RIAA's 'Misspeaking' May Have Affected Verdict 270
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "David Kravetz of Wired.com covered last year's Capitol v. Thomas trial gavel-to-gavel. It's worth noting, then, his article saying that the RIAA's recent statement — that Sony's top litigation lawyer 'misspoke' during the trial. She said that making a copy from one's own cd is 'stealing', which (in his words) may have caused a major miscarriage of justice. Wired further points out that later on in the trial, during the RIAA's examination of Ms. Thomas, 'On the hard drive she [turned] over were thousands of songs Thomas said she ripped from her CDs. The RIAA's Gabriel suggested to jurors that copying one's purchased music was a violation of the Copyright Act. Gabriel, for example, asked Thomas whether she had ever burned CDs, either for herself, or to give away to friends.' Gabriel, the RIAA's lead attorney, apparently misspoke too — prejudicing jurors along the way."
Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
Respectfully,
Carcharodon Carcharias, Esq.
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
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Anyway, given their shared bottom feeding habits, wouldn't Ginglymostoma cirratum be more appropriate?*
* IANAMB, I looked the Latin name up on wikipedia, so it probably actually means "Fuck your mother, Brutus" or something similar.
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Well, I think that if your offended by the (somewhat) respectful fashion of referring to an attorney as a shark, you'd refer to them as this instead: Annelida Clitellata.
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still wondering why biologists continue to use lab rats to experiment on when there's so damned many lawyers about...
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Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me clarify my position. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fact is that the present jury system is DESIGNED to REMOVE the jury from the facts. Designed to obscure facts of a case from the Jury, while crippling their ability to ask for facts or have the appropriate laws relevant to the case pointed out to the. Juries are treated as a bunch of dumb slobs to beg to push the Blue button or Red button so they can go home. The civil system is even worse as all the cases "waste the courts time" so incentive to pull big stunts and baited arguments is in full effect because the jury just has to "agree", it doesn't have to make LEGAL sense!!!
appeal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
why the hell not?
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then he was incompetent, and should be disbarred anyway!
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA -- She claims that she misheard the question and thought they were still discussing downloads, not ripping from disc. Who knows if that's true or not, but it's probably more than enough of a defense against any kind of complaint.
To reach the level of perjury you need to show that she knowingly and intentionally lied. There are two problems here -- First, she only said it once and claims that she didn't hear the question. To really nail somebody on perjury you have to show that their entire testimony revolved around a big lie. For example, if the witness comes up with a whole story as to where he was on July 2, 2007 that turns out to be a total lie. Even then, it's tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the witness was entirely fabricating. Second, it has to be an actual statement of fact. The RIAA has announced that they're not pressing the argument that ripping is stealing, but there is an argument that copying a CD to a computer is still copyright infringement. It doesn't matter if it's a good argument or a bad argument (I think most
Look, the RIAA does plenty of things wrong. Focus on the real ones rather than the little petty ones.
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Then they ought to ban her from the courtroom until she gets her hearing checked!
Re:perjury ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh. Except it's NOT copyright infringement, it falls under fair use for consumers. we're allowed to make copies of shit for our own personal use.
Sharing those copies is not allowed.
Breaking through copy-prevention is now allowed. The copying ITSELF is still allowed, it is the circumvention / disabling of the copy-prevention that is against the law.
This bitch did not misspeak. She was asked if it was okay for a consumer who legally purchased a track to make a copy of that track. She responded by saying that's a "nice way of saying -- steals one copy."
She knew exactly what she was saying, there is absolutely no way she could have misunderstood the question to be about illegal downloading, as the RIAA pres claims. Nor was it even a question about ripping CDs, also as stated by the RIAA pres.. it was a question about a legal purchase of a track, and making a copy of that track. Nothing about downloading, nothing about sharing, nothing.
Their expert testimony just proved itself to be as dumb or dumber than we all thought initially, and is no expert. I for one would not expect an expert to so grossly misunderstand a question that a flat answer would be given -- if there's the least doubt that you fully understand the question I would expect a request for the question to be clarified so a truly expert answer could be given. Not just off-the-cuff let's-make-a-case-OO-RAH bullshit.
