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RIAA Hearing Next Week Will Be Televised
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "One commentator labels it 'another fly in the RIAA's ointment.' In SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the Boston, Massachusetts, RIAA case in which the defendant is represented by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and a group of his students, the Judge has ruled that the hearing scheduled for January 22nd will be televised over the Internet. The hearing will relate to Mr. Tenenbaum's counterclaims against the record companies and against the RIAA. In her 11-page opinion (PDF), District Judge Nancy Gertner labeled as 'curious' the record companies' opposition to televising the proceedings, since their professed reason for bringing the cases is deterrence, 'a strategy [which] effectively relies on the publicity arising from this litigation'."
Televised means remote vision: that can happen over the internet as well as a TV. Actually the article uses televised in a general sense and uses the term narrowcast when going into details. which works for me.
Television (from Merriam-Webster) - an electronic system of transmitting transient images of fixed or moving objects together with sound over a wire or through space by apparatus that converts light and sound into electrical waves and reconverts them into visible light rays and audible sound (emphasis mine)
televised over the internet - means that the television is going out over the Internet to computer endpoints. That the television SET is often abbreviated as television is simply laziness and a bastardization of the language, not that the usage in the summary is incorrect.
The current order is only for the hearing on Jan 22, as NYCL pointed out, which only involves the legal arguments for motions entered by the Defendant's counsel. Further coverage of the rest of the case will be decided then. The judge made a lot of sense in her opinion though, I especially liked this bit:
"Public" today has a new resonance, especially in this case. The claims and issues at stake involve the internet, file-sharing practices, and digital copyright protections. The Defendants are primarily members of a generation that has grown up with the internet, who get their news from it, rather than from the traditional forms of public communication, such as newspapers or television. Indeed, these cases have generated widespread public attention, much of it on the internet. Under the circumstances, the particular relief requested -- "narrowcasting" this proceeding to a public website -- is uniquely appropriate.
Nice to see judges are starting to catch up to this generation.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Of course the RIAA wants the public to hear about this case to deter anyone downloading their stuff.
But they want people to hear it from them. Not directly from the court proceedings. Any idiot knows that your statements are only half as powerful if the other side can retort. And few people are interested in hearling both sides of the story, unless it is hassle free do hear it, they're perfectly happy when they just hear one side telling them "the truth". Do you have an idea how incredibly harder it gets to spin something when the other side can call you bluff and show that you're lying through your teeth?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It won;t escalate like most of us would like. When it's looking like things will go bad, they'll "settle" and not allow it to follow through making a precedent.
In a counter claim, the defendant has to "agree" to settle, and I don't think Nesson and his students are looking to do that.