RIAA Moves To Keep Revenue Info Secret

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In the Boston, Massachusetts case SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court had ordered the RIAA to produce certain revenue information, which would be relevant to a determination of the 'fair use' defense. The RIAA has now moved for a protective order to keep the information 'confidential.' In the opinion of the undersigned, the fact that the motion is made jointly by four competitors shows that any claim suggesting the information is valuable or 'proprietary' would be unfounded, and the sole purpose for making the motion is to keep the information out of the hands of lawyers for other defendants, thus increasing the defense costs in other cases."

Comments

isn't collusion part of Anti-Trust

[Dan667]

Anyway to push that so that the Feds look at this as part of of an Anti-Trust investigation.

Re:isn't collusion part of Anti-Trust

[erroneus]

It would be if it were used to maintain their market dominance or if it were used to harm the consumer by controlling aspects of the market to keep prices high or to keep prices lower than alternatives.

This is about the [ab]use of the legal process. There are other laws regulating that, but at the moment, using the legal system the way the RIAA does is rarely if ever punished. It is unfortunate but there are reasons for being reluctant to make changes or take measures against abuses of the legal process not the least of which would place additional burden, complications and scrutiny on those seeking relief through the legal system and might ultimately lead to preventing some people from being able to seek relief at all.

The RIAA is an aggressive and abusive entity that is designed and intended to be exactly what it is. Unfortunately, seeking relief from the existence or the activities of the RIAA would be a painfully slow if not impossible task. The act of preventing anyone from participating in the judiciary process of government potentially damages the rights of all. (On the other hand, we already prevent convicted felons from participating in elections or other such things and disbarring lawyers isn't unheard of either.)

Re:isn't collusion part of Anti-Trust

[jank1887]

hard to point to a 'legitimate' alternative, except for maybe the acceptable price for goods as determined by the law of supply and demand. RIAA v. Adam Smith

Re:isn't collusion part of Anti-Trust

[mysidia]

See, that's exactly what I mean. The RIAA have disingenuously defined the alternative to buying their retail boxed product as illegitimate.

Whereas previous the Audio Home Recording Act assured consumers of their right to make recordings.

Obtaining a recording of an individual song from a friend, whether through sneakernet, FTP, Windows filesharing, or other means, is presumably an alternative to buying a very expensive retail boxed album.

And the RIAA pursues action against that practice.

Without any regard for the law or fair use, or intended purpose of the download or upload, they assume all peer-to-peer file transfers are infringement, not legitimate, and the worst possible breach of the law.

A large trust like the RIAA labelling all the alternatives to members (trust certificate owners) as thieves or criminals is among the most extreme forms of monopolistic practice.

Corporation?

[nurb432]

If so they have to publish yearly statements of income/profit/loss/etc. If they are faking the numbers, its fraud time.

Then they can't "prove" damages

[Green Salad]

it's merely an assertion of damages. Lost revenue? Prove it.

Wow...

[lordofwhee]

Because that doesn't seem suspicious AT ALL...

Can the Judge say "maybe"?

[AnotherBlackHat]

Can the judge make a ruling like, "Ok, I'll order this information kept secret for now, but in the interest of expediency you have to turn the information over today, and I'll entertain arguments as to why I should or shouldn't allow it to stay that way after the defendant has had a chance to look over the information?"

I ask because it seems crazy to me that the judge can rule on how important the information is to their business without actually seeing it, or hearing what the other side has to say about it. (Wouldn't that be ex parte and as such frowned upon?)

Re:Can the Judge say "maybe"?

[tinkerghost]

Can the judge make a ruling like, "Ok, I'll order this information kept secret for now, but in the interest of expediency you have to turn the information over today, and I'll entertain arguments as to why I should or shouldn't allow it to stay that way after the defendant has had a chance to look over the information?"

The judge can issue an order for en camera review - essentially he get's to look at it first without any promises that it will ever go to the defense. So yes, he can certainly gag it for now and then remove the gag at any time it's petitioned to do so.

Re:Seriously...

[MarkvW]

Don't go to law school. Become a legislator. That's the ONLY way any of this can possibly change.

Re:Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a judge alive not willing to put up with these shenanigans?

Shenanigans? They're not refusing to provide the requested information. They're just asking for a protective order so that certain information is used only for the trial and not disclosed to the public. These requests are commonplace and parties usually agree to them without putting up a fight.

Consider production of a hard drive in a file sharing case. It is only fair that the copyright owner agree to a protective order limiting what can be done with information discovered (e.g., mp3s found, configuration files, etc.). The information may be relevant to to the case, but it isn't of any legitimate interest to the general public and, but for the law suit, would not be disclosed at all.

If NYCL was defending someone in a file sharing case and the copyright holder refused to enter into a protective order regarding hard drive contents, don't you think he ask the court to issue a protective order anyway? He'd probably also put up a big public stink about how the copyright holder was acting unreasonably.