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Informative)
Fair use isn't a right. Its a defense. You make a copy, you get charged with infringement, you defend your copy as fair use. You hope you prevail.
Copyright law itself doesn't define fair use as a right, it recognizes that some infringement for fair use is allowed, and gives a set of guidelines to assist with recognizing fair use. But essentially each non-authorized copy is an infringement waiting for a lawsuit... and when the lawsuit comes, fair use is waiting as a defense... but until something has actually been ruled fair use and a precedent is set, its legal standing is essentially unknown... we know a lawsuit can be brought, and we know fair use is a credible defense strategy... but we don't actually KNOW how it will turn out.
Ripping a CD to a PC has never been ruled on. So there is no precedent confirming that fair use is recognized. You and I can think its "clearly obvious" that a fair use defense would prevail (and I think it would)... but until it actually does...we don't actually KNOW.
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No, you just don't understand the law. "Fair Use" is an affirmative defense, which means you admit to being culpable for the crime, but then point out that, oh yeah, you still can't beat me. Contrast this with a plain old defense.
A plain old defense negates an issue the plaintiff had to prove. On the other hand, an affirmative defense acknowledges the existance of the elements the plaintiff had to prove and says
Re:perjury ? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:perjury ? (Score:4, Funny)
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Is this a law? (Score:5, Funny)
First, its duels [...]. Secondly, [...].
First, it's "it's." Second, if it's "first, ..." it's "second, ...."
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*applauds*
Re:perjury ? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Informative)
While we are on it, can the Judge be dismissed, seeing as it is the Judge's responsibility to keep the jury properly informed about the law. From a website about jury duty: "It is your duty to accept what the Judge says about the laws to be applied to the case, whether you agree or disagree with the law." [hamilton-co.org] Now if the judge failed to correct the "misspeaking" of the Sony attorney, they the Judge implied that the Sony attorney was in fact correct, demonstrating gross incompetence on the part of the Judge as well. They should both be disbarred.
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second -- It's the job of the other party (here, the defense) to object when a lawyer on the other side says something improper. If the defense failed to object to it then they waived the right to appeal it. The idea is that you want to allow things to be corrected at the time (by telling the jury "that's not the law" or instructing them on what the law really is) rather than looking for mistakes after the fact and having to start all over. Trials are long, complicated, and expensive. If we looked for every mistake after the fact there'd never be any finality to any ruling. Instead, we rely on the defense to catch the plaintiffs' mistakes as trial goes (and vice-versa).
Third -- It depends on the state, but in most cases there is a judicial misconduct process that requires showing that the judge actively committed some wrong (took money from one side, or tried to intimidate a witness into not testifying, etc). Getting the law wrong happens all the time. That's why we have appeals. If we disciplined every judge who got the law wrong at some point there'd be no judges left and we'd have no reason to have an appeal process. Tens of thousands of cases get appealed every year, and almost every appeal is premised on a claim that the trial judge got the law wrong. That can't be a basis for discipline or we'd run out of judges within a week.
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Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your statement is that there is a LOT of "the law." The United States Code [wikipedia.org] -- the document that contains all federal laws currently in force -- runs more than 30,000 pages [gpo.gov]. Nobody ever could "know" all of that law. If you add state laws and federal regulations you're talking in the hundreds of thousands of pages of law.
Our judges are usually generalists. They hear all kinds of cases. So instead of forcing judges to memorize, we rely on the parties on each side of a lawsuit to present the law to the judge and to inform him what the correct law is. The judge then takes his general legal training and figures out which side is correct, instead of trying to memorize a 30,000-page body of law.
Good judges are usually good lawyers. They are usually very good at legal reasoning. They usually aren't good at memorizing 30,000 pages of text. I'd much rather have smart judges able to reason than judges who have memorized a huge book.
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It is your duty to accept what the Judge says about the laws to be applied to the case, whether you agree or disagree with the law."
In at least Canada, this is a famous lie of omission: a jury can find a defendant not guilty despite the law (see "jury nullification" in both Canada and the U.S.).
This is why we have juries, you understand, not logic programs, or even judges alone. Justice trumps law, famously in the Morgentaler cases, where he was repeatedly charged, and repeatedly found innocent, whatever the Judge believed.
