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.'"

Comments

To whom knows...

[Creepy Crawler]

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.

Re:To whom knows...

[Creepy Crawler]

We had a court case 1 day before primaries, which I say on. Turns out, our 7'th (alternate) was someone I work with.. I work at Starbucks..

As to the point: they ruled out the Principal of a local school, and a few others. Aside from that, I was selected to be on the jury, and then as a foreman.

One thing I learned is that the general public does NOT like cops. Our case, we believe that the cop lied to protect another cop in a DUI case (they couldnt even prove he DROVE). There were no logs, the camera 'malfunctioned', the cop deposition didnt match with testimony in open court. Near the end, during deliberation, we took 5 minutes for a not guilty. And if we could have proved it, we would have sentenanced the 2 cops for perjury.. couldnt prove it.

And at the end, the judge asked if we would be willing to critique the lawyers in her chambers: We did, telling that we came up with the same questions during lunch as the defence lawyer did during closing statements. "We believed the cops lied and you have no case", is what we told them.

I did my vote, and it was a hell of a lot more important than November 4'th.. It freed a man.

Re:To whom knows...

[Ian Alexander]

Court proceedings are usually public. I went down to Seattle and sat in on a civil case between some lady suing U-Haul for about an hour, decided I was done, sat in on some B&E charges, moved on to drug court, then finished off my day with a civil case against the Metropolitan bus service because some guy got mugged on a bus. I had nothing to do with anybody involved, I just needed to rack up some hours sitting in court for a justice system class I was taking. They seemed pretty transparent to me. They don't post them on Youtube but that doesn't make them opaque.

Also, have you ever considered that the attitude that jury duty is something to be gotten out of is one reason most juries suck?

Streaming BitTorrent

[SEWilco]

This is a job for Streaming BitTorrent.

What sort of a bloody name is Zavvi anyway?!

[Dogtanian]

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?