SRG

Oh, be sure that the RIAA as well as the major media have their sock puppets here. It was made very clear that was the case when Jon nearly shut down because of lack of funding. At that time, it was announced that it was the case. I am sure the post can be found in the archives.

The RIAA is well aware they are on weak legal footing. It is the reason for the hit and run tactics in the courts. If it looks like they are in for a sticky time, they will abandon the complaint while at the same time attempting to do damage control of denying any recoup of lost income and expenses required to defend oneself against the slimy attempts to extort money from pockets.

It is because of the nature and the methods being used that I will not buy product from these shysters. I went on boycott when they started sue’em all. I will continue to do so till my dying day, if need be without a tear nor a worry over what it is doing to their pocketbooks. It is my hope that through my actions as well as those that have been the victims of sue’em all, and those others that disapprove and refuse to buy, that the big mega media will have a serious stumble financially. Nothing would please me more than to see these mob like operations result in their having to close shop and never open it again. I realize that is probably hoping for far too much but everyone has to have a dream; that is one of mine.

To wit, I would like to add I am not in any aspect of the legal profession whatsoever, have no connection to any sort of copyright infringement, purchase my music (DRM free from amazon I might add), and yet I was fully able to understand the entirety of Mr. Beckerman’s document.

In a nutshell:

1. the RIAA legal hounds ignore proper judicial rules of procedure in order to save themselves time and money
2. they provide as evidence “expert testimony” that does not meet judicial standards
3. they have ignored a large number of orders by members of the judiciary to follow proper rules
4. they misrepresent themselves as officers of the court
5. they extort money from people who are given almost no chance to defend themselves
6. they do everything in their power (lie, provide false testimony, ignore the orders of judges etc) to make sure those they are suing have no chance to defend themselves
7. they are a blight in the legal system, clogging the courts with lawsuits designed as no more than a campaign of legal terrorism upon students, those lacking in financial means to defend themselves
8. they use unlicensed, unproven, unfounded, unreliable “experts” and “investigators” to pursue defendents who have the balls to stand up to them

In short, the RIAA is a band of wolves preying upon the weak. All Mr. Beckerman is suggesting here is that the weak be empowered to defend themselves as is right and proper in a country that bases it’s principles in the nature of true justice.

If I’ve misunderstood any of Mr. Beckerman’s points (I only bothered to sum up the ones that reference the things that piss me off the most about the RIAA’s “tactics”), I am certain Mr. Beckerman would be happy to clarify. I am a non-college educated computer technician, IO, so go f**k yourself on playing down my ability to understand the above article. Like the RIAA (who I still say you must have some sort of connection to), you dismiss far too casually the regular man.

NOT because it’s opinion differs from ours, but because it expresses it
without any intellectual support, and primarily with ad-hominem and
argumentative rhetoric.

It is an obvious troll.

and a familiar one at that

Well, since you are obviously one of the very interested observing audience guys on p2pnet.net I guess we can conclude very well about YOUR intellectual and topic related capabilities to understand the article.

Then it was completely out of place for Newton to re-publish the entire article in P2PNet, and without permission, I might point out. This site is no more than a haven for individuals who are determined to steal music, depriving the music industry and artists of their rightful earnings. Your article can therefore be of little use to them.

In any event, the likelihood of this audience understanding more than a few words is slim indeed.

Dear Interested Observer, I don’t understand what you mean.

(1) It wasn’t a “diatribe”. It was an article which I was requested to write by The Judges’ Journal. It was a semi-scholarly article addressed to Judges who are legal scholars about the “equal access to justice” problem posed by the RIAA litigations.

(2) In such an article, addressed to sophisticated lawyers, one would not normally refer to web sites, newspapers, or magazines, but to primary sources: i.e. litigation documents.

(3) p2pnet has played a major role in getting the story of what’s going on in the technical legal world out into the nonlegal world. This article was a technical article written within the legal world for a legal audience.

(4) The reference to a quote from the RIAA was an “out of court admission” by the RIAA that they catch “dolphins” in their “fishing net”.

(5) The reference to Groklaw was in the context of its hosting of litigation documents in *pdf format, which is not something p2pnet does.

(6) The references to my own blog were in every instance a reference to the PRIMARY legal documents.

I thought long and hard about this and it’s the first time since I started p2pnet that I’ve re-run a complete article without the permission of the publisher and/or author.

I apologise to the American Bar Association for not first getting authorisation, but IMHO the content is so potentially valuable to both lawyers and victims that I didn’t want to waste any time.

Readers could have gone to Ray’s site and downloaded it there? Yes, they could have, and they still can. I haven’t, for example, included the footnotes.

For now, this is my contribution.

Cheers!

According to the RIAA ?

Why should it be, really ?

No matter, it was just a drive-by, with nothing of subsyance to contribute.

Sheesh. Does “fair use” mean anything at all?

Cheers!