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RIAA Threatens Harvard Law Prof With Sanctions
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Unhappy with Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's motion to compel the deposition of the RIAA's head 'Enforcer', Matthew J. Oppenheim, in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the RIAA threatened the good professor with sanctions (PDF) if he declined to withdraw his motion. Then the next day they filed papers opposing the motion, and indeed asked the Court to award monetary sanctions under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."
"Stop this (perfectly legal thing) or our teams of lawyers will fuck up your life" seems to be the new iteration of having thugs beat up a family member or sending pictures of your kids playing outside.
The intent is merely to scare people.
On the other hand, when you have a strong case things are different. I'm reminded of a business acquaintance who had a case against a powerful US trade group some years ago. His lawyers said the case was unanswerable, spent a morning summarising it on one side of a letter, and sent it off. The other side promptly settled out of court. The other famous example was the UK satirical magazine Private Eye, which once received a long and very threatening letter from the lawyers of a notorious fraudster. Their reply was something on the lines of "We have had your interesting letter and we have taken legal advice. Our lawyers advise us to tell you to f**k off".
Given this history, the one liner back (in effect "bring it on") is surely instructive.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If I sue you, I can't hide my claims against you on the theory that my thoughts about these claims are part of my legal representation. This is the case even if I'm a lawyer. The RIAA is trying to do just that by employing a lawyer intermediary between the RIAA itself and the legal team representing them: First, the RIAA generates "evidence". Then the RIAA gives the evidence to the intermediary lawyer, and also charges him with making all the decisions for the corporation. Finally, the intermediary becomes the "client" for the actual legal team. This way the real client is shielded from discovery: all their contributions to the lawsuit were done through their "client-attorney" relationship with the intermediary. It's a thing of beauty, but I suspect it's not legal.
It is not because they are clueless. Music business just revolves around seedy people. I know. I am starting up agent myself. I have a history of 15 years of tech development and know my local law quite well. I am sought up by young bands around me because I can tell them gazillion seedy practises of how to actually get a licing out of their music.
These discussions always take a place in some smoky studio with booze flowing. If my client and moral quibles, he will do by himself. I have one of these. He has honestly tried to break out for 10 years and is a very talented vocalist and guitarist. I can't help him because he finds my methods unsavory.
I do not collect by success. I have a fixed price which I take from the first album or by selling them to a bigger label. I have very little investement in myself, but they know I can help and are willing to sign my contract because they are only obliged to work with me until they get to bigger stages.
Anyway. Music is dog-eat-dog on business side. Those who try to make a living out of it, are quite heartless cynic people. But brilliant, talented cynic people.
Have fun supporting your local artist. Your pennies will never feed him. Do the math and calculate how much an ethical unknown artist would have to sell and tour to make ends meet. Don't forget to calculate expense of light techicians, sound technicians, roudies the bus driver, etc. Those salaries usually go untaxed and the venues pay grey. Try to work in proper taxation, insurances and what the heck not. A gig should cost $100/person and CD another $100 for the poor sods.
Music is not a business of scarce resources. It is of scarce customers. That's why the biggest front of the business looks so brutal.
Not really. The RIAA is a perfect example of a cartel and what it can do. There's a reason they are usually illegal.
[FUCK BETA]
Most people are still not understanding what this means, its implications, and its likelihood for success.
It's important to translate things out of legalese and analyze it in the context of the proceedings.
Slashdot is a tech site, not a legal one, so while the general community can see "aha", "touche'", and "gotcha" moments in, say, the realm of computer science or electrical engineering, we don't see it in legal context without some actual analysis. Feel free to qualify things with "this is my opinion" or whatever, but analysis and translation is essential.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Nesson loves this stuff. He represented Ellsberg (the guy that stole and released the pentagon papers) against the us government. In classes he loves telling stories of how he stood against government intimidation to protect Ellsberg's location (e.g., being followed everywhere, never using phones in his home or office, taking elaborate trips arranged through fantastic means to have in person meetings away from the watching eyes of the us government). The government was breaking law after law to find Ellsberg and put him away, but Nesson managed to hide him long enough to prepare for defense and turned the government's own illegal actions back at them to get the case thrown out.
This is just the type of action the RIAA can be sure will get Nesson even more excited about this stuff. He'll just wear it a badge of honor.
So, if he represents the interests of the artists
He doesn't. Nobody represents the artists, who get screwed over badly. The artist doen't even hold copyright to his own recorded performances, the label does.
If you want to know just how badly the RIAA labels screw over their artists, read any treatise by any RIAA musician (except Mad Donna or the dufus drummer from Metallica). There are good ones by Courtney Love and Steve Albini that will make you feel REAL sorry for the fools who sign with major labels.
Free Martian Whores!
Your Honor, we would like you to impose sanction against him. He's not supposed to fight back. Please punish him for fighting back. Our strategy doesn't work when intelligent lawyers fight back. This must be put to an end right now.
Pathetic RIAA.
whisper_jeff, you really hit it on the head. I see you've already been modded to +5 Funny. I wish you could be modded to +10 Funny AND Accurate.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What contract? What TOC? I don't recall signing a contract the last time I bought a movie.
Modifying a movie is just like buying a book and then writing in the margin, or tearing out pages -- do you think that is illegal too?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I bet if RIAA had stuck to suing copyright infringers, none of us would have ever heard of NewYorkCountryLawyer.
May well be so. I only came into the fight because of my hatred of bullies, and because these bullies were so obviously wrong on the law, wrong on the facts, and immoral and unprofessional in their behavior.
You might have otherwise heard of my alter ego, Ray what's-his-name, in other contexts, but probably not in this context.
I only first discovered Slashdot when one of my litigation documents in Elektra v. Santangelo got 'Slashdotted' one day in the Summer of 2005. I traced the backlink to this place I'd never heard of, where an intelligent Talmudic discussion was going on, among a bunch of people who seemed kind of like lawyers, but who clearly were not lawyers, but who seemed smarter than lawyers. It looked like an ordinary message board, but it obviously was a whole 'nother thing.
Things haven't been quite the same since.
1. Spend a lot of time on Slashdot.
2. Get the word out.
3. Have a lot of fun.
4. ???
5. No profit whatsoever (in the financial sense).
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful