My guess is yes. The Judge specifically asked Prof. Nesson to take the case. It's in this transcript, where she asks Mr. Tenenbaum if he'd been contacted by Prof. Nesson yet.
Are they perhaps trying to postpone the trial long enough so that the class has finished it's term and the 'defense team' has moved on to a new subject?
Perhaps yes. But last time I looked, Harvard Law School did have a sufficient number of new applicants to keep Prof. Nesson's CyberLaw class quite full.
I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.
My guess is that RIAA is carefully choosing the states in which it litigates so as to minimize the probability that it will get stuck with an unfavorable precedent.
No, that's not true. They will sue anywhere. Probably less than 1% of those who are sued fight back.
From what I've seen legal basis hasn't meant much in the RIAA strategy so far. The fighting back though could be a good reason....
It's the combination that frightens them. (1) Knowing that they have no legal position, and (2) knowing that -- if they were to take on universities and colleges -- there would actually be a lawyer in the courtroom representing the defendant to point it out, unlike thesecases, where the absence of any meritorious legal argument doesn't matter since there's no defense lawyer to educate the judge.
Sure, Duke is bold now that NewYorkCountryLawyer and other lawyers stood their ground in a proverbial Battle of Thermopylae defending a bunch of homemakers and retirees against the RIAA army!
Why thank you, cenconce. I've always found inspiration from the brave men who resisted the Persian empire at Thermopylae.
make defending students against the RIAA part of the law school curriculum
I've never studied law in my life, but "RIAA Defence 101" is a course i'd sign up for!!!
Actually Prof. Nesson once assigned his students the task of drafting a motion to quash an RIAA subpoena. Now his law students are fighting the RIAA in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum. Also law students at the University of Maine and University of San Francisco law schools have been fighting the RIAA, and I believe law students at the University of California are going to be getting into the act as well.
What do think about people who are pirating music and/or movies?
The term "piracy" in the world of copyright infringement means: -large scale -commercial -running off of exact copies for commercial gain.
I have never met anyone who is doing that so I have no real opinion of them as people.
I have seen poor people going around in the streets selling pirated copies, and they do not seem like evil people. They seemed a lot more decent than the people I've seen from the RIAA. They don't even seem to be aware that what they are doing is contrary to copyright law.
So if the University says "bugger off" to the RIAA, why doesn't the RIAA go after the University as a contributor?
Because (a) it has no legal basis for doing so, and (b)universities fight back. The RIAA lawyers don't know what to do with people who fight back. Their game is picking on the defenseless.
why the hell didn't universites see the RIAA's challenges for what they were(bullshit) and begin to fight against the RIAA for their students much sooner?
Warner Bros. only owns the movie rights. I don't think they would have brought this case unless J.K. was on board with them. And there is no way they could have forced her to do this.
Defendant's occasional lapsing into emulation of Rowling's writing style was totally irrelevant to the fair use analysis. Judge Patterson was wrong on that and I expect the 2nd Circuit to point that out to him.
Well you could say that about any activity where some people make a whole lot of money compared to other people. But that's what capitalism is; it doesn't limit how much money people can make.
I'm just saying, not as a legal matter but as a human morality matter... a little humankindness wouldn't hurt now and then.
I don't know why everyone's arguing with me. Everyone's entitled to their personal opinions. We all have different values and outlooks.
In my personal opinion the vagueness of the law surrounding "fair use" has a chilling effect on creativity, and was exacerbated rather than ameliorated by Judge Patterson's opinion.
And in my personal opinion a lady who was once on welfare and is now super-rich should have it in her heart to let the guy slide, even if she is advised by her attorney that a copyright infringement may have occurred, especially where (a) she expressed such reverence and adoration for, and gave such encouragement to, his project when it was only a web site, and (b) the guy's web site helped to increase and promote the success of her underlying works.
My legal opinion is that the decision was incorrectly decided. When the Second Circuit reaches its conclusion on the appeal, we'll find out if I was right or wrong.
It has everything to do with her being greedy and selfish and forgetting from whence she came.
