Hey could you start one of your posts with "IAAL"? Just for me? It would make my day.:p
Nah, it would sound too much like I'm trying to pull rank. Just because IAAL doesn't make me right. Just because IAAL doesn't mean IAAGL, I could be ABL, or even AVBL.
E.g., look at the RIAAL's. They're VBL's. Theoretically, TAL's, but they don't act like L's, and they don't know their A's from their E's.
In fact, if the RIAAL's really AL's, then I'm ashamed to be a L, and maybe IANRAL at all.
So I'll just say it on behalf of (most of) the slashdot audience.
Thank you. Thank you for doing the work that we didn't, couldn't or were unwilling to do. Thank you for carrying a heavy, unwieldy torch. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
It's time that someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm for that guy everybody loves".
Thank you, Sir_Real. Thank you for doing the work that we didn't need to do for the karma. Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you, Xeth. Thank you for doing the work I didn't have the time to do which was to to thank Sir_Real.
And thank you Sir_Real, both for your kind words, and for inspiring Xeth.
And most of all, let's not forget to thank the RIAA lawyers, who give me all my best material.
So, why do the artists keep coming to the mega-labels? Why do they keep signing on the dotted lines? Either the artists are dumb, or they want access to the unique worldwide promotional resources that the labels have, and find it to be worth the price. I'm not sure which is the case, but I'd say in either case, the artists have only themselves to blame for the results of their negotiations. If they wanted, they could have gone small-label and sacrificed the bigger pie for the bigger piece.
I think you're wrong about that. I think these 4 companies owned about 90% of the pie 10 years ago, and now earn about 70% of the pie. Major artists are declining to renew their contracts, and new artists are finding alternative ways of marketing their music -- ways designed to earn a few bucks for the artists, instead of enriching the slave masters.
No doubt the defendant and his attorneys will bring this to the attention of the judge (if they haven't already), but I must say that the levels of chutzpah, arrogance, and hypocrisy of these record labels are simply spectacular both in sheer scale and also in their wanton disregard for any semblance of fairness. Have these companies and their attorneys, at long last, no shame left?
Sorry I didn't understand your question. In my opinion, under a long line of cases, a copyright owner's agent's making a copy for himself would NOT satisfy the third prong.
The "distribution" right referred to in the US Copyright Act is a clearly delineated right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". (See paragraph 2 of Ms. Barker's answer). I.e., -it has to be of actual copies -they actually have to be disseminated -the dissemination has to be to the public, and -there has to be a sale or other transfer of ownership, or a license, a lease, or a lending.
In layman's terms, the RIAA's "distribution" claim is baloney.
The damages owed by Exxon for the Valdez oil spill were recently limited and substantially reduced because the court found the original damages excessively punitive. So if it makes sense for Exxon perhaps it also makes sense to apply a similar theory of limitation of damages elsewhere.
You don't even need to go that far afield; one of the plaintiffs in Ms. Barker's case, UMG Recordings, Inc., made the very same argument when it was a defendant, saying that a jury verdict for 10 times the amount of the actual damages was excessive.
I.e., when it's a defendant a multiple of 10 is too much. But when it's a plaintiff, a multiple of 428,571 is okay.
The judge here should be applauded. While he understood where Tiffany was coming from, he correctly chose NOT to legislate from the bench by siding with them.
Agreed. This was a landmark decision, from a good judge, who exercised judgment and clarity.
My pleasure. That's why I did it. I can't for the life of me understand why the major media, when they cover a litigation news story, never give you the actual document to read. In these days of electronic filing of almost all federal court papers it is inexcusable.
I guess I gotta come clean, now.
while I was patching my kernel (trying a new method that seemingly allows division by zero) - something happened to space-time that I could not explain. the more watchpoints I set in my code, the faster things ran! at some point, I must have added too many and my machine melted down.
after that, well, things got REALLY weird.
fortunately, I was able to find a block of RET instructions still on a shred of disk drive, and that saved me.
Well go get yourself some breakfast. It'll make you feel better. Then come back tomorrow and we can talk about God making cornmeal out of the RIAA and its lackeys.
