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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.'"
I thought that we were all pretty much aware prior to the election that Obama and his crew were against personal freedom and all for corporate freedom.
Just wait until the courts finish granting natural person status benefits to corporations without imposing natural person responsibilities and liabilities.
Welcome to hell!
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Why is it the "Obama DOJ" when last year it wasn't the "Bush DOJ"?
Like other folks have already noted, the RIAA has massive, continuous lobbying working both parties all the time. This is a (poor) decisions by "the idiots at the DOJ", not something that should be politicized like this unless your argument is that the President (of whatever party) should review all DOJ decisions and essentially dictate what law they should make rather than letting them do their jobs based on established law and precedent.
Now, I do think there's clearly something rotten there if this is the decision they came to, and the President (if he even gets wind of it) should instruct his appointees in-charge to review the situation, but this is in no way directly related to Obama.
The fine's arne't simply based on the damages on the download of the individual song itself. When someone downloads those songs with the file sharing client, almost always it then makes that song available or downloading by others. So the damages done by that person are far more than the cost o a single song. The damage don is how many copies of that song are then downloaded from that copy which could be in the 1000's easily. But of course everyone would much prefer to pretend there's some big government conspiracy because that's so much easier than actually looking at the details of the issue.
Just like his birth certificate....
"Didn't Obama publically state that he wouldn't be spending Federal Funds to go after state licensed medical marijuana growers?"
You can hang that up with government run health care. Once that passes your body is property of the US Government. I expect you will see the government using that fact to pass and enforce many more laws concerning health related "sins". With the full support of the legal drug industry.
Republicans ALWAYS support big business over the consumer. They may not get as much big $ from Hollywood, but there are loads of other big industries with IP and patent interests who certainly *do* pay them. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to come out batting for the little guy. Good luck finding someone from either party who won't side with the RIAA/MPAA thugs at every opportunity.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
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.
I would agree too - the defendant has the right to raise constitutionality as an issue. But that doesn't mean constitutionality has been litigated yet, nor did the judge agree with you [that the statutory damages are unconstitutional]. Rather, the judge [wisely] said, "let them have their day in court."
To be compensatory implies somehow equal to the damage caused
... or an approximation, which is the point of statutory damages in copyright law. The plaintiff can EITHER prove actual damages, OR take the statutorily-set levels.
, which is not the situation in the Tenenbaum case (over 32,000 times the wholesale price per song).
Sigh. I don't know why NYCL and everyone else fails to understand that there were TWO separate and independent infringements, and Tenenbaum was found liable for both:
(1) Tenenbaum downloaded the song, which he could have purchased for $.99-$1.40.
(2) Tenenbaum UPLOADED the song, and a distribution license costs tens of thousands of dollars. Do you people really think that Apple pays the music companies a dollar, once, for the right to distribute a particular song on iTunes thousands of times?