How do you reconcile this opinion with the fact that she has allowed many other guidebooks, analyses of her work, etc to be published, and in fact openly praised some of them in the courtroom during this trial? If she were just jealously guarding her work/money, why would she single out only this book and allow the dozen others?
Nothing on this scale had been done before. This one meant $$$.
As did JKR, when she allowed many other reference works to be published. Ones that properly attributed their quotes and added substantial value above and beyond simply rearranging direct excerpts of her work.
Including this one. It was only when the defendant decided to put his financially unrewarding web site into the form of a remunerative book that Ms. Rowling suddenly had a problem with it.
Fair use has rules about quote length and attribution
Not according to Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in his book "Creative Commons". What is and isn't "fair use" is a murky gray area.
Lessig's book (available on the internet under a CC license) is written in a manner a layman can understand and is a must-read for anyone interested in copyright reform.
You don't have to go to Lawrence Lessig for that. There isn't a lawyer in the country who thinks that "fair use" has straightforward, easy-to-follow rules. It is definitely a murky gray area. This vagueness favors the big content holders -- 6 motion picture companies and 4 record companies -- who like nothing more than litigation.
You way overstate the holding of the case. Judge Patterson fully recognized that defendant was entitled to do a reference work on the Harry Potter stuff, and that it could be a simple 'encyclopedia' or 'lexicon', without asking anyone's permission. The only thing Judge Patterson had a problem with was with some of the sloppiness.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this pro-bono or not? Anyone know?
My guess is yes. The Judge specifically asked Prof. Nesson to take the case. It's in this transcript, where she asks Mr. Tenenbaum if he'd been contacted by Prof. Nesson yet.
Are they perhaps trying to postpone the trial long enough so that the class has finished it's term and the 'defense team' has moved on to a new subject?
Perhaps yes. But last time I looked, Harvard Law School did have a sufficient number of new applicants to keep Prof. Nesson's CyberLaw class quite full.
I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.
I had submitted the story about Prof. Nesson entering this RIAA litigation, but the Slashdot editors chose someone else's story.
My guess is that RIAA is carefully choosing the states in which it litigates so as to minimize the probability that it will get stuck with an unfavorable precedent.
No, that's not true. They will sue anywhere. Probably less than 1% of those who are sued fight back.
From what I've seen legal basis hasn't meant much in the RIAA strategy so far. The fighting back though could be a good reason....
It's the combination that frightens them. (1) Knowing that they have no legal position, and (2) knowing that -- if they were to take on universities and colleges -- there would actually be a lawyer in the courtroom representing the defendant to point it out, unlike these cases, where the absence of any meritorious legal argument doesn't matter since there's no defense lawyer to educate the judge.
Sure, Duke is bold now that NewYorkCountryLawyer and other lawyers stood their ground in a proverbial Battle of Thermopylae defending a bunch of homemakers and retirees against the RIAA army!
Why thank you, cenconce. I've always found inspiration from the brave men who resisted the Persian empire at Thermopylae.
make defending students against the RIAA part of the law school curriculum
I've never studied law in my life, but "RIAA Defence 101" is a course i'd sign up for!!!
Actually Prof. Nesson once assigned his students the task of drafting a motion to quash an RIAA subpoena. Now his law students are fighting the RIAA in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum. Also law students at the University of Maine and University of San Francisco law schools have been fighting the RIAA, and I believe law students at the University of California are going to be getting into the act as well.
The university should have also stated that the evidence must come from investigators licensed in the state of North Carolina.
Interesting you should say that, because their "probable cause hearing" in North Carolina is coming up soon.
What do think about people who are pirating music and/or movies?
The term "piracy" in the world of copyright infringement means:
-large scale
-commercial
-running off of exact copies for commercial gain.
I have never met anyone who is doing that so I have no real opinion of them as people.
I have seen poor people going around in the streets selling pirated copies, and they do not seem like evil people. They seemed a lot more decent than the people I've seen from the RIAA. They don't even seem to be aware that what they are doing is contrary to copyright law.
