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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."
The problem they have here is that as with last time when they lost, its basically a Dick Cheney move. They might be stomping all over people's rights, it might have no real justification and the method via which they obtain evidence are horrifically flawed, but they "believe" that this is protecting artist's rights and so the ends justifies the means.
The RIAA is just playing a series of Dick moves in the hope that if they create enough fear then people will accept it. The problem is that while Dick had some real terrorists to scare people about (and made up others) the RIAA are trying to turn Soccer Mom's into terrorists and it just doesn't work.
Surely their only hope is to get Dick "madder than a sack full of badgers" Cheney to claim its a national security issue and that Obama is just supporting terrorists by allowing this. This will pull in Fox News and suddenly the RIAA might have a chance.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Nope. The judge gave the jury the wrong instructions, so she's not guilty
How come you can't throw out every case where the judge says "you must return a guilty verdict if you think they have broken this law" then?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't care about your "bias." What I'm more worried about is this "perceived" overuse of your so called "quotes." What "evidence" do you have that people like having quotes to spruce up your "reporting?"
By the way, punctuation goes inside the quote.
This isn't an appeal, it is a new trial.
I can't see the RIAA walking away from this. The defense motions were clearly grasping at straws. Why even try to bring in a open wireless issue when there was no wireless router? They tried to argue that communication between two computers was "wiretapping" of some sort. They tried to trot out the idea that one computer recording information from a two-computer conversation was somehow wrong.
I'll be very surprised if there is anything meaningful to come from the defense other than whining. Meaningless whining.