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RIAA Brief Attacks Free Software Foundation
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has requested permission to file a response to the amicus curiae brief filed by the Free Software Foundation in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston case against a Boston University grad student accused of having downloaded some song files when in his teens. In their proposed response, the RIAA lawyers personally attacked The Free Software Foundation, Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer), and NYCL's blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People.' The 9-page response (PDF) — 4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding — termed the FSF an organization 'dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs,' and accused the FSF of having an 'open and virulent bias against copyrights' and 'blatant bias' against the record companies. They called 'Recording Industry vs. The People' an 'anti-recording industry web site' and stated that NYCL 'is currently subject to a pending sanctions motion for his conduct in representing a defendant' (without disclosing that plaintiffs' lawyers were 'subject to a pending motion for Rule 11 sanctions for their conduct in representing plaintiffs' in that very case)."
Probably because they keep losing. If they make themselves loud enough in the courts, a judge is bound to find something he agrees with and rule in their favor. They're grandstanding to win.
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
The FSF's centerpiece, the GPL, depends wholly on copyright for enforcement.
So saying that the FSF has an "open and virulent bias against copyrights" clearly demonstrates either a lack of research, a lack of understanding, or a lack of honesty on the part of the RIAA's lawyers.
"4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding"
And?
-mkb
The RIAA is an organization that has repeatedly shown no respect for other persons or property, including the myriad recording artists, the plain intent of the Constitution, or its corpus. It is a usurper and an invader. It is an organization that needs prosecutions under RICO as well as numerous civil suits.
I love the FSF, but which of the quotes listed here is inaccurate? The FSF *does* want to get rid of copy restrictions, and does dislike the RIAA. Although, I would say the FSF hates on the RIAA, not the "recording industry", but I suspect the RIAA doesn't see the difference.
This is news how?
The only thing newsworthy I got from this is that the RIAA is just slightly more petty than I thought. Of course the Free Software Foundation is about making software "FREE", and of course, anyone with a blog aimed at bringing to light the RIAA's idiocy is going to be the target of their Ire. The thing people need to get over, and real quick, is the thought that the second they see anywhere in media the acronym RIAA, that they need to immediately post it on Slashdot.
We also need to realize, as a whole, that the RIAA hates us as much as we hate them, and we also need to note that the RIAA is a litigous bunch of pr1cks and that they will bring DMCA takedown notices, and law suits, and anything their multi-million dollar legal team can come up with against anyone who thinks differently than they do. The thing is, they have this crazy thing called MONEY backing them. When you have a band like Metallica, or Universal Studios supporting your cause, you can then afford frivolous lawsuits and such because money is no object
What we need, to effectively fight back against their idiocy, is SUPPORTERS. Find some corporation (good luck) that shares our ideals, or even a political movement. Then get them to help with the money to cover the expenses of all these court proceedings, offer legal support to the unfortunate few that get randomly targeted by the RIAA (like the ACLU does) and find someone to help us get some lobbying going in Washington.
Those are the things we need to do, or maybe even get some of us geeks to inundate media with easily comprehended information that average Joe blow can read and care about, and help spread the word to the masses about their evils. Find a way to make the average citizen give a crap about this issue, and you've found a way to get some money and influence behind this issue on a side that is NOT the RIAA. But until then, we'll always be a flea, biting the back of the Mammoth that is Industrialized politics at work.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
I can't wait to see what RMS is going to say in his reply :-)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Probably because they keep losing. If they make themselves loud enough in the courts, a judge is bound to find something he agrees with and rule in their favor. They're grandstanding to win.
Or it could be because they now have a more sympathetic justice department.
Targeting lawyers instead of, say, people who don't even know how to defend is "getting better at picking targets" when it comes to law suits that are not far from simple harrassment?
Dunno if I can follow your train of thought.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If their facts are wrong, attack their law; if their law is strong, attack their facts; if both their law and their facts are strong, attack their lawyer. I guess we can now assume that both their facts and their law pretty much suck 'cuz they're attacking somebody *elses* lawyer...
If you can't innovate, litigate.
If you can't litigate, legislate.
Very good call.
Though, I suspect that FSF would take a page from the corporate playbook and re-incorporate in a friendlier country, transfer the FSF copyrights there, leaving a powerless shell-subsidiary in the US.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The RIAA is an organization dedicated to maximizing restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying music. They have a virulent, though perhaps less open, bias against music customers; and are blatantly biased for the record companies.