So if the University says "bugger off" to the RIAA, why doesn't the RIAA go after the University as a contributor?
Because
(a) it has no legal basis for doing so, and
(b)universities fight back. The RIAA lawyers don't know what to do with people who fight back. Their game is picking on the defenseless.
why the hell didn't universites see the RIAA's challenges for what they were(bullshit) and begin to fight against the RIAA for their students much sooner?
Beats me.
Warner Bros. only owns the movie rights. I don't think they would have brought this case unless J.K. was on board with them. And there is no way they could have forced her to do this.
Defendant's occasional lapsing into emulation of Rowling's writing style was totally irrelevant to the fair use analysis. Judge Patterson was wrong on that and I expect the 2nd Circuit to point that out to him.
The writing style isn't in itself illegal, but it is evidence that shows the "fair use" argument to be less clear.
You're wrong. Can you cite to a legal authority that supports that?
Well you could say that about any activity where some people make a whole lot of money compared to other people. But that's what capitalism is; it doesn't limit how much money people can make.
I'm just saying, not as a legal matter but as a human morality matter... a little humankindness wouldn't hurt now and then.
I don't know why everyone's arguing with me. Everyone's entitled to their personal opinions. We all have different values and outlooks.
In my personal opinion the vagueness of the law surrounding "fair use"
has a chilling effect on creativity, and
was exacerbated rather than ameliorated by Judge Patterson's opinion.
And in my personal opinion a lady who was once on welfare and is now super-rich should have it in her heart to let the guy slide, even if she is advised by her attorney that a copyright infringement may have occurred, especially where (a) she expressed such reverence and adoration for, and gave such encouragement to, his project when it was only a web site, and (b) the guy's web site helped to increase and promote the success of her underlying works.
My legal opinion is that the decision was incorrectly decided. When the Second Circuit reaches its conclusion on the appeal, we'll find out if I was right or wrong.
It has everything to do with her being greedy and selfish and forgetting from whence she came.
How do you reconcile this opinion with the fact that she has allowed many other guidebooks, analyses of her work, etc to be published, and in fact openly praised some of them in the courtroom during this trial? If she were just jealously guarding her work/money, why would she single out only this book and allow the dozen others?
Nothing on this scale had been done before. This one meant $$$.
As did JKR, when she allowed many other reference works to be published. Ones that properly attributed their quotes and added substantial value above and beyond simply rearranging direct excerpts of her work.
Including this one. It was only when the defendant decided to put his financially unrewarding web site into the form of a remunerative book that Ms. Rowling suddenly had a problem with it.
I hope JK steals their lexicon idea and publishes one herself, then releases it at cost, out of spite, while this one is tied up in court.
Looks like you're getting your wish. (Although why you wished for it escapes me.)
Fuzzy laws just seem like a bad idea.
Fuzzy laws are a bad idea. That is not what our country is supposed to be about.
the rules actually are fuzzy, and need to stay that way
Agreed that they are fuzzy. Do not agree that they need to stay that way.
Fair use has rules about quote length and attribution
Not according to Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in his book "Creative Commons". What is and isn't "fair use" is a murky gray area. Lessig's book (available on the internet under a CC license) is written in a manner a layman can understand and is a must-read for anyone interested in copyright reform.
You don't have to go to Lawrence Lessig for that. There isn't a lawyer in the country who thinks that "fair use" has straightforward, easy-to-follow rules. It is definitely a murky gray area. This vagueness favors the big content holders -- 6 motion picture companies and 4 record companies -- who like nothing more than litigation.
You way overstate the holding of the case. Judge Patterson fully recognized that defendant was entitled to do a reference work on the Harry Potter stuff, and that it could be a simple 'encyclopedia' or 'lexicon', without asking anyone's permission. The only thing Judge Patterson had a problem with was with some of the sloppiness.
Fair enough. Sorry if I goofed on the context.
No problem. I understand. You're a purist, you don't like your issues blended. :)
I'm puzzled by the mention of "writing style".
Me too. I don't know why the Judge considered that a factor at all. I think the 2nd Circuit will disapprove that.