Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Seeks Web Removal of Courtroom Audio
suraj.sun writes to tell us that the RIAA has asked a federal judge to order the removal of what they are calling "unauthorized and illegal recordings" by Harvard University's Charles Nesson of pretrial hearings and depositions in a file-sharing lawsuit. "The case concerns former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum, who Nesson is defending in an RIAA civil lawsuit accusing him of file-sharing copyrighted music. Jury selection is scheduled in three weeks, in what is shaping up to be the RIAA's second of about 30,000 cases against individuals to reach trial. The labels, represented by the RIAA, on Monday cited a series of examples in which they accuse Nesson of violating court orders and privacy laws by posting audio to his blog or to the Berkman site."
He labeled as âoegobbledygookâ the felony privacy law that is punishable by up to five years in prison.
but has blatantly said that he's going to refuse to comply with what the law says. That's like acknowledging that your source of evidence for convictions gets its information illegally, but you still choose to use it. Not that I know anyone who'd do that, but just saying.
n/t
"Streisand Effect"?
Coming up next, RIAA applies for patent for human voice. All speech will be licensed, $0.99 a sentence.
It's the internet -- the cat never goes back in the bag.
Caveat Utilitor
second of about 30,000 cases
Let's assume that's 20 songs per case on unrelated albums. According to section 504.c.1 each work can cost the defendent between $750 and $30,000. And if the first trial was any indication, $30,000 per song is actually the low end once you've gotten past lawyer fees. Ok so by the letter of the law the RIAA is looking to get anywhere from $450 million to $18 billion. I hope to god that Nesson stops upsetting the court and sets some better precedent than the first case. I don't care if he wants to post courtroom audio. That's a great idea and I appreciate where his heart is but that's not what this is about! I do care that he works to either reduce these unrealistic damage amounts or redefine copyright violation. So far he's just been really good at upsetting people--and not the right people!
My work here is dung.
Coming up next, RIAA applies for patent for human voice. All speech will be licensed, $0.99 a sentence.
If that happens, I'd say the vow of silence will come back into vogue very quickly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Somebody get this on Wikileaks yet? While posting this is illegal, sure, posting much of anything is similarly illegal in the People's Republic of China right now, too. Not saying it'd be the right thing to do, but if the RIAA and their contemporaries are allowed to censor potentially adverse information about their practices as a matter of habit (silly, considering their tactics are no great secret), how is the general public supposed to defend themselves from future predatory litigation from these folks? Oh, silly me, of course....they're NOT. We truly have the best legal system money can buy, after all......
Don't they already demand royalties for recordings whether they own the rights or not?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Had to be said. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
If there's anything MAFIAA are know for, it's fighting a lost cause.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
nt
One is well advised not to fuck with harvard, espescially when they're openly defying law. I've got a feeling Nesson knows exactly what he's doing.
I gots one! I didn't read TFA, but this question still burns hot in my brain-mind.
If a state legislature passes a law that is unconstitutional, can that law be enforced? Let's say a state legislature passes a law stating that shoplifters must have their hands chopped off, is it now legal to start choppin' hands? If it is legal to start choppin' hands, whose heads will get chopped once it gets to federal court to be overturned as cruel and unusual?
It seems to me that there is no accountability for the idiots who pass unconstitutional laws in the first place.
Porquoi?
This is why we have courts that can strike down bad laws.
Courts can't and shouldn't strike down "bad" laws or even stupid laws. They can strike down Unconstitutional laws, but unconstitutional and bad aren't 100% overlapping.
They are consistent if nothing else.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They already have copyrighted silence. In the cover of 4'33" by John Cage, it claims the piece can be played for any length of time, with any instrument, including the human voice.
My middle finger is royalty-free.
If that happens, I'd say the vow of silence will come back into vogue very quickly.
Too late. 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence is copyright 1952 by John Cage (deceased 1992), and infringing derivative works of it of varying lengths have been successfully prosecuted by his estate on more than one occasion, and you can expect them still to be until 2047 (1952 + 95 because 1952 1978).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
4 minutes 33 seconds of silence is copyright 1952 by John Cage
And it's a hell of a lot better than the drivel they call music these days...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
and you can expect them still to be until 2047 (1952 + 95 because 1952 < 1978).
I fixed that for me: I forgot to entify the less-than sign.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Coming up next, RIAA applies for patent for human voice. All speech will be licensed, $0.99 a sentence.
