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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.'"
or not. Obama or not, remember that Hollywood greases Republican and Democrat pockets alike. Many of the big guys at the MPAA and RIAA are Democrats too, which must surely help.
As long as Hollywood gives politicians glamour by attending fundraisers, and actual cold hard cash, you won't find anyone in the government willing to speak out against Big Content. The only thing that can change this is public opinion.
Go somewhere random
I'm having that "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" moment that I really didn't want to have.
Obama taught, was editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated top of his class.
How he can abide this DOJ finding is really unknowable, outside of politics. It is behavior and outcomes like this that cost his party Mass. last night, and may well cost him his re-election bid in 2012. Pollingplace.com showed that last night in Mass., 37% of voters that voted for this independent that won, did so in protest of Democrats favoring Wall Street in the bailout.
The lesson is simple: Either the DOJ and the Obama administration stop taking sides against Main Street and for the big corporate interest, or they will keep losing.
I don't get it. Who were we supposed to vote for?
Only Obama and McCain had any real chance of winning (sorry guys, the Green Party and Libertarians have been, and always will be, fringe groups run by potheads with a pro-drug agenda) and it was beyond obvious that McCain was willing to run this country into the ground for the sake of the almighty dollar. So I picked Obama, mainly because I love America and want the best for this country. But has he delivered?
Patent reform? No.
Environmental protection? No.
Taxing the middle class when he said the rich would finally be made to pay their taxes? Hell no.
Stopping the war? No.
Stopping the MPAA/RIAA from walking all over American citizens? Nope.
It's frustrating because I want Obama to be great and he is ending up being another Jimmy Carter. A nice guy, and a hell of a diplomat, but completely inept and useless at running the country. I cannot possibly explain how sad this makes me.
Clearly the RIAA is at fault here, and Obama's DOJ is doing as the RIAA instructed them to do. Shameful.
This is the President's job folks: to defend the laws passed by Congress and signed into law by a sitting President. It's implied by the Oath of Office. Presidents ignoring laws they don't like by refusing to defend them in court--which is what the DOJ is doing here--would be a pretty flagrant violation of the obligations of the executive.
This is not the first time and will not be the last that a President, through his officers, defends a law he isn't thrilled about. Just because DOJ lawyers show up with a brief in support of a law does not mean that the President--or even the DOJ lawyers, for crying out loud--believe either 1) that the law is worth defending, or 2) the validity of their own arguments. They're just doing their jobs.
People, the DOJ's job is to defend the laws as standing as passed. They would not be doing their jobs if they said, "nah, you're right, this law should be overturned."
Lrn2USLegalSystem and US Government, please.
Folks, what part of "The RIAA is in your pocket, and in your life" are you not getting? For the love of Pete, the Vice President is a media hit-man... what do they have to do before it's clear, carve their initials in your forehead? There is no law, no juris-prudence, no honest, decent, or rational bit of thinking that the RIAA won't pave over, pay to have overturned, ignored, or publicly gutted, to protect their charges' strangle hold on media. Once they are finished with this little piece of business, they can move to the next piece. Make all use public or private payable, maybe they can even get a tax passed on the presumed number of people at anytime who my be humming a tune to themselves. That and make all new music created from that day forward, which is not owned by an affiliate of the RIAA illegal to listen to. They want a monopoly on sound, and they want to own your ears, and they want to utterly destroy anybody who get's in the way of what they want. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW...
I smelled this coming when he sided with the Telcos on the wiretapping.
I knew we were in for it when he kept Gitmo going.
ACTA secrecy pretty much cemented my opinion.
This is just icing on the cake.
And yes ladies and gentlemens, I voted for him...hoping he wouldn't be what he's showing himself to be...just another crooked pol, interested in being elected and nailing a sweet deal speaking deal once he's thrown out on his ear.
meh.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
That's not really an excuse. Didn't Obama publically state that he wouldn't be spending Federal Funds to go after state licensed medical marijuana growers? That sounds a a lot like not defending the laws as passed.
I'll cut Obama slack when he has to choose the lesser of two evils. This is not one of those cases.
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
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.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I told you so.
Not that McCain would have been any better.
Stop voting for the state-approved candidates.
Stop relying on a party to do your homework for you.
Stop believing that either of the main ones has your interests in mind.
Your brain is not a computer.
No what we got is exactly what we should have expected with someone with his limited experience. Someone with his "school intelligence" that never was tested, tried, and perfected. In other words, we got a directionless administration which was driven by someone who truly thinks they are special. His self references in many speeches makes clear to me he isn't yet figured out he is here to lead, here for us, instead he is there for himself. Its a me complex.
So if your expecting the second year to be the equivalent of a MMORPG Miracle Build I think you will be disappointed. He didn't know how to lead, he was used to campaign staffers and sycophants who fell over themselves to do what he asked for, not Washington which marches to its own drummer
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If legally permitted (I'm Canadian) I'll donate $100 to the Democratic Party if they appoint NewYorkCountyLawyer to head up the Department of Justice.
And I'll pay you $100 to remember I'm NewYorkCountryLawyer, not NewYorkCountyLawyer. [Just kidding. I wouldn't even know what $100 looks like]
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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