--dave
Re:perjury ? (Score:4, Informative)
In criminal law, in Canada, there is a real legal difference between a jury's refusal to convict an accused person at a criminal trial, and the U.S. concept of jury nullification. This is primarily due to substantial differences in case law which developed in the mid-to-late1800s in both legal systems which entrenched a right to make legal arguments to a jury, or to a judge in the presence of a jury which could form its own impressions of the arguments in the rendering of a verdict under certain circumstances (United States vs Fenwick 1836, Stettinius vs United States 1839 contra Games vs Stiles 1840, Sparf vs United States 1895). In the mid to late 20th century several cases in the USA upheld the jury's power to refuse to convict based on points of law, but hedged by restricting officers of the court from informing jurors of the power with the argument that it gives licence to jurors to disregard the law entirely in favour of deciding any individual case based on personal prejudices and feelings about the parties involved.
In Canada, juries have long been able to make strong (but not always binding) suggestions with respect to sentencing, if they choose to convict -- almost always this involves urging a lighter sentence upon the trial judge, often a conditional discharge. This is unusual in systems which inherited the English criminal justice tradition, but has had the effect of reducing even further the liklihood of a refusal to convict at all. As a result, there are only a handful of Supreme Court cases which have dealt with the issue directly.
R. v. Morgenthaler, [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30 is the culmination of appeals by the Crown against successive juries' refusal to convict Dr Morgenthaler in spite of what they believed was a clear cut case and clear instructions from the Judges. The decision confirms the right and moral duty of juries to refuse to convict when their consciences tell them otherwise; in their commentaries on the case history Dickson CJ, Lamer and Wilson JJ all made reference to the section 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (freedom of conscience) with respect to the actions of jurors, making it fairly clear that a jury's refusal to convict in the end was not sufficient reason to invalidate the outcome of a trial.
However, from the ruling:
Subsequent cases have followed this line: juries can refuse to convict, and that refusal is on its face insufficient grounds for appeal [R. v. Krieger, 2006 SCC 47, [2006] 2 S.C.R. 501], but at the same time judges are entitled to vigorously and forcefully instruct juries not to do so [R. v. Latimer, 2001 SCC 1, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 3]: "The trial judge did not prejudice the accused's rights in replying to the question from the jury on whether it could offer input on sentencing. The trial did not become unfair simply because the trial judge undermined the jury's de facto power to nullify ... Guarding against jury nullification is a desirable and legitimate exercise for a trial judge; in fact a judge is required to take steps to ensure that the jury will apply the law properly."
As the powers -- and even the existence -- of a jury were claimed in the face of proper tyrants looking to jail or execute people for personal an
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If that was the case, then a defense lawyer that knew his/her client was guilty couldn't try and convince the jury that he/she isn't, since they are knowingly giving false information.
Re:perjury ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that attorney should be fired for gross incompetence. I mean come on, it's a copyright attorney, it should know these things.
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I think you mean disbarred, nationally and permanently. Fired would probably include some sort of golden parachute payoff of a few million.
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You seem to be implying that he is trying to sway the court with that wording, and I think you're right. While it is one thing to word a phrase such that doubt is cast upon a legal concept, it is quite another to outright contradict what is known -- namely that the rights of fair use, whether legally established or not, are subject to interpretation. A statement other than that, such as
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Hmm, I wonder is someone could get away with starting a campaign claiming the head attorney here is a complete idiot with an IQ in the double digits and has no business in the position/career she has - IE: future clients beware...
I would think that it would be common since that the head attorney for the plantif
Mistrial? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope so.
OT (Score:2)
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Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
She also claimed this part of the story was not brought up at the trial. If so and if true, it seems to me that her defense attorney really dropped the ball here.
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Re:Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter. (Score:4, Interesting)
But, it is certainly possible that she brought the system in for repair and the repair shop sat on it for a few weeks/months and only returned it to her after she had received notice.
Re:Unfortunately for Thomas, it doesn't matter. (Score:5, Funny)
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Some punishments are inherently unjust regardless of all of the clueless "crime & punishment" that might be going on from the clueless and sheltered.
