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RIAA Awarded $675,000 In Tenenbaum Trial
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The jury awarded the record company plaintiffs $675,000 in the Boston trial defended by Prof. Charles Nesson, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. I was not surprised, since exactly none of the central issues ever even came up in this trial. The judge had instructed the jurors that Mr. Tenenbaum was liable, and that their only task was to come up with a verdict that was more than $22,500 and less than $4.5 million. According to the judge, her reason for doing so was that, when on the stand, the defendant was asked if he admitted liability, and he said 'yes.' The lawyers among you will know that that was a totally improper question, and that the Court should not have even allowed it, much less based her holding upon the answer to it."
I can't help but think there's some strategic reason for his actions that will become clearer upon appeal.
I've never heard stupidity described as strategic. The kid relies on a bunch of law students to draft up a dubious defense relying on fair use, then admits to committing the action that the Plaintiff alleges caused them a financial loss. I don't think I would approach a civil action in the same manner......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
IANAL, but I'm guessing that "liability" is a legal term, so if you ask a non-lawyer a legal question (do you admit liability), then the answer is meaningless. Think of it as hearsay for experts: if you don't know about a topic, you shouldn't be allowed to comment on the record on that topic. Does the guy understand the legal ramifications of what liability means? I don't.
Now, I must say that I'm not impressed with his defense. Anyone can comment on who the defense lawyer was and whether they did a good job? It just doesn't sound great to admit on the stand to being fully, completely guilty. Criminals tend to get away with a lot of stuff, but not this guy.
The judge's role is to decide issues of law, and the jurors' duty is to decide issues of fact.
In this case, both sides agreed that he violated copyright and that he was liable for it. The only issue that then remained was whether he did it "willfully" or not. The jury got to determine this, which determined what his liability was.
He basically walked into court and said, Yes, everything they're saying is true. What sort of result were you expecting?
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All excellent points. One other thing is that if the defendant's counsel (Nesson or otherwise) never objected to that question and did not properly preserve the objection for appeal, it might not be an appealable issue even if the question was improper.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Umm, who the hell would know what a "tradeline" is? Just say credit limit; problem solved.
No reason for an "Umm."
... So instead of having the government choose your healthcare, you prefer to have your job choose your healthcare? Instead of joining a plan that must care for everyone no matter what, you prefer to join a plan that can drop people whenever it chooses? Instead of having one open health care interoperability standard, you prefer to have every single healthcare provider roll their own? Then you can have the current American healthcare system, where most group coverage purchasers are too small to demand proper care for their employees, where health insurance plans will routinely deny first and even second requests just because they can, where the overhead of interoperating with so many different health care providers raises medical fees through the roof if you're paying out of pocket. How exactly is what we have right now better in any way whatsoever than any alternative? Hell, Singapore even shows that having no health care insurance at all can work out better than the piece of crap we have now.
Hey buddy, what do you call it when my premiums go up because *you* decided you could go without insurance?
It shifts the costs to everyone else. Is that fair? Is that the conservative way? Don't pay your fair share, and then when you get sick, screw your creditor (the hospital) and pass the costs along to the rest of society. Real nice.
The system is actually more efficient if the government administrates that. At least I will have the peace of mind that, along the way, if you made enough to pay in, you did, because you had to pay tax.
For a pretty awful example, and one that scared me as I'm self-employed and buy my own insurance, many people in my situation get denied coverage based on some ridiculously technical reading of their answers to the questions asked when you sign up for coverage. For example, there is an egregious example of a woman whose policy was canceled when she sought authorization for treatment for virulent type of breast cancer. The reason? She forgot to mention she had been treated for acne, her doctor misrecorded her condition, and even after the doctor called Blue Cross to clear up the matter, they wouldn't budge.
So we have a private insurance industry that will take your money and provide nothing in return. Even at the horrible DMV, you will eventually get your license, and they certainly don't try to murder you on a technicality. The notion that the free market is doing a good job at healthcare is simply not well founded in reality, and in fact it is doing SO badly, I think even the government would struggle to fail as epically as the private insurance industry.
In the end, if I can get the same crappy coverage I have now, for less cost and without the worry that I forgot to say I had the measles when I was 6 thus causing my entire policy to be canceled as a result (this is just robbery of premiums), I'd go for it. I just don't expect Congress to actually deliver something like that. They'll just force me to get robbed.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
America is the ONLY country in the first world that doesn't have nationalized health care.
The funny thing is, we DO have nationalized health care. 66% of the cost of health care in this country is paid for by medicaid, medicare, or federal government health care plans.
I DO NOT understand why people are so against nationalized health care here. It's already here. They play it up to be some sort of slippery slope, a plague that will infest every part of our lives and culture. Let me clue you in: the system is ALREADY IN PLACE, and the only people who benefit from the way things are now are the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
~X
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