Santangelo lawyer speaks out
p2pnet.net special:- When, last February, independent, one-man law office Jordan Glass was officially accepted into the Federal court system to defend Big Four Organized Music victim Patti Santangelo, he guaranteed he’d stay on the case to the end.
He’s kept his promise, and then some because now, as well as representing Patti, he’s acting for two of her children, Michelle and Robert, who’ve also become Big Four targets.
What does this mean to you? – p2pnet asked Glass shortly after he took on his two newest clients.
Here’s his reply:
This is both a privilege and an even greater responsibility than representing Patti alone, not because of the allegations, but because of their ages. Michelle was only 16-17 years old when the events were alleged to have taken place; Bobby was only 12-13 years old. Even Matthew Seckler, the identified family friend in the matter, was only 14-15 years old.
As law students we’re taught that law reflects “public policy.” But what is public policy? It can be answered by asking this fundamental question:
“What kind of country do you want to live in?”
Law is the main public mechanism by which we answer that question. But what about laws that don’t work as intended, that trap the unwary or create an unintended or inappropriate burden?
This case is about such laws.
At issue is much more than whether Patti or her children, or tens of thousands of others did or did not violate copyright laws. At issue is the fundamental question, “What kind of country do you want to live in?”
Ask yourself:
Do you want to live in a country where it’s acceptable that the federal government and big businesses are notified to protect them from falling in to legal traps, but where individuals are not so protected or warned?
Do you want to live in a country where laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protect ISPs and the RIAA, but create traps for individuals, in particular those who aren’t technically superior (forget about merely “savvy”)?
Do you want to live in a country where you’re legally responsible and liable for the acts of others, when you *can’t know* what they’re doing, and, in the case of computers, where even if you were able to watch, you wouldn’t understand unless you had specific technical training?
Do you want to live in a country where you’re legally responsible and liable for the acts of trespassers whose actions are invisible to you?
Do you want to live in a country where you’re legally responsible and liable for all of the above, when those who control the flow of information have the capacity, capability, power, right, authority, technology, know-how, scientific and technological acumen – and virtually limitless money – are free to ignore the problem they created, and instead place the burden, blame, financial and legal responsibility on people who have neither the right nor the know-how to protect themselves against the problem?
Now, when I say the “right,” I mean the practical right, not some ephemeral or ethereal right.
To have a right one must have the power and ability to either create a protection against violation of such right, or to be able to enforce such right.
How many congress people, US Supreme Court Justices, US Presidents and vice presidents, cabinet members and others have the technical knowledge to stop the flow of unwanted information to their computers (in their roles as private citizens, when not protected by the help of government employees, paid for by the taxpayers)?
How many ordinary parents, at the time the accused acts allegedly occurred (2002 to 2004), had even heard of “computer firewalls,” much less owned them in their own homes?
How many, at the time, would have suspected name-brand computers (such as Gateway), *pre-loaded* with software designed to download and copy music from the Internet, would be in violation of a law?
Did Gateway notify its user base that such programs could and possibly should be removed? Who was in a better position to know that the advertising “bait” was actually a legal “trap”? The one who swallowed the bait or the one who set the trap?
We don’t allow advertising cigarettes to minors; indeed, we don’t allow television advertising of cigarettes at all.
Yet, we allowed – and continue to allow – the RIAA and all those protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to seduce our children and protect the perpetrators and purveyors of the now-claimed illegally downloaded information.
The fight against this duplicity is what p2pnet readers are supporting, not just Patti and her children: they are supporting the right to be protected against the unknowable.
This isn’t a request for the suppression of free speech or to have the government control information on the Internet. Rather, it’s a demand to place the burden where it belongs: on those companies with the power and capacity to act.
Patti and millions of parents have no right, power, or ability to control the flow or content of information on the Internet.
At any time, AOL, Cablevision, the RIAA, Kaaza, iMesh, and hundreds of other ISPs and content providers had the power, technical acumen and financial wherewithal to prevent deceiving children into believing they had rights to do the things they were doing.
The RIAA has made much of the fact that it sent IM’s to the allegedly illegal downloaders. They ask what the parents did to protect the computers.
Suppose a parent had AOL’s parental controls set blocking IM’s to their children. Don’t you consider this responsible? Well, what was the result? The RIAA’s alleged IM’s didn’t get through the block.
Who had the power to make that “exception” – *if* they wanted to? The parents? No, they weren’t imbued with the authority to alter the AOL blocks at that level, nor did they even know such messages were forthcoming.
Parents thought they’d been responsible by implementing the blocks. AOL (for example) and the RIAA had the power and authority to create that kind of exception – *if they’d wanted to.* Instead, they’ve successfully shifted the burden to the parents, who are the ones now being punished: “if you hadn’t turned on the blocks, our (the RIAA) IM’s would have gotten through and warned your children.” On the other hand, can you imagine the outcry against parents who did not turn on the blocks? “How could you allow your children unfettered access to the Internet?”
There are many such conflicting demands to be addressed in response to the trap that’s been set for the children and their unknowing parents by the RIAA.
Heaping garbage on people and then calling them dirty: is that the type of country in which you wish to live?
That’s what this case is really about.
By the way, isn’t it interesting that the RIAA let its papers out to the press before serving them on the defendants?
What does that tell you?
Having not seen the complete set of papers, nor having been served, further response to the allegations would be incomplete and possibly contain errors. I can tell that you I represented Michelle at her deposition, and in my review of the transcript, I do not agree with the RIAA’s allegations. To say merely that “I don’t remember” slants it in a meaningless way.
Similarly for the other RIAA misrepresentations about the results of the other depositions.
