RIAA tries to stonewall Tenenbaum case
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA, in serious trouble with another of its spurious sue ‘em all lawsuits, is once again trying to stonewall due process.
“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,” p2pnet posted on recently, continuing »»»
“And one of the most painful must be professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School. 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’.
Nesson has, “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,” said Recording Industry vs The People.
“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.”
Now the RIAA is trying to weasel out of the hearing slated for December 1 due, it says in a court document, “to the extensive ongoing discovery, unresolved discovery disputes, and Defendant’s belated efforts to amend counterclaims and add parties”.
“In SONY BMG Music v Tenenbaum, the case where Mr. Tenenbaum is represented by Prof. Charles Nesson and his CyberLaw class at Harvard Law School, the RIAA has asked the judge to postpone the trial,” says Recording Industry vs The People.
Below is an excerpt from the Harvard team’s defense, giving a pretty good idea of the stakes involved and what Joel is up against »»»
The RIAA intimidates and steamrolls accused infringers into settling before they have their day in court and before the courts can weigh the merits of their defenses. The inherent dangers in allowing a single interest group, desperate in the face of technological change, led by a voracious, cohesive, extraordinarily well-funded and deeply experienced legal team doing battle with pro se defendants, armed with a statute written by them and lobbied and quietly passed through a compliant congress, to march defendants through the federal courts to make examples out of them should lead this Court to say “stop.”
And »»»
We are in the process of building out the docket from the case for public scrutiny. View the motion to add the RIAA as a defendant in our counterclaim here, and the amendment to the counterclaim itself here.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is in the process of bringing to bear upon the defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, the full might of its lobbying influence and litigating power. Joel Tenenbaum was a teenager at the time of the alleged copyright infringements, in every way representative of his born-digital generation.
The plaintiffs and the RIAA are seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused.
They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.
The plaintiffs in the suit and the RIAA are abusing law and this court’s civil process. Because Joel Tenenbaum allegedly downloaded seven songs from a file-sharing network comprised of millions of his peers doing likewise, the plaintiffs have already imposed upon him process filling a docket sheet running back over years.
Representing himself pro se with help from his mother he has responded with constitutional defenses and a counterclaim against the plaintiffs and against the RIAA for their abuse of law and this court’s civil process.
Joel challenges the constitutionality of the process and statute being wielded against him. The “Digital Theft Deterrence Act of 1999″ is essentially a criminal statute, punitively deterrent in its every substantive aspect.
Joel seeks damages to compensate for the actual damage RIAA has done to him and his family.
He claims the right to trial by jury including the right to offer proof and argument to the jury about what is right and what is wrong on both sides of this case.
In the face of the onslaught the plaintiffs have imposed and are continuing to impose upon him he seeks justice from both judge and jury.
At core his defenses and counterclaim raise a profoundly conceptual question: Is the law just the grind of a statutory machine to be carried out by judge and jury as cogs in the machine, or do judge and jury claim the right and duty and power of constitution and conscience to do justice.
Stay tuned.
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p2pnet – RIAA caught in ‘legal bees’ nest’,October 31, 2008
Recording Industry vs The People – Prof. Nesson of Harvard Law School takes on the RIAA in court in SONY v. Tenenbaum, October 28, 2008
Recording Industry vs The People – RIAA seeks to adjourn upcoming trial in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, November 14, 2008
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