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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'."
The problem is, if the RIAA wins by some convoluted twist of the law (of which they've gotten quite good at twisting by this point), no amount of losses will be able to wipe the smug look from their faces after winning the case on live TV. At which point, the industry is doomed.
Never think that the RIAA is doomed. They always come back.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
CD purchases, the listening public will bestow on ungrateful addicts, oops record execs...
Fixed. The real problems are/were record companies who were addicted to printing their own money and a market that thinks/thought that making 200%+ profit is/was piss poor performance. Fortunately, the recording industry is finally coming around to the notion that lawyers are only good for collecting sort-term, high-gain revenue, not suing grandma for her Dale Jr. poster.
Having read the order, I get the sense that the Judge really really understands what is going on and is not going to let them weasel out of their own lies.
The Judge is going to take their claims perfectly literally with no prejudice. They say that they want public knowledge of the suits, thus, she finds it "curious" that they don't want it televised. So, she takes them at their word (wanting public knowledge of the law suits) and "helps" them do what they say they claim to want to do.
Unlike judges before her, she knows they are lying. They know they are lying. Nesson knows they are lying. The case is a blackmail scam and everyone involved knows it, this time, even the judge.
They are stuck because these are counter claims, and while I'm not a lawyer, even if BMG/Sony drop the suit, I believe the counter claims live on. So, they can't drop it. They have to fight a Harvard Law Professor and his students, and it will all be public for display.
I'm going to buy some popcorn and watch.
Well first, even if you take the RIAA's side fully, a reasonable person would admit that it's copyright infringement, and not "theft". You can argue that copyright infringement is as bad as theft, but it's not theft.
Second, the complaint isn't that they're trying to fight copyright infringement, but rather their methods of fighting copyright infringement. Surely methods and means can matter. I can fight against injustice using methods that are themselves unjust.
Can we agree to that much, at least? At least as a starting point to discuss exactly how immoral copyright infringement is, and whether the RIAA's methods are just or unjust?
It might be just my crack-pot theory, so take it with a grain of salt...
I would thing the main reason to want the hearings televised goes to how there scare tactics work. Sinister motives or not, reading articles and watching video have very different impacts on how people perceive the information. I can write a ton of articles saying pirates are thieves, copying music makes baby Jesus cry, you'll get a life sentence for not paying every time you listen to a song, etc; but the actual court preceding will be very different. Even if they make those exact claims, it will not be in the same tone as attack media will be.
Real court proceedings are very dry, and will not support the fear image that they want. Plus it will be clear that they are suing for copyright violation and not theft. I'm sure there are various other concerns too.
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
The money=labour equation, while valuable, misses how investment works. There are two ways to make money: by labour or by taking on risk. If you buy something and resell it elsewhere at a higher price, some of that final price reflects the labour that went into producing the thing and in moving it from the seller to the subsequent buyer. Some of the price reflects the risk you took in the deal. By buying the thing, you took a risk that you would not be able to sell it for more than you paid. The profit you made on the deal compensates you for the risk you took. If there were no risk, someone would be willing to sell the item for less. Someone starting a business invests labour in producing their product, but also takes a risk: they may lose the money they put into starting the business. Outside investors (eg. in the stock market) take some or all of that risk away from the founders of the company. They make money not because they add labour but because they take risk.
No. Stealing the product of their labour would involve nicking the master copy they made, or possibly shoplifting a CD (although then you're stealing from the shop rather than the artist). An infringing copy removes nothing from their possession except the money that you might or might not have spent on a legal copy.
Both are illegal, but they aren't the same thing, and really the only reason to persist in not splitting that hair is if you have some motive for "copyright infringement" to be considered exactly equal to "theft". The most obvious motive being that theft sounds more serious and so people are less likely to choose to do it if they think of it in those terms.
Thankfully we are not undergoing a transition to Newspeak, so there is no need to eliminate terms from our vocabulary. There is a distinction between the 2 things and no reason to lump them together under one word, so please stop trying to do so.
It ignores investment because the only way that investment can pay off is through labour. The risk taker fronts his labour (since money is the promise of labour) with the expectation that he will be payed back with interest (interest being one of two ways that investment can ever enrich anyone - the other being the collection of collateral). The reality is that thanks to the addition of interest all debt can never be repayed because there isn't enough money in circulation (which is why we view investment as being risk). It's also why we have perpetual inflation.
When you consider that there simply is not enough money in circulation to repay all debt it becomes clear that investment is a scheme to exploit labour. It pays off for some people but it is not viable long term. The only reason that investment banks create the illusion of viability is thanks to the fractional reserve system and the safety net of the central bank (which both lead to perpetual inflation). The reality is that investment banks don't actually risk anything. They create money out of thin air (inflation) when they lend and they seize property when the loans are defaulted on. When the economy goes sour and banks stop lending the central banks cut interest rates, increasing their lending to commercial banks and more people end up in debt. Those people then seek employment/labour to repay it.
This isn't to say that banks never collapse due to poor investment practices. It happened as recently as 2008. It just means that in order for investment to pay off someone, somewhere has to loose.