discovered that the ban only really covered the spoken word, they simply dubbed over by a newscaster.
Why was it detrimental for the Government? Quite simple really. Some Sinn Fein representatives, such as Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, initially had such thick accents that most British people probably wouldn't have understood them anyways. By forcing the media to dub over the audio with a clearly spoken newscasters voice, it allowed the people to understand what they were talking about.
Joking aside, perhaps more relevant: Many high profile court cases have been 'reenacted' by the media for television in Britain, mostly because video, photo and audio recording equipment were not allowed ... so court transcripts were used, along with either artists sketches of the courtroom scene or even a few actors in a mock courtroom, to reenact events in court to make it accessible to the layman in the comfort of his own home.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
I hope they've got a full metric buttload - I can see this being slashdotted from hell to back, if it goes through
There is something beautiful about hanging crooks by their own words.
Lovely idea, and likely to cause more harm to their extortion scam than anything else so far.
That is, until they come up with another scam that abuses the legal system and doesn't involve too much hard work like providing solid evidence. Until judges not only stop the abuse but actively start punishing the perpetrators the abuse will just find a new form. A bit like fraud.
"Yet they do; fear of sunlight shone upon them"
In this case the semicolon would imply a "because" but it's still somewhat stilted phrasing...
Well they can shut up the media, but they can't shut up bloggers/podcasters..
Just say no to license servers!!
A similar thing happened in France with their revolution. Aristocracy? Don't you dare walk along with you nose in the air, or it just might get cut off- at the neck.
Now we have a new Inquisition, the RIAA. If you and your pal have a fall out, you better be careful or he may just pay a visit to the RIAA and you get sued for what amounts to a life sentence. $200 000 or thereabouts for a student means taking a loan (if you can get it these days) effectively pawning your assets for decades as you pay off interest. Kiss goodbye to your retirement fund.
If a record label owns copyright to a song, what exactly did they contribute to it's production? Generally, nothing. The artist is just not in a position to mass produce and market the song on his own, and therefore sells his copyright to the label for a fee. If he is lucky he may get royalties as a part of the deal. Talk about selling your soul to the devil! Pun intended.
What the RIAA is all about, is protecting the monopoly of the record label over the work of art. We can't have some upstart mass producing the same work at ostensibly lower cost than the record label and undercutting prices, or in the case of p2p, producing and distributing it at zero cost; that would put the record labels out of business, and destroy the artist's reason for producing works in the first place.
Now that sounds perfectly reasonable, does it not? The same perfectly sound reasoning applied to the protection of the institution of the church from devil worship and the protection of the newly formed French revolutionary government from competition.
Quite a quandry we have.