So why is it shenaningans when the copyright holder wants to protect their information but legitimate when a file sharer wants to protect his or her information?

Re:Why is it....

[jerep]

same here, although after seeing this im tempted to download even more music.. if only today's music didnt suck so much. Maybe without the RIAA and other corporations only in the music industry for profits, we'd get better songs which are actually worth buying.

Justifying piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow pirates,

I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty. I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong, but if Slashdot posts enough articles bashing the RIAA/MPAA/copyright law/whatever, it's easier for me to accept what I'm doing emotionally by visualizing someone else as the bad guy. Once on the forefront of relevant IT news, Slashdot is now a lame repository of mainstream pseudoscience links and pro-piracy articles to appease a dwindling readership. I am overjoyed.

Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.

I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work. I'm just so used to pirating things now that I take it for granted. If anyone mentions John Carmack to make me feel guilty, I'll look for Slashdot articles that bolster my viewpoint, such as this one, amusingly posted in the Your Rights Online section even though none of my rights are being violated.

According to that study, it's okay to not pay people for their work because there's some vague hope that they'll make up the difference in income through "concerts and speaking tours." Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do. John Carmack must stop programming in order to make money from programming. It's genius. The study does exactly what I need it to--make me feel less guilty when I pirate. We've managed to stretch the truth so far that we're actually telling ourselves that we're helping artists by not paying them for their work. Excellent job.

I look forward to Slashdot telling me everyday who the bad guys are. Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement, and they've pretended to care about plagiarism, we're supposed to go along with Slashdot's anti-copyright agenda. I'm okay with that hypocrisy because it serves me. It makes me feel less guilty when I pirate something. Remember, I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA/MPAA/whatever is. That makes it okay for me to not pay people for their work.

EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL. I don't care, because I'm too busy concerning myself with what I want for free, not about the consequences. I want to get rid of copyrights because I've been told that copyrights are the bad guy, and they are an obstacle to my rampant piracy.

Fellow pirates, let us continue our selfish leeching. Let us paint others as the bad guys to absolve us of our emotional guilt. Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.

Yours truly,
A fellow Slashbot

Re:Seriously...

[countertrolling]

So why is it shenaningans when the copyright holder wants to protect their information but legitimate when a file sharer wants to protect his or her information?

Because information used to project authority must always be closely scrutinized, in broad daylight. The file sharers' info is a personal matter.

Re:The Relevance of Revenue

[shaitand]

Because, a breakdown of actual revenue can likely be used to demonstrate that it is unlikely that any damage occurred at all from the alleged infringement. The use causing financial damages to the holder of the copyright is directly relevant to whether or not the use qualifies as fair use under copyright law.

Right now the RIAA wants to claim that filesharing hurts them really really bad. They claim it costs them billions of dollars and push for outrageous amounts per individual song infringed (which, even if you accept their numbers and divide it among the tens of millions of shared music copies would never reach even $5 a song let alone tens of thousands). Music is going to be destroyed by this heinous activity, etc, etc, etc. But they are raking in record level profits while every other industry is crashing. The last thing the RIAA wants is for you to see real numbers and details of the methods used to derive them because their numbers are cooked and may be made up entirely.

WTF ?

[smoker2]

In the opinion of the undersigned, the fact that the motion is made jointly by four competitors shows that any claim suggesting the information is valuable or 'proprietary' would be unfounded,

That doesn't follow at all. Competitors would normally agree to not share information in public. It is in all their interests. If they win the motion all their secrets are safe. What point is there in having a competitors secrets if he has yours ? If they were to reveal their secrets, then the data would definitely not be valuable would it. Just making a joint motion does not imply anything, as they haven't shared any data.

Also, the RIAA is specifically set up to act on those competitors behalf. Of course it will be a joint motion.
Competitor 1, will you share your data ? - - No.
Competitor 2, will you share your data ? - - No.
Competitor 3, will you share your data ? - - No.
Competitor 4, will you share your data ? - - No.

Oh the data can't be worth anything then ????

I hope you have better arguments than that one.

Re:WTF ?

[Antony T Curtis]

They probably won't want to make the sales data for specific songs public for a much simpler reason:

The artists who originally created the music would sue them for fraud because their royalties were paid for a much smaller amount of claimed sales.

If the music labels simply reported the numbers which they told the artists, the judge would probably see that the claimed damages are way over-inflated. Even if they used the real numbers, their claimed damages would likely seem excessive. So they (the labels) would like to use some outlandish sales data to show that when individual X "made available" song Y, the sales dropped to a thousandth of what it once was and hence justifying the damages.

Thats what my bet is on.

Re:Seriously...

[schon]

So why is it shenaningans when the copyright holder wants to protect their information but legitimate when a file sharer wants to protect his or her information?

Because a corporation is not a person.