It is not the neo-cons that we have to worry about. It is which oligarchs have the reins of which legislators and judges. It is beginning to look like the oligarchs that control the Obama group are going to take our intellectual and cultural freedoms from us, rather than our constitutional freedoms.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
The part where it works against them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You describe the backlash as though it hasn't already happened. Remember Tower Records? Virgin Megastore?
The music industry is dying, and this is their last stand.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
That reminds me, pardon my Godwin, of an old line from the late Pierre Desproges: "You will never manage to completely convince me that jews weren't at least a LITTLE bit guilty of irrationnal anti-nazi bias."
And then in the very next sentence:
I mean... unless something has changed in their pattern, they only have documentation of one legal download and that being from an investigation team that may or may not be licensed.
Why has no attorney ever taken a look at the finances and circumstances associated with one particular song - how much revenue did this earn in the year prior, the year during, and the year after the alleged infringement. Most of the songs that I've noted have been out for at least a decade if not two, with little or no marketing, and zero spins on any of the radio stations I listen to.
Another argument I never see in any of these is the challenge the RIAAs ownership of the material. A 20 year old song may or may not have a clear ownership record, and with the history of the industry, you really should establish that the recording artists, the producers, and the songwriters all have given the RIAA authority willingly and contractually prior to the filing of any individual lawsuit.
On the other hand, saying that the FSF is "dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs" is extremely accurate.
That would imply that the FSF is attacking the right to create and sell non-free software. That would be a bizarre goal, and as far as I can see it is not the case. However I can see why the RIAA's lawyers might want to ascribe bizarre aims to an organisation they wish to discredit.
The FSF appears to be concerned primarily with protecting our right to publish and use free software. What's truly bizarre is that these rights should even need defending.
I've noticed that people resort to ad hominem when they haven't a better arguement to use.
The 9-page brief looks like a very nicely structured ad hominem attack, but that's all it is.
Or, to paraphrase, "Don't listen to him, he's just a lawyer! Whereas I am the True Friend of the Court, he's your enemy! Actually, he's mine, but I'd prefer you thought of him as yours".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"pending sanctions motion" means the RIAA has made a motion to sanction NYCL. The thing is, almost every lawyer in every case is at some point (probably for most of the trail) subject to a "pending sanctions motion". Either side can enter a motion for just about anything. Sanctions motions are SOP, both sides will file them when the other side does something they don't like. The more important question is whether the judge will grant the motion or reject it.
It's much like lawsuits in general. I could sue you tomorrow for failing to pay me a million dollars and move for summary judgement on the matter as soon as discovery's over. You would then be technically correctly described as "subject to a pending motion for judgement for a million dollars". Of course that'll end as soon as you point out that I haven't produced anything showing you ever agreed to pay me anything and the judge dismisses the case, but it's a correct description up until that point. That's where the RIAA's motion stands right now: on the record, but it's a real hail-mary.
So, I feel you are saying:
"We are preaching to the choir, and will never get anywhere"
If I have misunderstood, then correct me...I can take it, and welcome it, in fact.
Working on the above perspective, I have to reply to counter argue.
I will use myself as an example.
I lurked here for several years before getting an account.
Why?
I learned stuff that was new to me, but was dismissed as 'old news' by those with your attitude. Those comments still came through, in spite of those like you.
I found interesting things to explore and learn about, and still do here on slashdot...every day!
I found out about GNU/Linux on slashdot, despite you, and the fact it existed before I was aware that it was news.
There is benefit to 'preaching to the choir', as the choir grows, and talks to others.
I've learned about many things that I had no previous clue that they existed from the 'preaching to the choir' bunch here on slashdot.
Again, if I have misunderstood, please accept my apology, and correct me.
If my assumption was correct, or close, then think about what I said, and have some patience...we were all n00bs at one point....there will always be n00bs, and the future is full of n00bs...in reference to anything.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
There's always some dastardly evildoers trying to steal our freedoms, nowadays, isn't there. If it's not the extremists it's the communists, or the democrats, or the republicans or the liberals, or the PC brigade with all their health and safety mumbo jumbo, coming to take away our precious, precious freedoms (it's our freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedommmmms, preeeeeeeeeeeeeeecious). As we stare at this wonderous package of glory. Our freedoms, which we have, and those ever growing hordes of zealots - from one side of the political spectrum or another (depending on our own beliefs) - coming to rip it from our hands and hurl it in to the volcanoes of Mordor or something. Or freedoms! Please! Won't someone think of the freedoms!
