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.'"

Comments

I wonder if ...

[TomTraynor]

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.

Re:But Sir

[Colonel Korn]

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.

Re:Come on Ray!

[Xebikr]

Hard for me to imagine them doing that, though.

Yeah, but they do a lot of things that are hard for me to imagine until they do them.