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Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online

Posted by timothy on from the give-us-this-day-our-daily-fix dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The entire transcript of the RIAA's 'perfect storm,' its first and only trial, which resulted in a $222,000 verdict in a case involving 24 MP3's having a retail value of $23.76, is now available online. After over a year of trying, we have finally obtained the transcript of the Duluth, Minnesota, jury trial which took place October 2, 2007, to October 4, 2007, in Capitol Records v. Thomas. Its 643 pages represent a treasure trove for (a) lawyers representing defendants in other RIAA cases, (b) technologists anxious to see how a MediaSentry investigator and the RIAA's expert witness combined to convince the jurors that the RIAA had proved its case, and (c) anybody interested in finding out about such things as the early-morning October 4th argument in which the RIAA lawyer convinced the judge to make the mistake which forced him to eventually vacate the jury's verdict, and the testimony of SONY BMG's Jennifer Pariser in which she 'misspoke' according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing.' The transcript was a gift from the 'Joel Fights Back Against RIAA' team defending SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston, Massachusetts. I have the transcript in 3 segments: October 2nd (278 pages(PDF), October 3rd (263 pages)(PDF), and October 4th (100 pages)(PDF)."

7 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Cue - no, Clue... by capnkr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cue the DMCA takedown notice in 5, 4, 3... ;)

    Thanks, NYCL. I hope that making this transcript available does something to help make the **AA strategists have to adjust to this "new" internet technology in a way more beneficent to all, instead of just trying to sue the pants off anyone who they think might have crossed their rather arbitrary lines...

    --
    "...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
    1. Re:Cue - no, Clue... by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. The RIAA is like:

      * We need new laws to make this illegal, hey Congress, can you hook us up? DENIED.
      * Ahh, the problem is public perception.. we need to vilify file sharing. Marketing moguls, can you hook us up? DENIED.
      * Ok, well maybe we can just scare people into our way of thinking. Lawyers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
      * Maybe we can use impossible technology to force everyone into forgetting how to copy. Cryptographers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
      * Ok, how about just crazy ass rootkit technology? That's doable. Hey Sony scumbags, can you hook us up? DENIED.
      * Boy oh boy, this is harder than making water not wet, we need an international conspiracy of ISPs to give us unaccounted power over all their customers. PENDING.

      What other crazy schemes will they come up with?

      * Maybe they'll start putting poison in cases of blank media (cause they obviously have this stupid idea that people still burn the music they download - look at the tax on blank media in Canada).
      * What ever happened to that lawsuit against Apple? Are they making so much money from the iTunes store that they've forgotten their water tight argument that an 80 gig iPod would take $79,200 to fill? I guess math never was their strong suite.
      * Direct hacking attacks on file sharers? They have your IP, I wouldn't put it past them.
      * What about voodoo? That shit works right? We just need everyone in the world to submit some of their hair or skin so the witch doctor can make a voodoo doll, then we can jab em whenever they share files.. how will we know when they share files? EVERYONE shares files, we just have to jab everyone equally, that's easy!

      Ok, now I'm just being silly.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Honestly... by G0rAk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PJ takes one week off, and everybody moves back to Slashdot.

    --

    Nothing to see here. Move along.
    1. Re:Honestly... by Ecuador · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What is this "woman" thing you speak of?

      Oh, come on, you know them. They look nice, they are generally flat and sometimes folded in the middle.

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  3. Let me guess on the whole jury convincing... by plasmacutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given the technical knowledge of your average joe...

    media sentry guy and expert witness come in and bandy about as much technical jargon as possible while connecting it with vicious invective to nefarious terms like "theft".

    defense asks them questions, which they answer in the same language, which may as well be fluent korean to the jurors.

    In the end, jurors make decision based on the repeated misinformation from the media of the past 10 years equating downloading to theft, which was repeated amongst the foreign language the "witnesses" happened to be speaking.

    The end.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  4. Re:Like anybody on /. by armanox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bit torrent is not an illegal application.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  5. I second the motion. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We should all take some time once in a while to thank NYCL and people like him for putting up the good fight and making this kind of information -- which is absolutely crucial to free markets and free people -- available to us all.

    I am also going to take a little time this holiday season to go donate a few bucks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org).

    Please help support all of these people, without whom we would all be royally screwed by now.