Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Case, Capitol vs. Thomas #2, Starts Monday
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's first trial verdict having been tossed out last year, the RIAA is coming back for a second round starting Monday. This time the trial will be in Minneapolis, rather than Duluth, and the defendant will have a team of pro bono lawyers on her side. But perhaps the most important new development is that this time, the 'technical' evidence garnered by MediaSentry and 'explained' by the RIAA's expert witness Doug Jacobson, will not get the free pass it got the first time around. In the 2007 trial in Capitol Records v. Thomas, no objection was made by defendant's lawyer to the MediaSentry/Doug Jacobson 'evidence' upon which the RIAA relied, and the evidence was admitted without objection. This time there will be no free ride, as defendant's tech-savvy lawyers have already filed a list of objections to the RIAA's proposed exhibits. Most notably, they attack the 'technical' materials submitted by MediaSentry and Dr. Doug Jacobson under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which requires evidence based on 'scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge' to be based on sufficient facts or data, to be the product of reliable principles and methods, and to be the result of those principles and methods having been applied reliably to the facts of the case. If the evidence fails to meet those standards, it is inadmissible. This judge has already shown acute awareness of these principles in deciding which subjects the defendant's expert could and could not address. This should be interesting."
This should be interesting.
This case seems like the exact type of case the RIAA avoids like the plague. Any time any of their methods are subjected to any serious scrutiny, they drop the case and run. They know any serious discovery will kill their racket.
So what's to keep them from dropping this like a radioactive potato when the bevy of tech savvy pro bono lawyers start to tear Mediasentry a new one? It would be nice if the case went on long enough for this Rule 702 thing to kill Mediasentry gathered evidence - which could hopefully be used as a precedent for other cases or requests for retrial. But at this point I'm not counting on the RIAA staying with this one long enough for even that much good to come from it.
Hopefully I'm missing something.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
After following more and more of these cases, I regret that I haven't been able to actually see what goes on in the courtroom. (That's my curiosity talking. I also have a feeling that after seeing the first one, I won't be so regretful if I don't see a second one. :-) )
Any chance that at least a transcript or audio recording will become available, eventually?
Thanks, Ray, now I have plenty of bedtime reading!
BTW, I notice that those transcripts were posted on your blog more than a year after the trial itself. We Slashdotters are used to practically instant access to everything, so I'm curious: what takes so long for such transcripts to become available? Could the transparency of the court system improve in the future because of technological advances, or are there lots of legal issues involved which impede this?
You realize that by criticizing the RIAA evidence you are implicitly agreeing that the defendant would be financially liable were better quality evidence produced.
What's the biggest word in that sentence? WERE.
If better evidence WERE to be produced, then maybe. But so far none has, and (so far at least) we have that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing.
And again, Mediasentry are not cops. They are not officers of the court. There are merely people with a story to tell. The defendant is another person with another story to tell.
So sure, IF better evidence were to have been collected, and IF she actually was guilty of something, and IF there was actual evidence to collect, and IF it was illegal to "make available", THEN maybe she'd be liable for some damages.
But that's a lot of IFs.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Personally I'm one of many who don't give a Monkeys about K Dawsons alleged poor editing or NYCL's alleged bias. Legions tend to be a bit larger in number than the regular handful of posts bitching about it. Theres somewhere in the order of 1-2 million registered slashdot users and most stories will attract less than 500 comments, with a handful of complaints.
complainers are probably out numbered by trolls and not necessarily a completely separate group.
Anything that can be used to wind up slashdot users can and will be used repeatedly.
In this particular case the interesting thing is can the prosecution prove their case with valid evidence, and what just what is valid evidence. Making available a list of file names isn't the same as offering copyrighted material. Emule for example will often respond with 1000's of file sharers having files named exactly what your looking for but usually the reported file size makes it obvious that the file is something else.
Lets get one thing straight if she was going to be fined a few hundred dollars, then perhaps "well she probably did it" is almost acceptable There's probably few people who haven't infringed copyright one way or another, who hasn't sung happy birthday without paying royalties.
But the RIAA doesn't want anything like a proportionate penalty but close on $250,000 for that sort of penalty there should be real indisputable legally gathered expert evidence.
It's not what she did thats bringing this penalty upon her but what everyone else did but never got caught doing that she's getting clobbered for.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants