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."

Comments

Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

NYCL is once again playing the pundit, and shrilly declaring that the RIAA is in trouble without any kind of recognition of the other side of things!

Maybe I'm just being silly, but I prefer journalism to at least have a pretense of being unbiased. Would it kill NYCL to at least try to be a tad even-handed? I'm not saying that's a deal breaker if it does, mind you...

Re:Translation:

[Merls the Sneaky]

Maybe that has to do with his contempt of **AA lawers and thier tactics.

He is also acutely aware of the audience on /. and the type of summaries that peak interest. ( therefore driving up traffic to his blog.)

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Neutral terms??? I'm sorry, but if you think those are neutral terms, then I can only say we've got an entirely different perspective on what constitutes a neutral presentation. That summary was clearly anything but neutral to me.

And sometimes you do have to point how biased somebody's words are. I suppose I could have detailed their faults line by line, but it just wasn't worth it to me. I've found people either see the problems for themselves or there's nothing you can do to convince them. It's like explaining to people about Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'reilly. You can try pointing out the lies and deceptions in both of those people's programs, but in my experience, all it leads to is further attacks. Heck, I've found you can't even convince people to not touch a hot pot till they burn themselves a few times.

So yeah if I'm just going to get attacked, why should I bother pointing out the specific flaws in the presentation? I sincerely doubt NYCL will ever try to correct the impressions he's giving even if I had, I see him far more likely to jump to the attack than recognize even the possibility that he could do a better job of being unbiased, as in fact, he has acted in this thread. Of course, I know it's probably fruitless, but hey, sometimes I choose not to remain silent. Go figure. It makes me feel better knowing I didn't.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

you are on serious medication if you think NYCL is neutral. He exists purely to drive traffic to his ad-infested blog which plays on this bullshit belief that when you steal music, its the people prosecuting you that are in the wrong.
he is worse than the fucking record companies

So when do they call Dick?

[MosesJones]

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.

Um, he is phony!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the problem is not that NYCL would be lying by being even-handed, the problem is that his lack of even-handedness makes him phony, as he is giving a false iimpression of the situation, with his biases quite evident.

Sorry, but I see his posts, I know he's not even presenting anything close to the truth of the situation. This leads me to discount him even further. Of course, he also tries silly accusations like AC's being paid for by the RIAA. I myself find comments to be interesting, and it offers me a further insight as to him, but not because it offers anything resembling an accurate presentation.

Re:Um, he is phony!

[pcraven]

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.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read his summary, he tells, in neutral terms, about one of the obstacles the record companies have to overcome

He puts 'technical', 'explained' and 'evidence' in quotes when describing that presented by the RIAA. Quotation marks are a way of casting doubt on something, which even the Wikipedia manual of style recognises.

Furthermore, NYCL has never hid his deep hatred for the recording companies, and has in the past given "legal" (in this case, the quotes are warranted) opinions on the admissibility of evidence that turned out to be false opinions.

If Rupert Murdoch instructs his newsdesk to always put "lawyer" in quotes when describing NYCL, would that indicate any form of bias? Hm?

I agree that you should wash your mouth.

Re:I hope so, but...

[drinkypoo]

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?

Re:A denied motion to dismiss?

[cdrguru]

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.