Although the RIAA likes to tell judges and the press that these cases are about downloading, in all the cases I've seen I've yet to see one where the case was about downloading.
That is simply not true. I guess you think the 'legal world' is not in the world, but you would be wrong. We play by the laws of nature, like everyone else. If something is true, it is true. If something is false, if it is false. If something is false, and a judge concludes it is true... (a) the thing is still false, and (b) the only thing that has changed is that the judge was wrong.
Most questions of 'truth' or 'falsity' in the legal system are determined by juries, not judges. And the same holds true there. If a jury gets it wrong, the jury is wrong. The truth hasn't changed.
Our main job, as judges, juries, and lawyers, is to discover the truth. Not to create it. (Unless of course you're an RIAA lawyer, in which case you have a very different mission: convincing the world that black is white, and doing it by picking on defenseless people who don't have the resources to put on a defense, or by bringing 'ex parte' proceedings where the defendant doesn't even know there's a case going on.).
This is also the kind of signs us wags here on/. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc.
Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.
To quote Longfellow: "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."
It's a/. meme, like "imagine a Beowulf cluster of x" or the CowboyNeal option. I can't think of a really good explanation at the moment, so here's a sort of example:
Poster: "Americans are overweight from eating too much junk food!"
Reply: "In Soviet Russia, junk food eats you!"
Well that explains it.
It's a Slashdot thing. Like...
1. Graduate law school.
2. Represent poor and working class people who are being sued by huge multinational corporations.
Nahhhh... my site wasn't down. Internet Law & Regulation, which hosts many of the *pdf litigation documents, was working on some problem with its servers. In the interim, I was taking the documents and hosting them on my own law firm web site. I'm delighted to report, by the way, that ILR straightened out its problem, and all the litigation documents are working fine now.
There is not a single word in Otter's "analysis" which comes from any of the cited documents. He appears not to have actually bothered to read them.
In fact, the RIAA and MediaSentry have consistently taken the position in UMG v. Lindor for 2 years that MediaSentry is NOT an expert and did NOT use technical expertise, but did "what any Kazaa user can do". They did not make this statement once or twice, but probably in the neighborhood of a dozen times. I culled just 3 of them.
Within weeks of making that statement in Lindor, Mr. Mullaney had made the exact opposite statement in the Michigan proceedings, saying MediaSentry was a technical expert which utilized its technical expertise in obtaining the evidence, just like a physician, a surveyor, a geologist, or a chemical engineer.... (all of which are clearly expert witnesses who would be subject to expert witness disclosure in federal litigations).
Any person who actually read (a) Mr. Mullaney's letter in the Michigan case, and (b) the three documents in the Lindor case, would have to agree with that statement.
Apparently Mr. Otter has some kind of grudge against me, and -- like his soulmates in the RIAA -- is willing to fabricate facts in order to 'make his case'. Mr. Otter please read the documents, and then please apologize.
In Maine we don't really take kindly to that sort of crap. Sometimes I love Maine's judges. Anyhow, I write to ask you (specifically) what, if any, results do you think this will have in the scope of things? IANAL but it seems to me that this has seemingly large potential for future problems with the RIAA suits when we're looking at it with the slashdot perspective but, on the other hand, it seems more likely that this won't actually have a great deal of impact at all.
As a veteran of 34 years in the field of litigation I can tell you 2 things:
1. It is not foreseeable which lie will be the one to bring them down.
2. It is foreseeable that their lying will bring them down.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey could you start one of your posts with "IAAL"? Just for me? It would make my day. :p
Nah, it would sound too much like I'm trying to pull rank. Just because IAAL doesn't make me right. Just because IAAL doesn't mean IAAGL, I could be ABL, or even AVBL.
E.g., look at the RIAAL's. They're VBL's. Theoretically, TAL's, but they don't act like L's, and they don't know their A's from their E's.
In fact, if the RIAAL's really AL's, then I'm ashamed to be a L, and maybe IANRAL at all.