Against Intellectual Property (Score:5, Informative)
Martin attacks the very idea that intellectual products can be considered property at all: "The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to." He demolishes many of the standard rationales for IP and cites many abuses of it, such as: "The neem tree is used in India in the areas of medicine, toiletries, contraception, timber, fuel and agriculture. Its uses have been developed over many centuries but never patented. Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials. In this way, collective local knowleilge developed by Indian researchers and villagers has been expropriated by outsiders who have added very little to the process.5
Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Ehar, "Intellectual piracy and the neena tree," Ecologist, Vol. 23 No. 6, 1993, pp, 223-227."
I recommend this essay highly.
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Sorry I don't have mod points at the moment. Thanks for the essay link to http://deoxy.org/aip.htm [deoxy.org]
Our business plan is to soon provide an environment for free innovation (the customer is the inventor concept) and push the patent system into where it belongs, a harmless oblivion.
Copyright laws are still important though, as they care for software licences like GPL to not be abused. Regarding creative art, DRM is evil (I don't purchase DRM stuff) and DMCA is pure insanity.
support FFII.org [ffii.org], EFF.org [eff.org] an
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Copyright laws are still important though, as they care for software licences like GPL to not be abused.
Most GPL proponents (here on Slashdot at least) are fond of claiming that the GPL is only necessary because copyright law exists and that without copyright law there'd be no need for the GPL. Of course technically the GPL does not provide the same rights as a public domain license would (which is what you'd have everywhere if there were no copyright law), since it obliges you to distribute the source code along with any binaries... but if it weren't for that forced source/binary coupling, the GPL would bas
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IP is bad because the person who created it didn't create it in a vacuum, so not everyone who was a part it gets to benefit.
Your teachers don't get royalties for teaching you the tools you used, etc.
My problem is that they all actually do seem to be covered in one way or another.
Teachers, trainers, etc all get covered as basically works for hire, so they have bargained their part of the IP pr
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I just had a hard time getting around it. Everything I read ended up coming through the lens of "well, if he's missing this, what else is he missing that I'm not thinking of?"
Sure, science does OK with the info is free angle, but it had a long tradition of that, with a tumultuous period where that changed.
What will that tumult look like in our society for it to happen to everything else? Without addressing that (which I didn't
Can we define copyright as between two people? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that this is how copyright was originally intended to apply, and I think it makes more sense. Let people do what they want with their media, as long as they don't copy and distribute it to another person. Thats when copyright law should apply.
--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital elecronics! [nerdkits.com]
DMCA. (Score:5, Informative)
After the DMCA, it's still alright for actual CDs, but many other things (movies) are copy protected, and it is illegal to break copy protection for any reason.
Re:Can we define copyright as between two people? (Score:5, Informative)
I buy a CD, copy it, then some time later sell the original. According to your revised law I haven't broken the law even though 2 copies now exist.
Copyright law in most countries does make it illegal to format shift. I don't know how it is in the US but in the UK for example it's illegal to use a VCR to record a TV programme - however nobody ever prosecutes (because it would be silly) so the law is effectively meaningless.
Re:Can we define copyright as between two people? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not true. This falls under "fair dealing". See Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, Section III, Chapter 1.
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[in response to the idea that copyright infringement should be explicitly redefined to only cover distribution to another person]
I buy a CD, copy it, then some time later sell the original. According to your revised law I haven't broken the law even though 2 copies now exist.
Yes you have. You distributed a copy and kept a copy. The fact that it was the original copy you distributed is irrelevant -- you've created additional copies and sold a copy to someone else.
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Don't you have the kind that record to DVD? They're only $50 (£25.29) here. It's difficult to imagine what that feature would be for if not to record TV shows.
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Enforcing copyright is an absurd way to get average people to pay for content. Its like walking cats. Instead people need to realize that they need to pay to get the good entertainment they want.
Yes some people will get what others payed to produce for free. But at least they got what they wanted f
Re:Can we define copyright as between two people? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to talk about the original intent of copyright, it was to prevent publishers from reprinting each other's books and selling them for profit. At the time, there was no expectation that we would have such a thing as a "digital copy", or that private individuals would have the ability to copy and distribute millions of copies of anything for practically zero cost.
