Slashdot Mirror
Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum
Several readers sent us updates from the Boston courtroom where, mere hours before the start of trial, a federal judge ruled out fair use as a defense. Wired writes that "the outcome is already shaping up to resemble the only other file sharing trial," in which the RIAA got a $1.92M judgement against Jammie Thomas-Rassert. The defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, has already essentially admitted to sharing music files, and the entire defense put together by Harvard Prof. Charles Nesson and his students turned on the question of fair use. The judge wrote that the proposed defense would be "so broad it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created." Jury selection is complete and opening arguments will begin tomorrow morning. Here is the Twitter feed organized by Prof. Nesson's law students.
I wonder why judges are throwing out defenses before the defense could even bring out the arguments of their reasoning. Copying (downloading) music for personal purposes is considered fair use in many if not all European countries.
This seems like another bought off or pressured case.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Man I don't get how people are so polarized about this. Look dudes. It's against the law to infringe copyrighted material. It's against the law to aid somebody else breaking the law. File sharing therefor is Against The Law. It is the Proper Decision for these people to be convicted. Anything else would make me think the judges were asleep at the wheel.
If you dislike that so much, don't focus on whether somebody wins or loses these cases. It is Proper that they lose. It would be Wrong if the law bent so much to allow what is clearly outlawed. Instead, seek to CHANGE the law. Donate to lobbyists. Become lobbyists yourself. Civil disobedience is fine, but don't expect to get off the hook for doing it until you change the law.
This "defense" cooked up by Neeson's retard students is absolute malarkey. The judge's ruling against fair use as a defense is spot-on. There's no "fair use" here, only some kid violating copyright for the hell of violating copyright. This is going to end badly for Joel, and his crybaby defense scheme is only going to set bad precedent. Someone somewhere will only extend this case's outcome to further wreck the place. The whole thing stinks to high heaven of a bunch of whiny Harvard assholes who simply didn't get what they want and would rather push a shitty agenda rather than work through rational means.
Where is NewYorkCountryLawyer when you need him?
I don't know what to believe without NewYorkCountryLawyer weighing in his opinion!
My page.
Lawyers (and judges) these days have literally zero concept of a law being "wrong". They are trained and selected through years of education to bring cases to an equitable resolution. No party actually wins or loses. They settle. The lawyers win.
They have evolved to this point through natural selection and their own best interests.
Laws are no longer scrutinized for logical consistency or correctness or even adherence to any type of higher law. They are merely accepted as the will of the legislature and added to the growing pile of regulations to be forced on the plebes.
The old stereotypes of Perry Mason or Matlock getting at the truth of a legal question are long gone. There is no more truth. There is only a vast gray area in which to bring both parties to some type of agreement. And if they can't agree, well then just rig the system by disallowing any argument that might lead to resolution of the conflict at hand.
Listen to this judge. Even allowing the defendant to utter such a phrase as "fair use" to a jury would be somehow unfair to the Congress, who after all worked very hard to try to make a fair Copyright law. We wouldn't want to offend them with the possibility that twelve citizens might find their laws to be fundamentally flawed, through anything resembling a fair trial or due process or anything.
Our latest Supreme Court nominee didn't even like Perry Mason. She preferred the prosecutor who continually brought half-assed wrongful prosecutions of innocent citizens before the court and lost every week. She probably felt sorry for him. She probably went into law in order to bring some equity to the system, and give him a chance to win more often. Surely the fact that he lost every time meant that there was some inherent flaw in the system, right? Wasn't he being discriminated against somehow?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Disproportionate statutory damages is the only reasonable defense; as others have pointed out, the RIAA gains ridiculous leverage because merely leaving a song upon eMule subjects you to thousands of dollars in phantom damages. Even if you ARE innocent, the risk/reward ratio allows the record mafia to shake you down simply because no one can risk the damages from losing.
Of course, the other obvious approach is to have Congress rewrite the statute to properly differentiate between a bootlegging operation with thousands of dollars in profit with counterfeit DVDs and some poor schmuck trying to get a few Mp3s.
Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog . . .
I was going to mod you up, but then I remembered the nutrient that the tree of liberty thrives upon and became depressed.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The RIAA's "objection" came in the form of a new pool quietly installed in the judge's backyard, more than likely...
If I may be permitted to misquote Isaac Asimov:
Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the incompetent.
It really isn't that hard to understand:
Under American law, the geek with a broadband connection doesn't have the right to a free digital download copy of WALL-E.
Nor does he have the right to upload his screener of the Transformers to 15,000 of his closest friends on the P2P nets.
The geek is cheap and he feeds on the thrill - and that is what lands him in court.
Netflix lists 100,000 DVDs and 2,000 Blu-Ray discs.
For about $15 a month he could build a substantial personal collection which would be of interest to no one so long as it remains within his home network.
Mind you, that's still a five fingered discount, and not Fair Use.