Harvard’s Charles Nesson battles the RIAA
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA has so many thorns in its side it’s starting to look like a porcupine. And one of the most painful must be professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School (right).
Harvard is the one senior US teaching institution the Big 4 have been unable (afraid?) to touch in their twisted campaign to reduce every American university to the status of marketing-unit-cum-copyright-cop, and every American student to servile consumer of corporate ‘product,’ and only corporate ‘product’.
Now Nesson has moved from outspoken critic of the guilty to active defender of the innocent.
“Harvard University has a number of distinctions, but one in particular is particularly relevant with respect to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s bloody-minded and bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign,” p2pnet posted in January.
Nesson, William F. Weld professor of law, Harvard Law School, and founder and faculty co-director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, had added a, “rather unusual, possibly unique, element to his Evidence 2008 course,” we said, going on:
“Under RIAA v University, frame a motion to, ‘quash a subpoena from a copyright holder to the university for the identity of a student downloader on grounds of undue burden,’ he says in what has to be one of the most apt law courses at any US school excepting, perhaps, Maine where two student lawyers are actively representing two university students.”
In 2007, he and Wendy Seltzer jointly authored a paper in which among other things they said »»»
Students and faculty use the Internet to gather and share knowledge now more than ever. Law professors at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, for example, have conducted mock trials in the online environment of Second Life; law students have worked with faculty to offer cybercourses to the public at large. Students can collaborate on ‘wiki’ websites, gather research materials from far-flung countries, and create multi-media projects to enhance their learning.
Yet ‘new deterrence and education initiatives’ from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threaten access to this vibrant resource. The RIAA has already requested that universities serve as conduits for more than 1,200 ‘pre-litigation letters.’ Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement.
But these responses distort the University’s educational mission. They impose financial and non-monetary costs, including compromised student privacy, limited access to genuine educational resources, and restricted opportunities for new creative expression.
One can easily understand why the RIAA wants help from universities in facilitating its enforcement actions against students who download copyrighted music without paying for it. It is easier to litigate against change than to change with it. If the RIAA saw a better way to protect its existing business, it would not be threatening our students, forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police, and flooding our courts with lawsuits against relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay. We can even understand the attraction of using lawsuits to shore up an aging business model rather than engaging with disruptive technologies and the risks that new business models entail.
Nesson has now, “gone to bat for an RIAA defendant in Boston, entering a case in which he will be taking the RIAA on directly, squaring off against Timothy Reynolds, Eve Burton, and Laurie Rust, the same Denver, Colorado, lawyers trying to dismiss UMG Recordings v Lindor in Brooklyn,” says Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman.
“The Massachusetts case is SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, one of the hundreds of cases consolidated in Boston under the caption London-Sire v. Does 1-4.
“On Mr. Tenenbaum’s behalf, Prof. Nesson has filed an amended counterclaim, interposing counterclaims against the plaintiff record companies and against the RIAA itself, for both federal and state abuse of process.”
He’s also moved for a protective order with respect to the RIAA’s request for a hard drive examination, and opposed the RIAA’s motion to dismiss counterclaims.
According to court records, Nesson was assisted by law students Shubham Mukherjee and Nnamdi Okike in preparing his brief opposing the RIAA’s motion.
Stay tuned as Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA mire themselves ever deeper in the tar-pit.
p2pnet – Harvard chooses RIAA for law class, January 24, 2008
jointly authored – Harvard and the RIAA, May 1, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People – Prof. Nesson of Harvard Law School takes on the RIAA in court in SONY v. Tenenbaum, October 28, 2008
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October 28th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
i feel the argument to ACTUALLY produce current copyright licensing for all files in question should be raised. And those files in question be compared to the SSH hash on the CD. Isn’t significant reduction in quality NOT infringement for personal use covered under ‘fair use’? I never heard of an RIAA lawsuit for kids taping radio broadcasts to cassette, or movies to VHS. This is clearly a business model issue.
I have been following the abusive, draconian tactics of the asshats @ RIAA, and it will be clearly a ’stay tuned’, now that a highly respected, learned law professor will properly shove their ‘ex parte’ circumvention up their gluteus maximus, and i pray there are court sanctions in the billions, pursuant:
Rule 11(b)(3) requires that a representation in a pleading have evidentiary support and one wonders if the Plaintiffs are intentionally flouting that requirement in order to make their discovery efforts more convenient or to avoid paying the proper filing fees. In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. .
January 19th, 2009 at 11:30 am
The problem with the argument above is that this not about a specific business model. This is about copyright infringement. Uploading music on the internet where millions of people have access to it is broadcasting and is clearly copyright infringement. By the way there was a lawsuit back in the eighties with regard to home taping. The Sony betamax case. The television and movie industry went through a similiar transition, and after everyone changed with the times home video has turned the motion picture business.