So copyrights were never intended to apply to our current situation at all, because our current situation wasn't anticipated. Applying copyright to the caching of software code in RAM in order to run that software, for example, has nothing to do whatsoever with the "original intent". And yet that's how it's being used now, which is why software vendors are able to require "licenses" in order to use their software even if you don't copy the software.
Some might argue that, regardless of the original intent of copyright law, we need the protection for content owners now. Personally, I think copyright law should never have been allowed to be used against individuals who have produced unauthorized copies without any commercial gain.
Re:Can we define copyright as between two people? (Score:5, Informative)
Not true.
US law, Title 17 Section 117 [cornell.edu] explicitly states that installing software and running software do not constitute infringing copying. The European Union has an equivalent law, as does most ever other country on earth.
You absolutely positively do not need any sort of license at all to install and run software. Just as you do not need any sort of license at all to read a book. An EULA is a contract offer. You are perfectly free to decline that contract offer, and it is absolutely positively not copyright infringement to go ahead and install and run software anyway.
EULAs are contract offers, and publishers use a a few non-copyright based tactics attempting to corner you into agreeing to them. For example they try things like arguing "we printed on the outside of the box that there is a contract inside, and that by buying the box you are accepting the contract on the outside of the box saying that you accept the contract inside the box". And on that basis, it would be absolutely valid for the supermarket could sell you tomato with an EULA sticker on it. It would be absolutely valid for them to sell you a box of cereal with an EULA inside the box (thats one hell of a "secret toy surprise!" inside).
These alternate legal tricks attempting to trap you into an EULA are sometimes upheld in court, and sometimes tossed out on their ass in court. Legally, EULAs are a total crap shoot. But they are absolutely not legitimate upon any basis in copyright. Just because someone slaps the title "EULA" at the top of a contract offer does not mean that it is actually licensing you anmything under copyright law that you actually want or need.
About the only time you have an EULA that genuinely is licensing you valid useful rights under copyright is when some company buys something like a "site license" that allows them to buy just once physical copy and use that one copy to install onto five machines or onto a hundred machines or onto ten thousand machines. A license to create multiple copies is indeed copyright license.
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I make an illegal copy of my CD when I play it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I even violate copyright by singing along to a song without having bought a performance license! Even worse, I might sing the song at a different time, thus time-shifting/reproducing it! If I hum it in a public place, that compounds the crime because then it's a public performance.
Since I want to avoid becoming a career copyright-violating criminal, I am moving to Antigua, land of the free, land of RIAA-copyright-free.
Sadly, I wish everything I wrote above was bollocks, but far fetched and silly as it might be, it seems the Recording Ass of America don't see it as such.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I make an illegal copy of my CD when I play it. (Score:2)
(*) Footnote:
Free for the first $21 million per year, usual charges apply thereafter. [slashdot.org]
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Wrong Musical (Score:5, Funny)
It's Miss Saigon [miss-saigon.com] , not Miss Peking.
Also, the RIAA shouldn't take credit for the work of Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Richard Maltby, Jr.
I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Freudian Slip (Score:2)
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Of course, they'd also love to use the same idea the telecoms use for the internet: collect from both ends for the same byte. In this
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This is the fantasy world that the RIAA uses
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The RIAA's ultimate go
Bad Lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
Thomas should get a new trial, with a new lawyer, and the two old lawyers should pay for screwing up the entire trial.
Re:Bad Lawyers-You've Been Trumped! (Score:2)
I actually believe he has been, and she's looking for a new one to handle her appeal.
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Thank Christ someone finally pointed this out. This is another one of those non-story Slashdot stories -- it's just preaching to the choir and doing so in a rather questionable manner. Is the RIAA lawyer a douchebag for playing fast and loose with the language? Of course -- but that's why a defendant isn't alone in our justice syste
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That explains THIS odd CNN video story (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2008/01/02/lklv.hostin.music.chetry.cnn [cnn.com]
Fine. What about the judge? (Score:2)
If the lawyer "misspoke," in his statements to the jury, wasn't it the job of the judge in the case to point out the actual requirements of the law? Otherwise, why have a judge? We should just make our legal system a contest between two people making up the most plausible bullshit they can muster.
