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Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online
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)."
is going to RTFETRIAAOT.
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
Just think... The computer that you're using might be worth a million dollars, maybe 20 millions dollars if you download a lot of music. How does it feel to have a million dollars worth of product sitting next to you? Probably not as nice as if a solid gold bar were sitting there, but still, it's the same.. You are a millionaire. Go tell your friends that you're computer is worth 7 figures... cherish it, stroke it... oil it down and rub it for comfort.. until it glistens and shimmers like diamonds.
PJ takes one week off, and everybody moves back to Slashdot.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Dear Mr Beckerman,
This trial transcirpt is an absolutely fascinating resource. As a lawyer myself, it provides me with plenty of things to think about.
I was simply hoping to ask you what you think of the Plaintiffs' lawyers. In England (where I practise) there is no concept of lawyers (or barristers, anyway) identifying with the case they seek to advance. On Slashdot, I have seen your disregard, to put it mildy, for the lawyers representing the RIAA.
My questions are these. To what extent do you think that the RIAA's representatives believe the case that they advance? To what extent do you think that matters? Do you think that they are bad people or poor counsel for advancing that case?
And then on a different tack, when one is dealing with litigants in person in a case that might have national repercussions, how can one deal effectively with those defendants if you have no confidence in their willingness to abide by confidentiality agreements and every fear that they will post the details on the internet?
Kind regards,
Tom
Its way too long for me. Can someone sumarize please using the medium of dance.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
is being widely used in my country (Peru), not only referring music "piracy" but also movie "piracy".
This includes commercials which are screened just before your favorite movie and printed ads in mainstream newspapers (which says "Piracy is stealing").
I have explained my son that this is a lie, because "piracy" and stealing are two different concepts, but many thousands of peruvians don't know this difference.
did I mention that the "Piracy is stealing" commercial showed before movies had the MPAA logo at the end?
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Mirror of the files. My webhost claims I have unlimited bandwidth.. :-)
Wonder what they would have to say if I started seeding this on a bit torrent client.
It's not just you, the rest of the world is also subjected to this bullshit.
"Disingenuous" is what some people call it. I think that's too polite.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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!!
I rest my case.
node-def: a tactical hacking sim. Now in open beta.
I always cheer loudly when these commercials are played at the movie theatres. I think it provides some comic relief and lets everybody know that not everybody believes the bullshit.
Read the post I replied to. The OP didn't say the fine was justified because it was against the law, he said it was justified because of a statement made by the defendant:
"The reason why she got slammed with such high levels for each instance of infringement is because she tried to make the jurors feel stupid"
If you don't believe the law is ethical, there are proper channels to go through in order to change it.
That's irrelevant - that doesn't mean that such people should be fined excessively more for what they believe. If your point is to simply say that the law allows for such vast fines, then yes, we know what the law says, and no one is disagreeing with that point - that's a straw man.
I thought court proceedings were public records -- why did it take a year for the transcript to be available?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Legitimate channels like Jury nullification.
Posting anonymously so that I don't get booted off any jury I get picked for. If they find out you know about jury nullification, they don't want you on the jury! If I'm ever on a file-sharing jury, I will refuse to convict, and do everything in my power to convince my fellow jurors of the same.
Is it okay if your camcorder recording includes the anti-piracy notice?
Like this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4
"when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing'."
That one baffled me. I am neither a lawyer nor an American. However, I would assume that a witness' opinion of the legality of a given action is completely irrelevant. Establishing the legality of a given action is a task for the court, not a task for the witness.
Agreed.
So why was a witness asked about the legality of copying a CD?
Beats me.
And why was she breaking her oath (as NYCL is somehow implying) when she did not know the correct answer?
She knew the correct answer. She was deliberately misstating the law in order to improperly inflame the jury against Ms. Thomas, convincing the jurors that even had Ms. Thomas done nothing but copy some CD's onto her hard drive, that in and of itself was a copyright infringement.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ms. Pariser is a lawyer and therefore an officer of the court even when she acts as a witness rather than as counsel for a party. Knowing misrepresentation of the law by an officer of the court is unethical and a potential cause for disciplinary action.
They do it here in america too, and the stupidest part is they come to the conclusion:
"Buying pirated movies is stealing"
Uh, no. Not only are pirated movies not stolen, but buying black market goods is not stealing either. Sure, it might be illegal, and sure, the cops can confiscate it w/ out compensation, but last I checked it's not stealing.
