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Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA Again In Tenenbaum
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Despite having had some time to get their act together, Obama's Department of Justice has filed yet another brief defending the RIAA's outlandish statutory damages theory — that someone who downloaded an mp3 with a 99-cent retail value, causing a maximum possible damages of 35 cents, is liable for from $750 to $150,000 for each such file downloaded, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions. Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for, and/or are directly connected with, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's RIAA.'"
A majority of them. And most all of those appointed were pro-copyright, including 5 RIAA attorneys. and many others that are anti-content.
He may not have given any direct input on this specific issue, but if I recall correctly, he appointed a lot of the former RIAA law talent now working in the DOJ. I don't know this for sure, but I remember a number of slashdot stories about it.
I like the guy, I think he's doing a fine job, but those appointments really stuck in my craw. They stank, and what we're seeing here is a prime example of why. But, I guess you gotta take the bad with the good. Let's hope the supreme court steps in.
I did not say that it was unconstitutional to award statutory damages; I challenge the amount. Under United States Supreme Court standards, the statutory damages awarded should not have exceeded something in the neighborhood of $1.40 per infringed work.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Leave OBAMA alone
He's our president and we'll do what we want with him, including criticize his bad acts, and praise his good ones.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Hi there, I'm from Canada. You might remember us from previous political threads such as "Canada's healthcare isn't that bad." and "Dude, 1812 was almost 200 years ago. We have nukes now."
We have national funding for our political parties. In order to prevent, let's say, the "BSTFF (Beardo Should Totally get Federal Funding)" party from forming and pocketing a whack o' cash, you get a certain amount from every vote that's cast your way. I'm not going to bother looking it up, but it's about $1.50 per vote. So if you get a million votes, you'd get $1.5M. We had 13.8 million voters last election. 37%, or just over 5 million, voted for the Conservative party. (So that's about $7.5 million from Elections Canada.)
We also have campaign contributions and you can claim those on your income taxes. However, there are limits and those are enforced via jail time. Rather than cut-and-paste, here they are. In short, you can only contribute $1,100 per year and companies / corporations / trade unions / etc cannot make them.
Now, this is where it gets interesting, is that we have spending limits on campaigns. Third-party limits are just under $200k total, across all electoral districts. It's just under $4k for each district. The parties themselves can spend a total of about $20 million for the bigger parties. http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/laws.html
That's not all. Each party has a certain amount of media time alloted to it. It works out to 396 minutes per broadcaster in total, with allocations given out based on some formula locked in Ottawa somewhere.
http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/laws.html
All in all, our system works out reasonably well as long as you've got people in Parliament who are willing to work together. We don't right now, so government shut itself down for 2 months.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The problem with big government is that its easy to say its too big - but try and remove parts of it and you will suddenly realise that the great majority is a whole heap of actually necessary small things that add up.
This is a false dichotomy. The problem lies in the abuse of the structure of the Constitution. There is a design that accounts for the 'necessities' you're referring to: States.
Government can be big, in total. There are a lot of States, after all. But Federal government cannot, so long as it remains within the original design specification.
The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.
A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.
There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.
NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I think the problem is that the $22,750 in statutory damages for each of the 30 infringements that the court ruled to be just, could be construed as excessive.
The Court has NOT 'ruled it to be just'. The jury rendered that verdict, and the judge established a briefing schedule for the parties to submit papers on whether it was unconstitutional or otherwise excessive. The Court has yet to determine that it is just, and in my opinion will almost undoubtedly determine that it is not just, based on about 700 years of legal precedent.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
NYCL clearly has his "side". The statements in it should be considered to be nothing more than opinion, as they are, rather than statements of fact or actual precedent
True
because the courts have repeatedly explored and rejected his claims
False. The issue has never been decided in any of the RIAA cases. The only RIAA case in which it has been litigated to any extent was UMG v. Lindor, where
-the RIAA argued that it was a frivolous defense,
-I argued that it was not a frivolous defense, and
-the Judge agreed with me and rejected the RIAA's argument.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful