Dear p2pnet: about those law students ….
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- “Dear Jon,” says an email in response to p2pnet’s University of San Francisco joins RIAA fight.
“I read with interest your report that Vandenberg & Feliu, a company of New York lawyers, are now being supplemented by unpaid students at the the University of San Francisco.”
It goes on:
I find it truly disturbing that students are being used in this way against legitimate enterprises as they try to protect themselves against the rampant theft of their work.
It is indeed a sad state of affairs when this kind of thing is not only encouraged, but promoted by heavily biased media such as your site.
However, it is only a matter of time until the legitimate music industry succeeds in its fight against those who would see it deprived of its rightful earnings based on sale of product it has created, and artists it has nurtured.
Feel free to publish this so that you have at least one accurate report in your ‘blog’.
HCH
Thanks, HCH. As always, it’s a pleasure to hear from the other side.
Yes, I’m biased, and as I say here, “I’m as biased as they come, I’ve explicitly said so on a number of occasions, and I’ve never pretended to be otherwise.
“I’m biased against any and all efforts to kill free speech, online or off. I’m biased against the entertainment cartels as they pretend to be honest businesses trying to earn an honest living. I’m biased against their efforts to penetrate school classrooms to spread their poisonous ‘educational’ programs, claiming they represent decent standards for children to follow. I’m biased against the one-sided reporting by many, if not most, elements of the mainstream media who DO pretend to be fair, balanced and unbiased. I’m biased against attempts to flood us with tricky Net advertisements designed to force themselves past our natural barriers of free choice. And I could go on 
”
HCH, I find it more than just a little ironic that you zero in on law students working with lawyers such as Beckerman.
Why shouldn’t they? It’s on-the-job training of the best kind. Law students need to know how to deal with the legal parasites who feed off the labels as they attack their own customers.
For years the Big 4 have been laughing all the way to the bank at the continuing gullibility of the people who run the schools.
Now the wheel is turning.
“The RIAA’s litigation campaign has met resistance from the academic community before, but now its been taken to a whole new level,” says Beckerman, “the defense of RIAA victims who are not part of the college community at all.
“First the University of Oregon lashed out on behalf of its students, then it was the University of Maine’s Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic on behalf of its undergrads.
“But now the University of San Francisco School of Law has taken the fight a giant step further. Its Intellectual Property Law Clinic’s attorneys-in-training, working under the supervision of law professors, are going to bat against the RIAA by helping outside lawyers to defend their clients, pro bono.
“The energy and talent of the thousands of honor students attending our nation’s law schools is a huge and powerful resource.
“For the poor and middle class people hanging on trying to defend these cases, to receive the assistance of that army of talented, eager, brilliant legal minds, most of them digital natives who actually understand the legal fallacies and technological missteps the RIAA is taking, and who can’t wait to expose them, could be an immense development.”
‘Border on extortion …’
The pic on the right shows professor Robert Talbot and students at the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Project.
“The U.S. recording industry sends hundreds of letters each month to college students across the country accusing them of illegally downloading music from the Internet,” says the clinic, going on >>>
The letters offer a simple option: settle for $3,000 or $4,000 or be sued for hundreds of thousands.
Professor Robert Talbot and students in the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Project are providing research, writing, and counseling assistance in cases involving the Recording Industry Association of America’s letters to college students concerning music piracy.
While many – if not most – of the students targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America’s “pre-litigation settlement letters” may have in fact illegally downloaded music, not all are guilty. But frightened by the threatening letters and lacking the resources to obtain legal advice, most students opt to hand over their credit cards and settle.
A new undertaking by the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Project at the USF School of Law aims to provide college students with the legal counseling they need to make an informed decision on how to respond to the RIAA letters. Law students in the class, led by Professor Robert Talbot, are available to counsel students accused of music piracy.
They are also researching complex legal issues for attorneys including Ray Beckerman, a key player who represents individuals targeted by the RIAA.
“The RIAA is using heavy-handed tactics that some of the law students feel border on extortion,” Talbot said. “The cases involve complex legal and technical issues. We can review a students’ case, explain their rights, and determine whether they have a good defense or not.”
There are many scenarios that can lead the RIAA to target the wrong person, said Jonathan Jaffe, a law student who also works in the technology industry.
“Many may not be guilty,” Jaffe said. “Their roommates could be using their computer, or they could be connecting over a wireless network where it is hard to determine which user is downloading the files. The RIAA tactics seem like a racket.”
In addition, a student could have made a simple mistake, it could be sabotage, or the RIAA could simply have the wrong person, Talbot said.
The class is currently assisting Beckerman on the case of a 60-year-old Haitian woman who speaks broken English, works six days a week for $8.50 an hour, and has never used a computer who is defending herself against charges that she is an “online media distributor.”
“There are a great number of important legal issues of first impression being decided in these cases, the resolution of which will have enormous implications for the Internet, for our society,” Beckerman said. “The opportunity for the law students to be a part of real world cases of first impression, working side-by-side with experienced practitioners motivated by principle rather than by money, on behalf of real life, suffering clients, is a priceless asset for the law school.”
The Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Clinic was established by the USF School of Law to provide legal services to individuals who need assistance with a variety of intellectual property matters. The clinic is a partner of the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF), assisting in domain name disputes. The Project is also a partner in “Chilling Effects,” a joint project of the EFF and law school clinics at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Maine. Chilling effects helps the public understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws provide for online activities.
For information on the USF School of Law’s Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Clinic, call (415) 422-6752 or email clinic@internetjustice.org.
OK, HCH?
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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February 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
“However, it is only a matter of time until the legitimate music industry succeeds in its fight against those who would see it deprived of its rightful earnings based on sale of product it has created, and artists it has nurtured.”
The dude almost had it right until the “nurtured” part. As for the part about “legitimate enterprises” defending themselves, he missed by a long shot. In terms of accurate reporting, it’s called regurgitating propoganda.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Since nurtured was not in my readily available english vocabulary I had to look it up what exactly it meant.*
Now that I know it I think we can safely say if “HCH” truely believes what he wrote Jon, I guess its time to call child welfare agency to protect the nurtered one since their guardians clearly keep them in a neglected condition and endanger them severely!
*http://www.dict.cc/english-german/nurtured.html
February 28th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
“in its fight against those who would see it deprived of its rightful earnings based on sale of product”
HCH you got it wrong, noone wants to do that.
What the people want is to not buy product at all.
They don’t care what you do with the money you earn from “sale of product” and they certainly don’t want to deprive “the legitimate music industry” of this earnings.
Please note further that those artist that want a piece of your cake too are technicly not counting as “want to “deprive” the industry”.
They have contracts that promissed them a share (even if it’s only a measly one) and you xan now not complain about that fact too!
February 28th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Quote: I find it truly disturbing that students are being used in this way against legitimate enterprises…
I find it truly disturbing that corporate business is being conducted on college and uni’s as a welfare handout. I also look with abhorrence at the idea that mom and pop will wind up footing the bill through tuition to pay for this monstrosity that has been heisted off on them through erroneous data used to support the argument that file sharing is the problem with why the industry is proclaiming to lose income.
In the first place, no one guarantees that just because you open a business or have one established, you therefor will make a profit throughout that business’s existence. The falsity that file sharing is devastating this profit motive is being used as a scapegoat for the poor understanding of future marketing and how to deal with it. This is a direct fault of the majors and not of its customers. Any time a business can not predict market trends and meet them, satisfy the customer and not leave them with the idea they got ripped off continually for the money, removes the ability to hear new stuff coming out on commercial radio stations through the use of payolla that prevents future sales in continual new interests, and calls their financial base they depend on for their economic livelihood thieves and then sues them, they themselves will at some point get caught in those lacks by loss of income.
Quote: …rampant theft of their work.
Though out history the common thought of theft requires denial of use of property. But IP is NOT property. You can’t fence it, you can’t deny use of it unless you take the container it resides in. Further all real property is taxed. For instance, if you own land, you pay taxes annually, same with a car through various means such as car tags and brake stickers. The majors have attempted to equate intellectual property with tangible property. This is akin to attempting to sell air. Now you can lay all sorts of arguments out about how wrong this theme is about IP property. Where the problem comes in is that people themselves know this is a BS argument. Simply they will not accept this as a real property like what you could erect a fence around. So even your potential market doesn’t really see this as a real deal but rather as an artificial one. When no money changes hands, there is no profit motive. The majors have also attempted to change the definition of profit from money changing hands to denial of profit through lack of the passage of money. They are not the same.
Quote: …promoted by heavily biased media such as your site.
This “heavily biased” has no meaning when compared to the bias of lamescream media. It’s like comparing an ant to an elephant when you consider major media is either influenced through payment as to not be fair and unbiased or take their news sources directly from the corporate pap. Thank heavens you can still find such counter sites somewhere that calls a spade a spade. Ever wonder why the major newsites are losing readership as well as major broadcasters? Oh, don’t take my word for it, there are surveys coming out every year saying major advertisers are reducing their ad budgets to these same outlets in favor of the internet; which is where those lost readers and viewers are going. They are going there because they can find something besides the filtered, bias, and obvious lack of real reporting. Things like what Britney or Winehouse is doing today has no influence nor use on how our lives will be affected by some important event. Events that fail to even see mention on the back pages of supposed news outlets. We’re not talking one or two publishers but near nationwide. There is no unbiased when it comes to hearing about the negative side of the music industry in public print of news outlets. It simply is ignored by nearly all, with the minor exception every once in a while. HCH, you should really do a bit of research on your subject.
Quote: …it is only a matter of time until the legitimate music industry succeeds…
No it isn’t a matter of time. Where to go for examples? Nothing is a given here, no matter the money throwed at it, no matter the legal research into presenting hairbrained schemes. How about the cassette tape, that’s a good one. This too was at one time a major contention with the music industry. Despite the legal pleadings, despite all the media snow jobs, despite all the calmouring about it being the death of the industry, they did NOT get their way with this. It is NOT a matter of time, rather it is a matter of acceptance by your customers. You can get all the bad laws passed you wish, you can not MAKE the public accept it if it is a bad law. You can chase your legal tail all over the world attempting to enforce it but you can not MAKE people obey what they see as not being wrong, no matter your definition or how you attempt to explain it, law or no law. Prohibition was a good example of attempting such an action. It didn’t work then, nor will similar work today.
Quote: …artists it has nurtured..
Correct me if I am wrong here but I seem to remember that the majors ceased to invest money into long term development of the artists. That is teaching them how cultivate long term success. Instead they dropped near 50% of their stables of artist. Those that were not major sellers of volume of albums. Instead the majors had the idea of letting the independents and small labels develop the artists and then the majors wanted to come along at the time when that artist was reaching their profit potential years and cherry pick from those that had invested that long term development. The only thing the majors have nurtured is their own pockets. They are like economical vampires to both the artist as well as any that attempt to deal with them. That is a more accurate picture than saying the artists were nurtured.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:42 am
What he said.
February 29th, 2008 at 1:44 am
This “current state of affairs” would not be such if the music cartel sold their music at a price that defeats piracy, considering the internet expanded the number of potential new costumers many times fold, they wouldn’t be losing money, but the cartel would rather multiply current prices by internet explosion, and holy shit! “Look at all the money we’re entitled to”. The current state of affair is only such due to their greed.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:24 am
âIâm biased against any and all efforts to kill free speech, online or off. Iâm biased against the entertainment cartels as they pretend to be honest businesses trying to earn an honest living. Iâm biased against their efforts to penetrate school classrooms to spread their poisonous âeducationalâ programs, claiming they represent decent standards for children to follow. Iâm biased against the one-sided reporting by many, if not most, elements of the mainstream media who DO pretend to be fair, balanced and unbiased. Iâm biased against attempts to flood us with tricky Net advertisements designed to force themselves past our natural barriers of free choice. And I could go on”
Well said Jon. You hit the proverbial nail on the head there.
February 29th, 2008 at 7:53 am
“I find it truly disturbing that students are being used in this way against legitimate enterprises.”
I find it truly disturbing that so called legitimate enterprises are being used in this way against students.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:28 am
While you may be biased but a big “+1″ for posting ‘both sides’ of the story, agreeing with them or not. Much more than most news do(tv or internet)
February 29th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Interview with Feargal Sharkey on the music industry. Reckons downloading is damaging artists, but also recognizes that the old business model has gone. Might be a good piece for p2pnet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/bmr_feargal_sharkey/page4.html
February 29th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Supplementary links to Free Thinker’s post. (good one FT
)
Here is what the recording industry does when they rip off…. erm… nurture their artists.
Courtney Love’s point of view
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
From the perspective of a record producer.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html