Camara Goes On Offense Against the RIAA

whisper_jeff writes "Ars has an excellent write up outlining how Kiwi Camara (Jammie Thomas-Rasset's new lawyer) is following the 'Best Defense is a Good Offense' philosophy and going on the attack against the RIAA. Not content to just defend his client, he is laying siege against the RIAA's entire campaign and beginning the work of dismantling it from the bottom up, starting with the question of whether they actually do own the copyrights that were allegedly infringed. And, if you're thinking this is good for everyone who's been harassed by the RIAA, you'd be right — Camara, along with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, plans to file a class-action suit seeking to force the RIAA to return all the (ill-gotten) money they've earned from their litigation campaign." We first discussed the efforts of Nesson and Camara to thwart the RIAA last month.

Comments

More on Camara/Thomas Vs. RIAA

[yerktoader]

There's more happening, and not all of it is necessarily going to work. I hope Thomas comes out on top, but I wonder how some of these tactics will affect the case overall.

Re:More exciting than the play offs

[jamstar7]

This is Slashdot. Anything is more exciting than sports.

Except Redwings Hockey isn't a sport, it's a religon. And they'll bring home the Cup on Friday night.

But I like the idea of RIAA getting a dose of its own medicine. This day has been a long time coming, just like that other case we've been watching from the peanut gallery. Almost makes you wish you could sell tickets & popcorn at it. It's gonna be a helluva show...

Re:Look that gift horse in the mouth, Jammie

[nausea_malvarma]

Problem is, most "Indie Music" is really on a major label. Take Sub-Pop. Every band on Sub Pop has been called Indie at some point, and most think Sub Pop is an independent label. On the contrary. 49% of the label is owned by Warner Brothers. Sub Pop does not directly fund the RIAA, but every Sub Pop album you buy supports Warner Brothers, which does.

One can use RIAA Radar to cleanse their music collection, but it's not perfect, since it does not detect this sort of indirect RIAA support. Realistically, if one want's to boycott the RIAA, they might as well boycott the idea of record labels themselves. In an age where bands can make their own album with consumer recording equipment, and make it sound just as good or better than professional releases, then distribute that music with the most powerful communication medium known to humanity, why do we still have these record label middlemen?

The RIAA's ill fated motion to bar objections

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

By the way, I submitted a proposed article a few days ago -- which is still in the Firehose -- about the Judge denying the RIAA's motion to bar Jammie from objecting to the defects in their copyright registration documents. I guess the article is being rejected, although it was voted up to "orange" in the Firehose, so you might want to check it out.

Re:Wow!!!

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I'll ignore the snarky end of your reply

What do you mean you'll ignore it? Damn, that's the best part.

and chalk it up to this being a subject near and dear to your heart.

Instead of my just being a snarky bastard? Well thanks for the more charitable interpretation.

Instead, I'll ask for clarification

I can do that too, although I prefer snarky.

- are the lawsuits not the individual company versus the alleged infringer?

Yes they are. But the actual filing and preparation is done by the RIAA. They just stick the record companies' names in. And when needed they give the record companies papers to sign. And then, if they get a judgment, the record companies assign the judgment to the RIAA, and the RIAA brings its own judgment collection proceeding.

For example, the case at hand is "Capitol v. Thomas" not "RIAA v. Thomas". Or is it the cases are filed BY the RIAA on BEHALF OF the company?

Right.

As for the checks, I'll write that off as me being incorrect. It happens.

Yeah, the settlement checks are payable to "RIAA Litigation Fund" (or something like that).

Oh, and by the way, Matthew Oppenheim, who acts as the "client" and the "principal" of the record companies, for settlement purposes, was at the counsel table during the first trial (and was observed by Ars Technica's reporter as reading my blog on his laptop), and has gotten himself admitted pro hac vice in the case this time around, which means he will be doing some questioning, or argument, or both.

Re:A$$ kickin' time

[VGPowerlord]

The question was why nobody had complained about all the prior term extensions. Well there was nobody around to complain. But the internet changed all that.

Well, up until 1976, US Copyright law was still fairly sane... 28 years with the possibility to file for another 28 years... and you have to file for copyright on everything.

The Copyright Act of 1976 bumped that to the author's life plus 50 years, made copyrights automatic, and introduced a number of other things into US Copyright law (including Fair Use). It could be that some people thought that the latter changes were good things.

However, by the time the most recent copyright extension happened, in 1998, we had already been exposed to the modern insanity super-long copyrights introduced, and we started to fight against the insanity of increasing it even further. It also introduced nothing new in terms of how Copyrights worked (the DMCA came a year or two later). It was a pure greed move by certain corporate interests, including one mousy movie studio.