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Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court's more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages. Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the Government brief asked the Judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?"
There was no reason for the administration to intervene at all in this case. There was no legal requirement for them to take a position in the case. This may not reflect favoring the RIAA so much as a general trend by the Obama adminstration to favor a very strong federal government going so far as to endorse many of Bush's worst positions (see for example http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/15/obama/). Restrictions on statutory damages would thus be something the administration would not favor. Either way this isn't a good thing, but it may be premature to conclude that this indicates any particular bias towards towards the RIAA.
Yes. Not only that but it is a harbinger that will eventually show where the Obama campaign probably got their campaign money from.
Big media company associations, and big banks.
Who'll be big-time beneficiaries of their judicial efforts, stimulus packages, and ultimately new laws think new super-DMCA but 1000 fold worse.
i.e. Mandatory DRM. Repeal of the safe-harbor protections of the DMCA. More liability for services like youtube, and ISPs who fail to filter copyrighted content.
Criminal liability for authors of P2P software like bittorrent.
The years ahead will probably not be very fun for technologists or the public.
But, this type of ruling/defense by the administration, along with other things are really starting to bother me.
There are several that are bothersome. The moving of the census to be controlled by the executive branch. This is scary enough, in that it should be more independent....and above political needs. I see on the news that possibly ACORN is being tapped to 'help' with the census. I'd think the controversy over the potential voting fraud they were associated with, would sideline them on this effort. Slanting the census will have FAR reaching influence over many, many issues and money for years to come.
Obama was promising that he'd try to cut down earmarks..."line by line" I think was his quote. Yet, that Omnibus bill was loaded with what, like 8K of them?
The move to help people in housing problems....where they are allowing judges to overturn, revamp the condition of valid contractual agreements, that is dangerous, with far reaching implications for valid contract law in the US.
While it is understandable that people are pissed over the AIG bonuses...the acts passed by the house which try to retroactively and specically target these, again, is scary and I'd think unconstitutional. If these payouts were from valid contracts signed in the past, I don't see any clear way they could be overturned...and going after them retroactively by taxes...wow. I'm hoping the senate and especially Obama himself votes this down. It sets a bad precedent, and could really start to hurt US businesses. If valid contracts can be messed with like this....who wants to do business when you can't count on the terms being enforced?
The latest proposals...to not only mandate what execs of bailout companies can make..but also implications coming out that they want to actually set limits on what healthy, non=bailout companies can pay....that acares me. Sounds very much the opposite of capitalism. It may be a populist view in terms of the current economy, but, wow....THAT would be a change.
I want him to succeed in getting the country back in step....so we can all go back to trying to make a living without the interference of the government. That is the US way....at least ideally. Some of these policies coming out, seem to be a change to something the US is not....and never has been.
I ask honestly...for not just those that voted for O, but, those that were adamant supporters...are these things truly what you were expecting for 'change'? Do you support all of this which seems to change what the basics of the US business is all about? I don't mean the corruption and waste...but, the basic principals that seem to be in jeopardy?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It is easy to critize... So what should he have done? And by this I don't mean cut taxes as a general concept. I want details...
I want details of what he should have done, and how it would have helped the economy...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
votes were supplied by people. the VERY people this shitfaces are suing.
democrat party still depends on those people's donations for upcoming congress elections. he was just sending a call to volunteers. if an online campaign is launched to raise awareness about this stunt, theyll get served.
and they deserve it.
Read radical news here
At least with the first you usually get a happy ending.
If I ever met Ron Paul in person, this is something I would like to ask him about. Even though Libertarians are pro-property (copyrights and patents are in the Constitution iirc), he at the same time is very much against corporate welfare (voted against bailouts) and corporate fascism. So this new fangled IP (intellectual property) may not be so cut and dried.
I have a feeling he would have voted against all the copyright extensions and patents back in the day were not so bad when they protected implementations vs. now which is "intellectual property" vs. methods, thoughts, whatever, etc.
While I have sympathies to the pirate bay, a lot of it is just people demanding free shit which is a form of welfare if instituted on a public level. I enjoy using google books to find books and think fair use should extend to that although I don't demand the entire book for free.
One should remember while libertarians uphold private property rights, there is a real and distinct difference between private property vs intellectual property.
Ron Paul refuses to accept corporate donations.
The US army could hardly handle Iraq, which is about the size of Texas, and didn't have an armed populace at the outset of the war. The US is much larger than Texas, and we have an armed populace. We also have the national guard, which answers to the state governors. Should revolution break out, all it would take would be a few governors siding with the revolution and you've got a full scale civil war on your hands. That doesn't take into account the fact that there are nuclear installations thoughout the nation. A civil war in a nuclear armed nation probably wouldn't last long, so long as both sides had nukes. The national guard could easily take control of at least a few ICBM installations within a few hours, and it would take weeks to recall foreign based troops to put down any rebellion.
So yeah, we would have a pretty good chance. Especially with widespread public support. If there was enough support, it might even be wholly bloodless.
Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard.
And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob.
Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf.
Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf--that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination.
Thereupon the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their
own. Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant.
Plato, The Republic
Full explanation: How we'll move into tyranny
Great empires like the USA are not conquered. They decay from within. We are corrupt because we have lost social consensus. To understand that, you will have to first realize that not all of the humanities are BS and that politics/philosophy is a discipline as structured as programming. Until you overcome that bias, it will all be Greek (heh heh) to you.
Futurist Traditionalism
Didn't have to spend billions of dollars.
http://moosecove.com/propertyrights/taxes/eminentdomain-taxes-melist-usat-040401.shtml
The USA Today article below reveals the latest ugly trend in statist abuse against private property owners: government seizure of private homes and businesses through eminent domain for the purpose of generating higher property taxes on subsequent "redevelopment" of the property.
The planned displacement of over 5,000 residents - to be removed by physical force if they refuse to leave under the government's threat - from a middle class community in coastal Florida is one in a rash of cases in recent years in which municipal officials collude with large-scale developers to seize private property: The officials use government eminent domain powers to take private property and turn it over to their cronies, who in turn use the land for large scale development of their own. The naked extortion is rationalized as legally justified with the rhetoric of the "public good", nebulously claiming that the seizures will improve "the economy" and, more specifically, arguing that it meets the constitutional test of eminent domain for "public use" because it will raise more taxes.
USA Today reports that a viro, "Larry Morandi, the environmental program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, says cities are using eminent domain to address financial problems. 'They are taking property they don't believe is generating enough tax revenue and turning it over to a developer who will generate more taxes,' he says."
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And yes, we knew Obama sided with RIAA beforehand.
Voting for Obama was a complex decision.
a) booting out corrupt republicans
b) stopping their social agenda
c) stopping the next 20 to 25 years being a "pro corporation, hyper socially conservative" court
d) addressing racism
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RIAA has overstepped, will continue to overstep, and ultimately to avoid them-- just don't buy their products.
They can be reversed when they put enough grannies, dead people, and 17 year olds in prison. Every time Obama's team sides with them, he will waste a bit more of his political capital. Perhaps at some point he will wake up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.