So I'll just say it on behalf of (most of) the slashdot audience. Thank you. Thank you for doing the work that we didn't, couldn't or were unwilling to do. Thank you for carrying a heavy, unwieldy torch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It's time that someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm for that guy everybody loves". Thank you, Sir_Real. Thank you for doing the work that we didn't need to do for the karma. Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you, Xeth. Thank you for doing the work I didn't have the time to do which was to to thank Sir_Real.
And thank you Sir_Real, both for your kind words, and for inspiring Xeth.
And most of all, let's not forget to thank the RIAA lawyers, who give me all my best material.
So, why do the artists keep coming to the mega-labels? Why do they keep signing on the dotted lines? Either the artists are dumb, or they want access to the unique worldwide promotional resources that the labels have, and find it to be worth the price. I'm not sure which is the case, but I'd say in either case, the artists have only themselves to blame for the results of their negotiations. If they wanted, they could have gone small-label and sacrificed the bigger pie for the bigger piece.
I think you're wrong about that. I think these 4 companies owned about 90% of the pie 10 years ago, and now earn about 70% of the pie. Major artists are declining to renew their contracts, and new artists are finding alternative ways of marketing their music -- ways designed to earn a few bucks for the artists, instead of enriching the slave masters.
No doubt the defendant and his attorneys will bring this to the attention of the judge (if they haven't already), but I must say that the levels of chutzpah, arrogance, and hypocrisy of these record labels are simply spectacular both in sheer scale and also in their wanton disregard for any semblance of fairness. Have these companies and their attorneys, at long last, no shame left?
None.
Absolutely none.
Take it from me. I deal with them every day.
Does the word "hypocrite" come to mind?
Actually, estoppel came to mind first.
Only a lawyer could say that.
Sorry I didn't understand your question. In my opinion, under a long line of cases, a copyright owner's agent's making a copy for himself would NOT satisfy the third prong.
The "distribution" right referred to in the US Copyright Act is a clearly delineated right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". (See paragraph 2 of Ms. Barker's answer). I.e.,
-it has to be of actual copies
-they actually have to be disseminated
-the dissemination has to be to the public, and
-there has to be a sale or other transfer of ownership, or a license, a lease, or a lending.
In layman's terms, the RIAA's "distribution" claim is baloney.
The damages owed by Exxon for the Valdez oil spill were recently limited and substantially reduced because the court found the original damages excessively punitive. So if it makes sense for Exxon perhaps it also makes sense to apply a similar theory of limitation of damages elsewhere.
You don't even need to go that far afield; one of the plaintiffs in Ms. Barker's case, UMG Recordings, Inc., made the very same argument when it was a defendant, saying that a jury verdict for 10 times the amount of the actual damages was excessive.
I.e., when it's a defendant a multiple of 10 is too much. But when it's a plaintiff, a multiple of 428,571 is okay.
Does the word "hypocrite" come to mind?
The judge here should be applauded. While he understood where Tiffany was coming from, he correctly chose NOT to legislate from the bench by siding with them.
Agreed. This was a landmark decision, from a good judge, who exercised judgment and clarity.
My pleasure. That's why I did it. I can't for the life of me understand why the major media, when they cover a litigation news story, never give you the actual document to read. In these days of electronic filing of almost all federal court papers it is inexcusable.
If you'd like to read the actual decision. (PDF)
When did you have breakfast? Last night?
I guess I gotta come clean, now. while I was patching my kernel (trying a new method that seemingly allows division by zero) - something happened to space-time that I could not explain. the more watchpoints I set in my code, the faster things ran! at some point, I must have added too many and my machine melted down. after that, well, things got REALLY weird. fortunately, I was able to find a block of RET instructions still on a shred of disk drive, and that saved me.
Well go get yourself some breakfast. It'll make you feel better.
Then come back tomorrow and we can talk about God making cornmeal out of the RIAA and its lackeys.
Although the RIAA likes to tell judges and the press that these cases are about downloading, in all the cases I've seen I've yet to see one where the case was about downloading.
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."
I'm hungry for dinner and you're talking to me about grinding cornmeal??
It's 10:03 AM and you're hungry for dinner?