There does admitedly appear to be some wiggle room within the "the whole truth" thing, which is to say you are only required to completely answer the question put to you as opposed to telling truths you know but haven't been asked, but lying under oath is still illegal as far as I know no matter what.
Perhaps the defendent's lawyer should have objected, but if she's an expert in the field it would have been a fairly gray area and probably a quite applicable question and would likely have been overruled.
On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, while copyright infringement is not stealing, it's sort of hard to come up with a laymans term for what it is that correctly explains what it is to a non technical jury. Realistically it's a breach of contract, but contracts you don't explicitly sign, verbally agree, or make any explicit acknowldgement of contract, don't make a lot of sense to the average person(which one might argue is why the case is flawed to begin with).
I don't go to theaters much anymore, but I've promised myself that if I ever do see one of these commercials I'm going to loudly sing "Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me!" which is both on-topic and as a public performance is a copyright violation in and of itself.
I'm hardly an expert but, I have been reading the pdf's a bit from the beginning and so far one glaring problem I see is that the MAC address referred to in the opening statements was the MAC of the cable modem and nobody had the MAC address of the actual computer.
I shall keep reading now. I suggest anyone that may be sharing copyrighted material also read it. The more you know the better off you will be if the RIAA ever comes knocking on your door.
Thanks again Ray! great stuff!
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
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.
Here in Korea, they go one step beyond that. "Loaning a disk to a friend is stealing." People at work probably think I'm stealing since I install my own OS and Free software.
I also download music at work. Shock! It's legal because it's CC'ed (Jamendo). When I tried to help a coworker out with some teaching material, she said she needed a license for it. I tried to point out the author's license allowed non-commercial use, but she refused to believe it.
They have these giant publicity campaigns but don't bother to mention "may or may not be illegal depending on the license." It's all just illegal to them. The "re-education" is working, too.
Put identity in the browser.
Would anyone care to make an audio book out of this?
I'm curious about the content (I like learning how things work), but don't want to wade through that many pages. On the other hand, if I could listen to it in the background while I'm doing something else ...
Honestly, it's like fining someone $10,000 for jaywalking or a speeding ticket because they say it isn't wrong, Totally cruel and unusual.
I don't thank NYCL, I worship him!
Praise to NYCL and the Virgin Thomas!
The worst is when I pay for a DVD and am forced to watch this shit. I'm talking about the 1-minute "piracy is stealing" commercials which play at the start of the disc, and cannot be skipped due to DRM.
It is offensive to me, to think that I have paid good money for this, only to be forced to listen to this shit every time I watch my movie. The pirated discs don't have this defect.
The US has never really been the freedom loving nation it aspires. when it started, it had slavery, when that ended there was an apartheid of Blacks, after that there were constant conflicts over religion internally. (In fact, religion has caused the US Public school system to be torn apart.) The list goes on. The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination. The whole secularism and tolerance thing has been around only since the early 70s.
You can't really have a true open and transparent democracy when such a huge percentage believe in a Monarchical Autocratic universe. The last 8 years, the US presidency has boiled down to "Jesus wants me to be president." My significant other has been told "Jesus wants Christians to run Windows", and "Linux is a Demonic Operating system". So telling the public "Jesus says making copies of music is wrong." and they will believe it. Because thats just the way the USA is.
why do Americans allow their Democracy to be defined by Corporations that have their own interests, and not the nation's, at heart?
Because, Corporations are loaded with money with which to buy COngresscritters. You, living on social security, do NOT have the same amount of money to buy a congresscritter. Today's rate of a congresscritter is about $2,000,000 excluding "sponsored" educational trips to Swiss Alps and Carribean.
Why does anyone who tries to exercise that right get put in gaol or executed?
Because it upsets the status quo dumbass. If you start questioning and succeed, others will rise, and ultimately the corporations will be overthrown leading to rule "by the people", "of the people". Something that neither congresscritters nor corporations want. Hence, to prevent anyone else from trying to do what you do, they make a Che Guevara out of you.
I accept that Democracy here in Australia is not what it was.