You can help the Santangelo family battle the multi-billion-dollar Big Four cartel with their bottomless pockets and teams of lawyers by making a donation.
Cheers! And thanks ….
Jon Newton
Also See:
officially accepted – Patti Santangelo’s new lawyer, February 6, 2006
Michelle and Robert – RIAA goes after Santangelo kids, November 2, 2006
isn’t it interesting – RIAA, Santangelo court doc farce, November 3, 2006
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November 11th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Why is a Canadian website supporting this? It should be focussing on Canadian problems.
November 11th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
it IS a Canadian problem as well as a GLOBAL problem!
If you’d been *keeping up*, you’d already know this.
November 11th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
The US _sue ‘em all_ cases are just part of a massive international plot to extort people into having to buy overpriced, cookie-cutter crap from Big Four Organized Music instead of exercising free choice.
I call the corporate industry Organized Music because I don’t believe there’s much to choose between them and Organized Crime. And the music industry was historically linked to The Mafia. Remember?
The labels can do pretty well what they want in America, including having laws promulgated and then having them enforced by agencies wholly supported by US taxpayers. And they’re trying to acquire the same kind of obscene power in Canada, and elsewhere.
So this _is_ a Canadian problem and the more we can do to highlight what’s going on, the better.
Cheers!
November 11th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Fantastic. You say it exactly the way it is. Thanks you
November 12th, 2006 at 12:27 am
The days of NIMBY are pretty much over when it comes to global mega-corporations. In case you’re not familiar with NIMBY it means Not In My Back Yard. The commenter referring to why focus in something not Canadian is still running on yesteryears ideology.
The coming of the internet pretty much screwed the isolation of independent countries when it comes to multi-national corporations and having control on them. Now when it looks like things aren’t going their way they run as fast as they can for the theme of “lack of authority” in that they are a foreign country operated business. When it comes time to get handouts, they are standing there with their hands out wanting to make sure their palms are crossed; twice if they can get it.
So their deal is now to do it global style, which is what WIPO is and why they are driving so hard to get Canada into the fold of signing or ratifying that treaty. Doing so means that the default law will be pretty much the same as the US. Funny how you’re not hearing much from your minister on how this is to be effectively put into law nor are many of the citizens being called to input ideas, themes, and what should constitute protections for those other than the cartels. Even the Canadian branch representing the Canadian artists has separated from the cartels’ aims. This is much the same way it was done in the US. Now why should Canadians be concerned with that? Simply if you don’t take up interest and fight it now, come next year it will be a done deal and Canadians will be facing the very same sue’em alls that are happening in the US today is why.
*SECOND ATTEMPT AT VALIDATION
November 12th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Which only proves how badly many have been educated noe and in the past.
Yesterday, in historical terms, Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews. Had it not been for Hitler’s other stupidity, the invasion of other countries, the world would have done nothing about what Hitler was doing to the Jews because it was nobody’s problem.
What Hitled did to the Jews, the cartels are doing to artists and music lovers.
No doubt about it, the music cartels have exploited real music, musicians, and songwriters, the artists, to the point of threatening it’s extermination, to be replaced by plastic fabricated artists. We should all resist.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
November 13th, 2006 at 2:22 am
It would be interesting if Patti was pregnant whether the RIAA might try to sue the fetus as well. Basically there are two divergent views in which the supporters of abortion will argue that the fetus is an extension of the woman, while the anti-abortionists will say that the fetus is a separate life form.
If the fetus is sued will the father be sued as well?
December 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
The abuse of power happens when there is no morality. Morality is not some religious hallelujah, mediaeval, sermonising, finger-pointing, guilt-inducing sort of clap-trap. Morality is that which confers benelovence to the individual and thence collectively to all within any social structure. Morality is Evolution-in-Progress.
There cannot be Freedom without Maturity. Neither can there be Democracy without Morality. Anybody who thinks or were brainwashed, and that’s the majority, to understand that democracy is about freedom-of-choice or one-man-one-vote, is sadly mistaken/misinformed. Deliberately and igorantly. When maturity and morality is absent, you only have abandonment.
Commerce, entreprenuerialship, technology, “Justice”, etc. is ALL about “Keeping The Peace” and that’s what “Law & Order” does best. Commercial greed, which is just a conniving cover for the greed of their proponents, is about “amorality”. That’s the term their immoral supporters want others to think. Machines, mechanisms of law, etc might be amoral, but when humans are used to decipher/interpret them, they will have a moral spirit.
Selling junk through fashion via advertisements of any kind is entrapping through immaturity and immorality. In a world which operates on relativities, there are no limits to human “expression” when morality is absent, except for the fear of being caught/exposed. What all these situations expose is the lack of real choice for the choice of skewering oneself is not a choice at all. When true maturity is absent, you have sheer abandonment. Like giving a child a box of matches or raising a national flag and singing a national anthem when one’s dirty deeds are about to be exposed. Or valuing one’s chastity for less than a few dollars [and then swinging to abusing children under some guise of “religion”]. Or taking backhanders under the guise of war-for-democracy called “lobbying”. Or “lobbying” for perpetual income under the guise of some “intellectual property right” including the right to use any word, term, system, “because I patented it first”.
It’s time Truth is exposed and not “freedom” or “democracy” for the democracy/freedom that is being peddled for the past 200 years is about freedom to grab and plunder, not freedom to exercise one’s wisdom and innocence. In reality, the democracy being expressed is the freedom to be nonsensical whereas the collectivity [read: “communism”] being touted is the lack of freedom to be sensible. Both are immoral and immature expressions that have brought us madness of every kind imaginable. Such madnees will only end when we assume our maturity and morality. Not in the courts of the law of their immoral interpreters.