That seems like a very good idea, because human voice is an invention of nature and since nature is not present the RIAA can be appointed as its representative, like the laws in some countries where if no one claims copyright for a work some benevolent copyright managing organization takes hold of it so that no bad people pirate it until the real owner comes and takes it, although often when the real owner comes to take it the benevolent organization may not give the copyright back, but that's okay since they're benevolent and need the money to keep carrying out their benevolence, and also we have freedom of speech but the question is how can you speak freely when anyone can just copy what you say - look at China, they have no copyright and no one is willing to speak out against the government because if they do people would just steal it, because some people are bad and it only takes one person to let all the other bad people pirate your speech (to be continued...)
While your three boxes are neat and tidy, there is one box you've left out that everyone in a representative democracy is supposedly guaranteed above all others - the soap box.
This one is most important here, since the jury hasn't yet been formed, there is nothing in the legislative pipeline that will likely reform copyright if some person or persons is elected, and of course killing people or threatening to do so is way out of line in this case.
Basically what is happening seems to be a conflict between:
1) somebody's right to limit others' free speech involved in suing (in front of a jury eventually?) to protect their claimed legal copyright to limit others' free speech, and
2)free speech itself.
Yes, they do. See Internet Radio and the Canadian tax on blank optical media, among other things. Also, the permanent extension of copyrights which is nothing less than outright theft of our entire culture.
Unlike music piracy, the eternal copyright actually deprives people of content they are entitled to, so it is theft. It is different from illicit copying.
Unfortunately the only cure is to abolish copyright altogether, or as near as can be accomplished without rewriting the constitution.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Listen to this recording that he made. He enters a phone conversation with a judge and other parties to the litigation, and fails at the outset to let any of them know that he is recording the conversation along with a room full of students listening in. This bit of eavesdropping only comes to light when the judge asks him pointedly if the call is being recorded. That is when Mr. "Openness" admits that he is in fact recording the conversation with the presence of his students.
It seems to me that Mr. Openness, an obviously deceitful person, only turns to honesty in the face of a room full of witnesses, a very astute judge, and his own potential criminal liability for illegal wiretapping and contempt of court. Translation: his ass over his principles.
Great and open guy, that Nesson character is. Hard to miss it.
Excellent example. Bad laws are bad because it is possible to break them even when the lawbreaker is doing the right thing. However, striking a bad law down does not require an actual test case to show that a bad law is bad. A test case may help, but it is not necessary. Therefore, it is complete to say that bad laws get struck down when the legislative branch smartens up and changes them. The legislative branch may smarten up by seeing test cases of people breaking them, or it may just smarten up by thinking a law through and not seeing any test cases. Either way, bad laws get struck down.
I've been bitten in a judicial process, where the other party said one thing in one court and another thing in another. It would have worked greatly to our advantage if we'd been able to use this lying. Also, in one of the courts the judge acted like he was a member of the other party. With audio tapes .
I hope there is a lawyer here (and sticks around for a few rounds of discussion). Why do laws prohibit to make recordings in court? I think it would help to keep parties (and judges) honest. Any pointers to relevant websites are also welcome.
Bert
FYI, only 12 out of 50 states forbid recording a conversation you have without the other party knowing. From URL http://www.callcorder.com/phone-recording-law-america.htm :
In the vast majority of the US, what he has done is perfectly acceptable, at least with regards to letting the other party know or not know about the conversation being recorded. Just because your personal ethical framework doesn't agree, this doesn't make Nesson a douchebag.
A lot of people think RIAA is "slimy" for all of the collateral damage they are causing to society while trying to preserve their dying business model. Personally, I'm undecided whether their actions are actually unethical --- but I'm certain that they are dangerous and detrimental to society.
Several commenters have made arguments based on the assumption that the recordings in question were made in a federal courtroom. That is not the case. If you RTFA, you will discover that what is at issue are recordings of depositions, which are normally taken in the offices of law or sometimes in a hotel room, and of telephone calls between the parties and the judge, where only the latter may have been in the courtroom. The argument that Massachusetts law governing recordings does not apply because the recordings were made in a federal courtroom is therefore wrong.
I *know* this is Slashdot, but if I see yet another intahwebz-style lolcat-Schrödinger-cat-in-the-bag-of-worms metaphor beneath this comment... I swear I'll kill your dog.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
They had screenshots of his shareza folder MAJOR invasion of privacy...case closed?