Democracy in Australia follows the Westminister model, which is why the past and present political dingos can get away with Orwellian internet, crappy telephones, a overtaxed economy, subsidies to woolworths and Coles, while beating the sydney man to death with council and state taxes.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Has anybody been reading the testimony of the RIAA's investigator and of its expert witness? It would be interesting to get some discussion of that going on here, like the one that's started on my blog.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I cant seem to find out what finally happened after the verdict -- did she (Thomas) have to pay up the $222,000.00 ?
Nothing happened with it. It was set aside. A new trial is scheduled for March 9th.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination.
Racism and sexism are smokescreens for the US's blatant classism. And it's far from Christian; the national religion is the worship of money. You won't find Bibles in any public school I know of, and students have been disciplined for even talking about religion. The Constitution itself states that the government cannot institute a national religion. We were founded as a secular nation.
Our national god is the god of mammon. We worship green pieces of paper. Hell, the mammon-worshipers are so afraid of Jesus they no longer even use the word "Christmas" in advertising. "Holoday tree?" What other holiday (outside Druidism) has a tree? Do they call it a "Holiday Menorah?"
We're heading into a depression because the high priests of finance are greedy morons.
As to racism, nobody would object to Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey moving in next door to them. It's the crack smoking gang bangers that they don't want moving in. Their color has nothing to do with it; what it has to do with is the fact that they're poor violent thieves. Most anybody would object to blue eyed Billy Bob Meth guy just as vehemently. It isn't a matter of race, it's a matter of class.
Free Martian Whores!
This is one of the things I don't understand about America and Americans. My understanding is that your Constitution includes the Right to bear arms so you can rise up against an oppressive or corrupt government.
The 2nd amendment prevents the government from taking the right to the ability to rise up, it does not imply that the government must tolerate armed insurrection. Those who bear arms against the government have placed themselves outside the rule of that government and become an enemy. If they prevail and form a new government they will presumably not have themselves punished. If they do not prevail they will either be killed as an enemy or forcibly brought back under the rule of the government through the courts and prison system.
So you have the right to keep and bear arms but waging war on the government is only legal if you win. LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes gives an explanation of unalienable rights under the title "Not All Rights Are Alienable" which would probably help your understanding of this. It is available at Project Gutenberg you can search for the title without the quotation marks. It's worth reading the whole book though.
Surely you have enough people with guns to force the issue.
From the Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Have a read of the list of things they put up with before the Declaration of Independence was made (the list is in the Declaration, also at Project Gutenberg).
The copyright problem is likely transient, ie temporary. The people who have been voted out will leave office. Things can still be dealt with in court and through other legal means. The situation isn't so bad that it is worth the suffering a civil war would cause. Having guns doesn't mean you give up easily on peaceful methods.
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Ray,
In another part of this thread it was (humorously, perhaps?) suggested to make an audiobook of these transcripts.
I took this suggestion seriously and elevated it to a platform which it would be more appropriate for here. This site hosts audiobooks that are read of public domain manuscripts and released into the world. If support is gathered through the discussion to the "suggestion" that I posted, it would be a matter of time before we could do a proper production of the Recording Industry versus Jammie Thomas in audio format.
Could you comment on the potential legality of such an effort and reaffirm that the transcripts truly are "Public Domain"? Could you additionally answer the question of whether you'd think it would be a worthwhile effort? Would you imagine it being able to grip a target audience and hold their attention? Perhaps an abridged version would be better to exclude parts that are overly dry and boring? Is this case truly historical enough to be preserved in an audiobook fashion? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated since you are much closer to the Jammie Thomas case than the casual /. reader.
Best regards,
Rob
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
No I wouldn't 'comment on the legality', for to do so would be like giving legal advice. I can say that I published it without express permission from the U.S. government or from the Court Reporter or anyone else. Nor can I predict how history will view the trial. I can only say that (a) the transcript itself, and (b) a vetting of the MediaSentry, Jacobson, Best Buy, and Thomas testimony by the tech community will be enormously useful to all of us who are representing other victims of the RIAA's campaign.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I'm replying here since I know you'll probably get an email alert. Please provide this kind of stuff in text or xhtml format excepting for the rare case where absolute positioning of elements is required. I find pdf format really annoying to deal with since it's hard to manipulate/search/sort/etc using standard tools. Thanks. S
Sorry. It was the decision of the federal court system, not my decision, to adopt *pdf as the format.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful