‘Think tank’ on RIAA v Jammie Thomas
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- US district judge Michael Davis’ mistrial decision in the Jammie Thomas file sharing case is “unreasoned” and “unreasonable,” says a “market oriented think tank”.
And leading the attack on behalf of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, with Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA, together with Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney and their MPAA as extremely interested observers, is one Thomas D. Sydnor II (right), a former aide to Hollywood aficionado, senator Orrin ‘Terminator’ Hatch of INDUCE Act infamy.
Snydor was, “widely credited with the Senator’s infamous ‘blow up their computers‘ solution to P2P file-sharing,” said Seth Schoen in the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Deep Links.
Nor is the first time Sydnor has made an appearance in the Jammie Thomas case.
Various entities accepted Davis’ invitation to submit amicus curiae briefs on whether he’d made an error in law when he instructed a Minnesota jury that Jammie Thomas could be liable for merely making files available, posted Ray Beckerman on Recording Industry vs The People.
Thomas was ordered to pay the labels almost a quarter of a million dollars. But Davis confessed to committing a “manifest error of law” in telling the civil jury the, “act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown,” opening the way for a new trial.
Hollywood’s MPAA decided to get into the act and in a 25-page amicus curiae brief, claimed the, “act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without a licence from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown”.
In other words, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc, were trying to say there was no need for proof.
What were the Hollywood Big 6 doing inserting themselves? It was nothing unusual: the labels and major studios are often teammates, sharing information and resources.
The Progress & Freedom Association, in the shape of Thomas D. Sydnor II, also horned in, siding with the entertainment cartels.
Now, “Sydnor Finds Judge’s Analysis of Making-Available Right Deeply Flawed,” says the ‘think tank‘.
Thomas, says a statement, “unreasonably accuses scores of judges, Congresses, Presidents and expert agencies of adopting unreasonable interpretations of the Copyright Act. For over forty years, these entities have repeatedly concluded that the U.S. Copyright Act provided a making-available right.
“Sydnor shows that even the precedents cited in Thomas refute its claim that for over forty years, expert legislators, jurists, executives and administrators consistently adopted an interpretation of the Copyright Act that no reasonable person could ever adopt. ”
The “profound flaws” in the Thomas case, “must be exposed before they mislead other jurists,” says Sydnor.
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Progress and Freedom Foundation - Thomas Decision Unreasoned, Unreasonable, November 17, 2008
INDUCE Act infamy - RIAA collapses INDUCE talks, October 8, 2004
Deep Links - New USPTO file sharing report falls short on consumer protection, March 28, 2007
Jammie Thomas - p2pnet Jammie Thomas v RIAA digest, June 30,2008
Jammie Thomas - Jammie Thomas: her story in her own words, November 2, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People - Amicus curiae briefs filed in Capitol v. Thomas, June 21, 2008
manifest error of law - 10 law profs back RIAA victim Jammie Thomas, June 20, 2008
submit amicus briefs - Jammie Thomas judge cops to ‘manifest error’, May 15, 2008
sharing information and resources - RIAA, MPAA, joint operations, old news, March 8, 2008
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November 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
In the eyes of this lobby group masquerading as a think tank any law that denys them excessive profits is a target, the law is plain however, you cannot breach someones right of copy without actually creating a copy.
I wish these commercial political lobbyists would learn to read.