It's certainly an emotive issue.
And if people actually did care then maybe they'd stop slinging shit into the eyes of fabricated enemies for 15 seconds and realise that there is a middle ground in which you can actually work together and not just boil it down to some pitiful good/evil pantomime.
They act like a government agency but they can only take civil action, regardless of the FBI's doting on copyright abusers. If they were to stay silent a moment too long then what little power they do bear would dissolve.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
There's always some dastardly evildoers trying to steal our freedoms, nowadays, isn't there.
Nowadays? Not a moment in Humanity's history was a calm silence where groups of people weren't trying to impose their will on others by penalty of death or disruption. It's a story that will long repeat itself and is unlikely to ever end.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
It is not the neo-cons that we have to worry about. It is which oligarchs have the reins of which legislators and judges. It is beginning to look like the oligarchs that control the Obama group are going to take our intellectual and cultural freedoms from us, in addition to our constitutional freedoms.
FTFY
Anyone who still thinks that Obama and the rest of his administration will suddenly revert course on constitutional freedoms from the last 8 years has been living under a rock since the Inauguration. He is a politician. Politicians like power. They, repubs and dems, are not going to remove some law in place that benefits them, even if the other side used it first.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
The music industry is dying, and this is their last stand.
You are correct. The existing music industry infrastructure is dying. Music won't.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Note that litigation costs scale badly.
Beyond a certain threshold, it is cheaper to legislate first.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
the art of music in western civilization may even come alive again if we can get rid of these cartels.
No of course they wouldn't, closed source businesses would hiss and spit bloody murder, but the AC you linked to didn't even suggest they would do that.
But that doesn't mean that over the longer term they'd do well - youngsters today somewhat overestimate the difficulty of reverse engineering from binary. Open-source programming-as-a-service-provision businesses would (already do anyway) spring up to replicate any functionality provided by closed stuff in the old system.
See, really, "programmer" *should* be a professional class like "doctor", "lawyer" - as a consulting programmer providing a service you're advising people how to run their computing machines (professing on the subject!) ...Really detailed, step by step advice... Open source basically just means that you're free to reuse existing advice verbatim when supplying that advice. It reflects closely the situation with contract terms, which lawyers freely copy/paste (when it comes to their _own_ work, they see the benefit of sharing) since they set it up so that contract texts themselves exempt from copyright in most systems. See, the lawyers know themselves that copyright is wrong...
When you don't have the facts on your side, pound on the law.
When you don't have the law on your side, pound on the facts.
When you have neither on your side, pound on the table.
When an opposing party start attacking people on their beliefs, you know they are in bad shape.
Fight Spammers!
NYCL is not just a harder target to hit, he is also a much more valuable one. If the RIAA can take him out of the equation, then they can go back to pushing around children and crippled grandmothers, but like any bully they can't properly operate with anyone actually standing up to them.
What comes next is the lawyer equivalent of meeting at the playground after school. If the RIAA can put enough hurt on NYCL, RMS and anyone else who has been willing to take a stand, then they go back to stealing lunch money... otherwise it is quite likely that they'll be shown for puffed up cowards and never be taken seriously again.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Democrats and Republicans both hate the constitution; they just hate different parts of it (1st amendment & 2nd amendment for example).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
what a magnificently witless way to top off a fairly droll thread.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Back in the 1800s I could start a brewery easy enough. These days it's hard unless you've got a million dollars. In fact, starting any business is hard; it's not the taxes, it's the huge fucking amount of regulations you have to meet, which take a huge toll on you. My cost to make small-time alcohol are like $200 to start up and $1100 a barrel (55 gal); my costs with govt. regulation shit are about $300,000 to start up and $20,000/barrel unless I scale to tens of thousands of barrels. If you want to start a simple restaurant it'll cost you; if you want to start a restaurant that serves wine, you need $1000 more; rum, $100,000 more per year to operate. Ouch.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Well I wish computer programming was more accessible to me. What can you do? We live in a complex world. A lot of things require a lot of study to become "accessible", and each of us has only one lifetime. The law, like every other field of study, has its own language, conventions, methods, and processes. It takes time to learn them.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Well, yes. Yes we should. One day you will be sold into slavery-- oh, you'll be kept alive and well enough to work, but you'll be forced labor and the beatings will continue until you die. But that's not a threat of death now is it....