What about the AHRA? (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL, but the aforementioned act appears to include language specifically designed to allow home digital and analog recording of copyrighted material.
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"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."[17]
Putting your files out for share under any program such a
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I'm willing to don my aluminum foil conspiracy theory hat for a moment and make the following supposition: The RIAA is attempting to get testimony introduced into a case involving file sharing that equates CD ripping with sharing. Once a judge is conned into issuing a decision that implies ripping itself is illegal, the RIAA will extend its enforcement based upon this new precedent.
That's pretty much the idea. But to refine it just a bit:
1. The RIAA's leading precedent for its "making available" theory is the Hotaling case. Hotaling has been distinguished on the ground that the copies being 'made available' were concededly unlawful copies. If the RIAA can establish that copies ripped from cd are 'unlawful', then Hotaling case can't be distinguished on that ground.
2. If in their filesharing cases they can argue, as they did in Capitol v. Thomas, that the mere fact that a defendant
Future EULA (Score:3, Insightful)
When you buy a cd, you puchase the disk and the music/data on it. You do NOT purchase a license to simply use the disk and listen to the music. That being said, if I buy a CD, then I should have the right to make as many copies of the music on it as I see fit, as long as I don't sell those copies to other people.
If the RIAA wants to start this whole EULA-esque crap, then they should state that you are not buying a CD, but rather purchasing a license.
DMCA. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is because, as I said in my other comment on this thread, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. It doesn't matter that what you're going to do with it constitutes fair use; the act of circumvention is itself illegal.
So, in theory, if you have a CD with the Sony Rootkit on it, you're not allowed to rip it, because to do so, you'd have to "circumvent" the D
Lawyers "Misspeak" (Score:3, Insightful)
Just had to smile..... (Score:3, Informative)
what is a "digital audio recording device" (Score:4, Informative)
here is the law
is a PC a "digital audio recording device" it is certainly capable of being used that way, -- but -- that is NOT it's primary purpose. A PC HAS NO PRIMARY PURPOSE it is a general purpose machine.
now if you put a sound card in your PC and announce that your PC is your Music Library system then that is just something you are saying
copyright law was intended to protect the right of the owner to regulate the manufacture and distributions of copies of the copyright material.
what we need is the law clarified with the addition of a paragraph on computers and networks
if you post any material to a web site or on a P2P share you have published that material and if the material is copyright protected then you have trespassed on that copyright and can be charged with a crime.
it is the duty of the Congress to clarify the definition of a digital recording device it is not up to the court to wreck someone life with a test case. If the law is NOT CLEAR then the defendant must go free and if there is any remaining issue that has to be refered to the Congress -- NOT to the Court. The court does not make the law only Congress can do that and it's about time this trouble with "juducial activism" got straightened up too.
Re:hopefully they'll get what's coming to them (Score:4, Funny)
Fixed that for ya. That'll be $5 plus $0.05 per view. Cash only, please.
Re:Article summary (Score:4, Interesting)
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RIAA's out of court comments aside, is this not something that could be cited in a future case? I mean, RIAA did prevail in the case, all testimony is kept on record, and unless the verdict is overturned, the lawyers comments will be a future quotable. I am dubious of RIAA's intentions and it is not out of this realm to imagine some exploratory litigation.
Good question. Actually, the RIAA companies will NOT be able to use the transcript of Jennifer Pariser's testimony -- it is just out of court hearsay -- but WE, the defendant's lawyers, can use it, to show that Jennifer Pariser and SONY BMG are dishonest, do not take seriously the sanctity of an oath, will stop at nothing, and are ignorant of copyright law.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now somebody gets it. That's the whole point of this debacle. If the RIAA misspeaks something often enough, and it gets into the record, it will make it easier to go after ALL iPod owners and anyone else walking down the street with an MP3 player and headphones.
You're exactly right. And that is their strategy. And their strength is in the economic imbalance. The defendants can't afford to hire the type of legal representation they need, while the RIAA can spend hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in any given case. In Atlantic v. Howell [blogspot.com] they slipped in [blogspot.com] the language about ripping cd's to mp3's [blogspot.com] because Howell doesn't even have a lawyer, and they're hoping to get the judge to make a mistake.