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RIAA Loses Bid To Keep Revenues Secret
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's motion to keep secret the record companies' 1999-to-date revenues for the copyrighted song files at the heart of the case has been denied, in the Boston case scheduled for trial July 27th, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The Judge had previously ordered the plaintiff record companies to produce a summary of the 1999-to-date revenues for the recordings, broken down into physical and digital sales. On the day the summary was due to be produced, instead of producing it, they produced a 'protective order motion' asking the Judge to rule that the information would have to be kept secret. The Judge rejected that motion: 'the Court does not comprehend how disclosure would impair the Plaintiffs' competitive business prospects when three of the four biggest record labels in the world — Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and UMG Recording, Inc. — are participating jointly in this lawsuit and, presumably, would have joint access to this information.'"
I wonder if they told the artists one set of numbers and need more time to make sure what they give to the court matches that set.
Panic now, beat the rush!
because music copyright usually results in a monopoly situation there is not competition - no one else is publishing the same track in competition to them, so the information is not commercially sensitive
They'd have to show what they actually gain from "honest" business and have that compared to their extortion schemes. It could even show that the "claimed losses" exceed what one person could possibly cause in damages.
And that in turn could mean that their insane claims (and the verdicts that ensued) could be up for review, they could end up with far more sane sentences and that in turn would make the whole "shock and awe" deterrent a joke.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
haha! well, maybe now their hollywood accounting will come back to bite them in the ass as they struggle to show that the songs are now worth massive damages, when they were worth nothing or less as they computed royalties for the artists they were screwing.
MAFIAA: You have to take into account everyone that downloaded them.
JUDGE: Ok so lets say 10 people downloaded each one, that's about so that's about $4800 right?
By definition, the average participant in a peer sharing network uploads one copy. There's no way around that. If the actual number of uploads is unknown, the only remotely reasonable assumption for damage calculations is 1.0000000000000000000000000.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Yeah, but they do a lot of things that are hard for me to imagine until they do them.