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RIAA Lobbyist Becomes Federal Judge, Rules On File-Sharing Cases
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers. Beryl Howell isn't the only judge to believe this, but her important ruling is especially interesting because of Howell's previous work: lobbying for the recording industry during the time period when the RIAA was engaged in its own campaign of mass lawsuits against individuals. The news, first reported in a piece at TorrentFreak, nicely illustrates the revolving door between government and industry."
maybe the RIAA has forgotten to take her off the payroll.
Enjoy your Corporate States of America!
The alternative to the "revolving door between government and industry" seems to mostly be regulators who don't know anything about what they're regulating. Fun stuff either way! :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
but this is ridiculous. I honestly don't think that cases of this nature should be allowed to come before, or be judged by someone who has spent so much time fighting on one side of a cause like that.
That's like asking an ice cream man to preside over a case or cases where someone is suing an ice cream company for them being fat or something (probably not the best analogy, but as close as i could think of). In short, this is retarded, and that judge shouldn't have been allowed to have anything to do with this stuff.
Increasingly, our country is appears to be more like the Corporate States of America. Sad. Can I have my bill of rights, consumer rights, and right to privacy back please? Or is that now subject to subscription services? (plenty of sarcasm intended).
That's a false duality. There is no reason that regulators can't listen to the industries they regulate as long as the industries aren't buying them trips, cars, vacations, etc...
How can any judge with even a sliver of a conscience not recuse themselves from this case?
And confirmed by a Democrat Senate (in the lame duck session, right before the Dems lost some Senate seats in January):
Beryl A. Howell (born 1956) is a federal District Court judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on July 14, 2010 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 27, 2010. (Wikipedia)
Well, all you YRO types who voted for Obama, this is what you get.
Too bad I had to post anon due to predictable mod abuse, because I am serious about this topic, not trolling.
STOP BUYING THEIR MUSIC (and don't pirate it.) Sooner or later they will die away like any meme that has become bad..
Or, they'll buy enough politicians to be able to simply sue all of us w/ internet connections. You know there's just no way we would stop buying their product without somehow stealing it. [rolls eyes]
She is an Obama appointee. And not his first.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
goatse warning :(
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I'm certainly no legal expert, but shouldn't a judge with such an obvious conflict of interest recuse themselves from such cases? I was under the impression that's what a judge is supposed to do if the judge can't adjudicate impartially?
Why sue everyone with an internet connection when you could just surcharge the connection? There are surcharges on blank discs and burners in various places on this planet, so why not start nickeling and diming at the source here?
Eeurgh. I'm not so sure if it's more revolting that it's plausible or that there have been approximations of this already done successfully.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
Even if that weren't a false dichotomy I'd prefer a meddlesome regulator who follows the laws to the letter because he didn't "know anything about what he was regulating" to the lazy one that "knows which regulations don't need to be followed".
Red tape may be annoying, but it's often there for a reason.
Or they'll use their clout to whine so much about the supposed "piracy" that the government applies a federal "media" tax where everything that can or does hold any kind of content (from a blank journal notebook to a CD to a hard drive to web space) is taxed and filtered into the RIAA. And those artists who are not part of the RIAA can just eat a dick.
your attorney is fucking your spoiuse. I'm sure you'd agree that your divorce will be equitably handled so long as they no longer have sex....
Yes, those who work in an industry logically tend to have valuable information on it.
Of course, bias concerns stemming from that are just as logical.
Another example is how repair personnel who often have the best grasp on what you need fixed are also the ones selling you the parts and labor to get it fixed.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
This is the consensus from everyone who has a clue.
"Judge Beryl Howell received 415,000 USD from the RIAA for lobbying work, from 2005 to 2008, during her tenure at Stroz Friedberg LLC. This financing represents a potential conflict of interest for cases which involve copyright law."
And just how do you think she got nominated? It wasn't by chance.
Welcome to fascism. Benito would be proud.
Those that do not learn from history...
"My mommy is a porn company and my daddy is 4chan".
Think of the children!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If Congress truly wanted to prove themselves to the American people to be above it all they would ban any contribution of any kind from K-Street to any member of Congress or their families. Further more, they would forbid the same from ever working for such organizations. However I doubt this will come, it will take influence outside of the Democrat or Republican parties.
Yet both are deft at playing people off each other, getting people to focus on the other party, which thereby keeps them in power. When groups rise up outside of their control you can tell as the media will line up and protect their investment, along with all the powers on Wall Street. The American public are only allowed to rise when commanded and when they dare do so on their own the entire establishment comes down in force. Unfortunately too many buy into it and side with the very people keeping them under the thumb of two political parties corrupt beyond repair.
If you voting for a party your voting for your loss of freedom
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
freedom of speech does not mean that you can remain anonymous
You do realize you're posting on /., home of the original AC, right?
from http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:
Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius," and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus, in 2002, the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
These long-standing rights to anonymity and the protections it affords are critically important for the Internet. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the Internet offers a new and powerful democratic forum in which anyone can become a "pamphleteer" or "a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
...we'll have to grab twelve random schmoes off the street to decide cases for us.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
That's a false duality. There is no reason that regulators can't listen to the industries they regulate as long as the industries aren't buying them trips, cars, vacations, etc...
This points out what most Americans and all Libertarians fail to understand about regulation.
Regulation is not "the man" tying the hands of the "free market(TM)". Regulation is supposed to ensure that an industry can run properly, produce products as well as being profitable and competitive.
Proper regulation brings in more competition and allows for better products or lower prices. Part of this is listening to the industry, who have a list of their problems and wants, part of this is listening to the customers who have a list of their problems and wants then to figure out what is the best course of action to ensure that both sides can get as much of what they want as possible. Often the best course of action is nothing but not always.
Regulation often helps businesses, by limiting liability or preventing supply shortages/abuses sometimes even as far as to fix prices for supply and disallowing below cost prices to force competitors out of business. Complaints about regulation more often then not come from corporations and entities who are attempting to do something that is not in good faith (I.E. squeeze out competitors).
Those people who froth at the mouth with "blerg, regulation is bad(TM)" blanket statements are idiotic. They dont take into account the actual situation. Bad regulation is bad, good regulation is good, blanket statements based on inflexible philosophies are useless.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
STOP BUYING THEIR MUSIC (and don't pirate it.) Sooner or later they will die away like any meme that has become bad.
You're assuming they'll be able to put 2 and 2 together and figure this out.
Given the fact that they've stated there are 200,000 more pirates then internet connections in Australia I doubt it (23 million population). They didn't even bother to look up stats publicly available on the ABS web site (Australian Bureau of Statistics) before pulling some horrifying looking numbers out of their arse.
The only way to beat them is at the courtroom. The more court cases they can lose the more it costs them. Barring that you have to go to the laws themselves. Make it expensive for them to sue John and Jane Doe's. This is why they haven't tried to sue the millions of Filthy Pirates(TM) in Oz, our normally woeful libel and deformation laws would bankrupt them in a month.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.