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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
Your computer is a television in that it allows you to view moving images transmitted over a distance:P
Yeah - I'm being pedantic and taking liberties with definitions.
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.
I'd rather get it in .avi format.. so I can scroll back and forth.. then listen to a steam that cannot be replayed. (Yes, I know there are tools to do so, but it's normally not native.)
Have you seen how our legal system works these days? The whole thing would completely fall apart with any level of transparency, never mind audience feedback. It's easy enough to get someone jailed when they're being judged by a dozen people who couldn't think up an excuse to get out of jury duty... not so much when you've got ten thousand pointing out the flaws and inaccuracies in the prosecution's arguments.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
NYCL, or other informed lawyers: Why is there such a disdain and avoidance to audio/visual recording and dissemination about court cases?
There isn't. There is a growing trend towards it. Only the RIAA has "disdain" and "avoidance", since shining a light on things tends to encourage their mortal enemy... the Truth.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Only approved, purchased content on a secure, Trusted Platform (tm). Anything else would be communist, comrade.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
... 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.
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.
Fear of the unknown. The more people know about what to expect in a trial V. RIAA the less they will fear it.
Lawyers know all about court and trials but, the average person knows very little about what to expect at a trial of this magnitude and they are probably scared to death of the possibility of being on the wrong side of one of these.
Perhaps people will not be so afraid to share music files after seeing this trial and that has to scare the hell out of RIAA. To think that one of these trials could actually lead to more music files being shared instead of less.
P.S. A big thanks to NYCL for all his hard work!
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
"Think about how the RIAA lawyers feel."
Hi Mom! I'm on TV!!!
I don't think they'd want their mothers to see what they are doing for a living.
*back on topic*
Spoilsport.
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.
You were under the correct impression.
Televising the court proceedings would only scale up the 'open to the public' concept IMHO
Exactly.
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.
They can do that much easier if the public can't see what's really going on.
2. the ability to influence public opinion (due to #1 above), which can in turn influence the court's decision.
As I noted in an earlier comment, the jury basically is -- or is supposed to be -- "the public", only (a) in microcosm, and (b) with all of the actual admissible evidence in hand.
3. the whole thing turning into a media circus, as per the likes of Jerry Springer-type shows.
If you read the court papers carefully, you'll see there's no way for that to happen. The camera is invisible and doesn't affect the trial.
Without specific, strict guidelines for this, more harm than good is possible.
Well there are very specific, strict guidelines for this.
Some of those guidelines necessary could in themselves be considered unconstitutional.
??? On the one hand you're saying it needs to be regulated. On the other hand you're saying that regulating it would be unconstitutional. That is kind of illogical, I hope you realize. In any event, it is a moot point, because it is very very strictly regulated, and the regulations which are being used have not been ruled to be unconstitutional.
I don't know which side of the fence I'm on in this debate.
Sounds to me like you do know which side of the fence you're on.
In an ideal world, transparency and openness is desired.
Indeed it is.
But in this world, the chance of skewing trial results is just too high to be acceptable, IMHO.
You haven't shown us a single reason why turning on an invisible video camera would in any way skew anything.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I've known several people (myself included) who would like to serve jury duty. In my case, I was never actually called up, but I had a college friend who was called in four times, and three times he was culled from the jury pool during the interview stage.
The fourth time he was called up, we told him to pretend to be as dumb as possible. Answer their questions as vaguely as he could, act like he didn't know anything about the legal process, the news, etc. He was selected.
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
What goes on in the courtroom is not the be all and end all of the work a good lawyer should being doing. For example, I'm sure that the time in court is not the only work you do for clients that you defend in cases against the RIAA. Research and preparation of paperwork does not come for free (pun not intended.)
But if the work you did in preparation for appearing in court was lacking then obviously that would show in what happened in the courtroom, so in that case, a video would reflect your real work ethic.
Be that as it may, various parts of court proceedings at different levels are available, anyway. Making it available with video just makes accessing said information easier. For example, some courts already record everything that is said - you just can't sit down with a beer and press the play button to see what happened 12 months ago. From that angle, an interested, prospective, employer in the legal profession could see what you've done. But then again, once you reach a certain level in law (as with many other white collar jobs), reputation and knowledge of what you've done and who you are is part of any future employment. If a laywer that is looking for work has been a clown in court, the right people will know, video or no video (or at least that's my expectation.)
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.
I guess that's the theory (though I'm not clear if is this accepted practice or your own reasoning; if you're an economics genius, please accept my apologies- it doesn't matter which ;)).
I'm no genius, and I not sure what group I would be speaking for if I said it was "accepted," but I have studied economics and I work with these issues as part of my job at a large insurance company. I do a lot of basic financial modeling, and work with the people in the investment and hedging areas that do the more advanced stuff. Regardless, you shouldn't take arguments like this at face value from anyone (especially on the internets), and I'd be glad to explain the reasoning behind my conclusion.
There's a couple different ways to define inflation, which does make this a bit (as you say) complicated. As a financial professional, I tend to think of the exchange rates as representing the relative prices of two currencies, and inflation of one currency as a decrease in that price, because that's the most consistent and tractable way to model uncertain future inflation and exchange rates. You're absolutely right that the presence of a free global market with minimal trade barriers (artificial or otherwise) is required for this to match the "cost-of-living" interpretation of inflation. If you measure inflation as the cost of goods for which there is such a market, such as widely-traded commodities like gold, then what I said should hold. If you define inflation as a CPI on an arbitrary basket of goods, some of which don't have such a market, well... that's what I meant about "not actually measuring inflation." Not in a consistent and useful way.
If I'd done the conversion a few months ago, when the Pound Sterling was hovering around the US $2 mark, you'd have got a higher figure than if I'd done the same thing today.
Not if you measure inflation based only on internationally traded commodities. If the Pound has lost value relative to the Dollar since then, then either it cannot buy as many commodities (inflation), or the Dollar can buy more (deflation), or both. Either way, it shouldn't matter what date you choose for the currency conversion, because the proper inflation adjustment will get you to the same place.
This is a bit confusing for people who are used to thinking of inflation only in terms of an arbitrary consumer price index. You might think that if you are making the same number of Pounds, and it buys the same number of CDs, what inflation has occurred? If your CPI basket consisted entirely of CDs, then indeed it would show 0% inflation. However, that's misleading, because you presumably spend money on many things which are ultimately driven by commodity prices and international free trade. Even if you don't, the suppliers of the CDs probably do, which means that even though you're still paying them the same for the CDs, they are feeling the true difference in price.
In other words, despite the stable salary and CD prices, I would say that the Pound really was worth more (relative to the Dollar) a few months ago, so your £X,000 salary and £X cost of CD were both "more" than they are now, even if the only thing you actually bought with your salary was CDs. You were still paying the opportunity cost by choosing CDs over whatever alternatives you had for that salary. Since then, you've received a pay cut (by being paid the same number of a less valuable currency), and certain goods (CDs) but not others (commodities) have also been discounted in the same way. If you still buy only CDs, you'll get the same number of them, but you won't be paying as large of an opportunity cost to do so, since your salary couldn't have bought you as many other goods. (Alternatively, or perhaps additionally, I've received a raise, but many goods like CDs have correspondingly gone up in price.)
This implicit price change can only happen if there are significant barriers to free international trade of the good in question, b