When did you have breakfast? Last night?
That is simply not true. I guess you think the 'legal world' is not in the world, but you would be wrong. We play by the laws of nature, like everyone else. If something is true, it is true. If something is false, if it is false. If something is false, and a judge concludes it is true...
(a) the thing is still false, and (b) the only thing that has changed is that the judge was wrong.
Most questions of 'truth' or 'falsity' in the legal system are determined by juries, not judges. And the same holds true there. If a jury gets it wrong, the jury is wrong. The truth hasn't changed.
Our main job, as judges, juries, and lawyers, is to discover the truth. Not to create it. (Unless of course you're an RIAA lawyer, in which case you have a very different mission: convincing the world that black is white, and doing it by picking on defenseless people who don't have the resources to put on a defense, or by bringing 'ex parte' proceedings where the defendant doesn't even know there's a case going on.).
This is also the kind of signs us wags here on /. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc.
Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.
To quote Longfellow:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."
[...] oral argument on the "making available" issue was rescheduled for August 4th, 10 AM, Duluth, Minnesota, federal courthouse, Courtroom 1.
Whoa! Didn't know that. I live in Duluth, so I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the info!
You're lucky!!!
It's a /. meme, like "imagine a Beowulf cluster of x" or the CowboyNeal option. I can't think of a really good explanation at the moment, so here's a sort of example:
Poster: "Americans are overweight from eating too much junk food!"
Reply: "In Soviet Russia, junk food eats you!"
Well that explains it.
It's a Slashdot thing. Like...
1. Graduate law school.
2. Represent poor and working class people who are being sued by huge multinational corporations.
3. ????
4. Profit!
I'm a little slow on the uptake. I don't get the Russia comment.
Me, I'm just a country lawyer.
I'm sure the seersucker suit and straw hat look sharp down on Pearl Street...
Did you say "suit"? What's that? Those things that go with "ties", like at a Bar Mitzvah or a funeral?
Nahhhh... my site wasn't down. Internet Law & Regulation, which hosts many of the *pdf litigation documents, was working on some problem with its servers. In the interim, I was taking the documents and hosting them on my own law firm web site. I'm delighted to report, by the way, that ILR straightened out its problem, and all the litigation documents are working fine now.
There is not a single word in Otter's "analysis" which comes from any of the cited documents. He appears not to have actually bothered to read them.
In fact, the RIAA and MediaSentry have consistently taken the position in UMG v. Lindor for 2 years that MediaSentry is NOT an expert and did NOT use technical expertise, but did "what any Kazaa user can do". They did not make this statement once or twice, but probably in the neighborhood of a dozen times. I culled just 3 of them.
Within weeks of making that statement in Lindor, Mr. Mullaney had made the exact opposite statement in the Michigan proceedings, saying MediaSentry was a technical expert which utilized its technical expertise in obtaining the evidence, just like a physician, a surveyor, a geologist, or a chemical engineer.... (all of which are clearly expert witnesses who would be subject to expert witness disclosure in federal litigations).
Any person who actually read (a) Mr. Mullaney's letter in the Michigan case, and (b) the three documents in the Lindor case, would have to agree with that statement.
Apparently Mr. Otter has some kind of grudge against me, and -- like his soulmates in the RIAA -- is willing to fabricate facts in order to 'make his case'. Mr. Otter please read the documents, and then please apologize.
In Maine we don't really take kindly to that sort of crap. Sometimes I love Maine's judges. Anyhow, I write to ask you (specifically) what, if any, results do you think this will have in the scope of things? IANAL but it seems to me that this has seemingly large potential for future problems with the RIAA suits when we're looking at it with the slashdot perspective but, on the other hand, it seems more likely that this won't actually have a great deal of impact at all.
As a veteran of 34 years in the field of litigation I can tell you 2 things:
1. It is not foreseeable which lie will be the one to bring them down.
2. It is foreseeable that their lying will bring them down.
I believe it's actually:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small".
Is this admissible in the new case where they claim they are stupid or does it only stay with the case that the 'expert defense' was used?
Yes it's admissible.