p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Citizen reporters are making the difference. Ask the people in Myanmar or, a lot closer to home, ask the families in America who are being viciously and relentlessly victimised by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

However, for the first time since 2003 when the RIAA launched its first attack, a case is actually going to trial.

And it’s slated to begin tomorrow.

The defendent is Jamie Thomas, a First Nations single mother of two who lives in Minnesota.

Thanks to the cooperation of the lamescream mainstream media, the Big 4 members of the organised music cartel have been able to scam most of America into believing they’ve successfully identified thousands of massive online distributors of copyrighted music, and prosecuted them.

It’s all flim-flam. Pure baloney. Just like the bulk of claims and accusations emanating from the Big 4 and all the RIAA-like alphabet organisations which front for it around the world.

But as p2pnet has been stressing for years, the realtiy is: not one of the innocent 30,000 men, women and children accused of being illicit file sharers, an offence which doesn’t exist in law, civil or criminal, has ever appeared in a civil court before a judge or jury.

Now, to its disgust, the RIAA has been told it can’t hand in 784 pages of documents it’d failed to produce until two weeks before the trial date.

“The RIAA claimed that these documents were needed to show who were the owners of 14 of the copyrights in question,” says Recording Industry vs The People.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this case and it’ll be down to citizen reporters to make sure it doesn’t slide by.

Says Beckerman:

Citizen Coverage of Virgin v. Thomas Jury Trial

This space is reserved for citizen coverage of the Virgin v. Thomas trial, believed to be the first RIAA case to go to trial in the United States.

If any of our readers can get themselves to the courthouse in Duluth, Minnesota, to see any of the jury trial commencing Tuesday October 2nd in Virgin v. Thomas, where Brian Toder of Minneapolis will square off against Richard Gabriel of Denver, and can phone or email us with updates as to what is going on, we will publish here reports or excerpts of reports throughout the trial.

This post will be re-dated each day so that it stays at or near the top while the trial is in progress.

Ground rules for citizen-correspondents:

1. Submissions should be by email, phone, or fax.

2. Submitter may not be anonymous to me (i.e. you must disclose to me your name, address, and contact information).

3. In publication I will disclose your name only, or, if you prefer, a first name only, or a fictional “handle” of your choice.

4. Please be painfully accurate.

5. Please check with Court as to what you’re allowed to bring into the courtroom, and be sure to follow the Court’s rules at all times. I’m sure cameras and recorders are prohibited, although they can be used outside the courthouse.

6. I will be using editorial discretion, and will not publish anything that doesn’t meet the “plausibility” standard (to borrow a phrase that the RIAA has been having problems with lately, see, e.g., Interscope v. Rodriguez).

Definitely stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
people in Myanmar – The Net uncovers Myanmar secrets, September 29, 2007
Jamie Thomas – First-ever RIAA trial?, September 27, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People – Judge in Virgin v. Thomas Precludes RIAA from Introducing 784 pages of documents not previously produced, October 1, 2007

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