Support my political activism on Patreon.
In what possible way can that matter?
The justice department has limited resources. What they choose to focus those resources on matters a lot.
Ex-RIAA lawyers are likely to focus on RIAA concerns, if for no other reason than that's what they're familiar with.
That's a very bad thing and a form of regulatory capture.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
Now they have a cushy new job in the DOJ they have a different paymaster
Never heard of bribery?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
In that case wouldn't we choose GPLv2 rather than "later"?
Support SETI@home
Sort of. The BSD/MIT licence doesn't just allow somebody to slightly modify and close the source. It allows somebody to do that and re-licence under a closed copyright that prevents copying (as long as credit/attribution for the original work is given) - which I think is what Stallman is really against.
Without copyright, if somebody tried to do the above, (like Microsoft did with the AD Kerberos group extensions, for instance), you would be able to decompile Microsoft's code, identify changes from the original release, clean up and optimize the changed/decompiled source, and re-release it in commented source form, all without fear of legal reprisals. That would certainly be more work than the current system under the GPL, but you would effectively still have most of the rights that Stallman advocates for: the ability to own, maintain, and redistribute software you have placed an investment in, be it through development or purchase.
So I think Stallman would prefer the current status quo with GPL protection because itrequires less maintenance effort once GPL code has enough market share that network effects work in its favour, but would be satisfied with a copyright-free world.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
No, they don't. Stallman is not the FSF, nor are Stallman's public statements the stated principles of FSF. If this referred strictly to Stallman, it might be true. But it doesn't.
Comparing Stallman's statements to the stated purpose of the FSF is like blaming Bush's foreign policy on the average American citizen. It's just not valid.
The point is that it's empty rhetoric that's completely irrelevant to the legal argument. Somebody could be a politician notorious for advocating legalizing marijuana. If they saw and filmed you assaulting without provocation some guy on the street who had light up a joint, just because that politician advocates for marijuana doesn't render invalid or affect their recordings and testimony of your unprovoked assault.
You could try that kind of crappy approach if you're in front of a jury in republican country, but the opposing lawyer should object as soon as it was clear where you were going with the line of reasoning and the judge should sustain it and slap you with contempt of court if you persisted. Submitting that kind of argument in writing to the judge doesn't make it any more proper or relevant or render you immune to repercussions.
In other words, being a "Commie", while indicating a significant misunderstanding of human nature, doesn't automatically invalidate a person's direct observations and arguments on a point of law. The kind of rhetoric you are championing might be unfortunately effective in grade school, campaign trails, and government committee hearings but, by long established precedent, it has no place in a court of law.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
In a legal action, a legally qualified target can often have less latitude afforded them in their defense than unqualified targets.
Going after NYCL for, say, defamation not only ties up a thorn in their side in a court case, but is harder to defend because it is expected that NYCL should know the law precisely.
The idea that "ignorance of the law is not a defense" may be true, but only in a criminal suit, it affords you some breathing room in a civil suit, to my knowledge.
Going after the FSF gets them money from places other than the recording industry, if it is believed credible. Stallman has pissed off a few too many corporate magnates, and they have money and the will. Microsoft might put cash into this, for instance.
Seriously, the game just got kicked up a notch, and it is possible for the RIAA to prevail simply because of the "torrents" of money they might receive from these sorts of actions. Justice can be bought.
The opening is over. The average Joe is undoubtedly aware that copying is illegal, and will no longer be afforded any breathing room. It's time for mid-game. They're trying to take down Joe's advocates.
Watch out. There are many more gambits to be played. This is a long game.
--
Toro
Either we have freedom - and it is absolute, or we don't have any. Thus, at present we don't have any. A person without freedom is - a slave.
..but by your definition, Freedom = Anarchy (i.e one can do anything he or she wants to whomever they want whenever they want) ...which isn't really conducive for a civil society. The kind of freedom you're talking about exists, but you're gonna have to strip naked and head to the jungle.