Harvard to RIAA: Help us distribute TV feed
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- “I know,” I says Groklaw’s Pamela Jones.
“I said I wouldn’t be doing any articles for a bit, but this is too fascinating and exciting an opportunity, to get to ‘attend’ oral arguments together in a case of this significance, no matter where we are, no matter what side we may be on, and in our jammies even.”
“I so love the Internet,” she says.
Me too. It’s the one place in this cold and cynical world where honesty and human worth actually count for something, and where ordinary people can make the powers that used to be pay attention.
Jones is talking about the RIAA attempt to railroad an initially defenceless student, accusing him of being a massive online distributor of corporate ‘product,’ using its now defunct claim that files shared equal sales lost as its excuse.
Instead, it found itself up against Harvard (the only major university in the US which has consistently stood up to the RIAA in its attempts to use staff and administrators to blackmail students with extortion letters) and a team of law students led by professor Charles Nesson.
Jones goes on »»»
The court in Sony BMG Music v. Tenenbaum — the case about a guy who allegedly downloaded seven songs over Kazaa years ago when he was 17 and who is now facing a damages claim of $1 million dollars — has ruled [PDF] that the hearing on some defense motion can be streamed on the Internet. The hearing is set for January 22nd, beginning at 2 PM Eastern, which is why I’m telling you about it now. We may find the streaming issue decided at the last moment, so this is to prepare you, in case it goes forward.
However, Sony has just filed a Notice of Appeal [PDF] and is asking the lower court to stay the order — here’s Sony’s District Court Motion for Stay [PDF] — so there may be a delay while the courts work the streaming issue out. But the hearing will happen with or without the Internet, although I’ll have to keep you posted on precisely when. If it happens on January 22nd, and I hope it will, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society will have it live … The case will be tried in Boston, Massachusetts, beginning on March 30th, as currently scheduled, in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Now, picking up the question originally asked by judge Nancy Gertner, who’s hearing the case, “If the RIAA’s position is to educate people about the business and legal climate of the music industry, it is unclear to us why they are appealing this decision,” say Nesson and the Harvard team today, continuing »»»
Further, we believe that the true public interest in this case is permitting civil involvement in courtroom proceedings.
Our case is fundamentally about the ’so-called Internet generation,’ and it is … appropriate that such an opportunity be made available to these individuals.
We are working hard to ensure that the Berkman Center is not the exclusive distributor of the content, and we welcome the RIAA’s help in finding additional websites through which the proceedings can be viewed. Other parties have approached and are planning to narrowcast the feed.
However, no worries.
Video output will be almost instantly available online in spades not only in America, but around the world, to the ongoing embarrassment of the RIAA whose efforts to stamp out P2P and file sharing are as effective as its sad attempts to pretend it’s a caring organisation with only the best interests of music lovers at heart.
Raising another highly salient point, Jones adds »»»
You know how I keep telling you that the courts may be slow, but in time, they start to get it? Well, they’re starting to get it, and we’re all noticing that the penalties for file sharing aren’t equivalent to penalties for stealing a CD from WalMart with the same number of songs on it. Specifically, the defendant is asking if a law can be constitutional that allows civil actions by private entities for what are supposedly criminal matters, when doing so removes safeguards a criminal defendant would otherwise have.
Continue to stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
January , 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
“Instead, it found itself up against Harvard (the only major university in the US which has consistently stood up to the RIAA in its attempts to use staff and administrators to blackmail students with extortion letters) and a team of law students led by professor Charles Nesson. ”
This is slightly inaccurate.
Harvard has never HAD to stand up to the RIAA.
The RIAA members have pointedly avoided extorting any of Harvards students
so they wouldn’t have to face a real opponent.
No Harvard students have ever been sued. This should be pointed out to all.
It should also be noted that this is not an accident.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Well, I had to think about the RIAA’s complaint that their corporate owned lamescreem media outlets had no right to broadcast this important court session too.
And I thought, if they don’t like it that way, depending how fat the internet pipe in Judge gertners “geek heaven” courtroom with all the plasmas and internet access is, why not asking the expert for the defense in LINDOR, dutch Professor Pouwelse- to set up on the judges PC one of the “steaming Bittorrent” clients that he and his research team is working on in europe where he even gets millions of governmental and scientific money funding for to find the best way of “television distributing 2.0″.
For one, you can bet that the demand for watching the january 22nd proceedings will be enourmous, so doing it via an “online media distribution system” would not only be logic and smart, but it would also add this tiny note of nelsons HA-HA! to it, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and if Evil4 does not like good european “online media distribution system” technology, how about THEY do not only give crappy songs to akamai to distribute, but tell this huge CDN to help spread the gavel to gavel recording via their enourmous capabilities too?
–
A_F
January 18th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
* lamescream
* “streaming Bittorrent”
Mea Culpa!
January 18th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
@ Dreddsnik > “Harvard has never HAD to stand up to the RIAA.”
Not in the sense that it’s had to defend its students. But as you say, and by way of expansion, that’s true for one reason only: it stood up to the RIAA early on.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/12855 > “Harvard and other universities to which the RIAA sent pre-litigation notices, ‘ought to take strong, direct action’ and ‘tell the RIAA to take a hike,’ believe Charles Nesson, William F. Weld professor of law, Harvard Law School, and founder and faculty co-director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; and John Palfrey, clinical professor of law and executive director, the Berkman Center.”
The post went on:
“This Spring, 1,200 pre-litigation letters arrived unannounced at universities across the country. The RIAA promises more will follow. These letters tell the university which students the RIAA plans on suing, identifying the students only by their IP addresses, the ‘license plates’ of Internet connections. Because the RIAA does not know the names behind the IP addresses, the letters ask the universities to deliver the notices to the proper students, rather than relying upon the ordinary legal mechanisms. Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process.”
IMO, that’s standing up to the RIAA.
I believe Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman rightly feared they might end up taking Harvard on full frontal, which is exactly what’s happening, albeit not because of a Harvard student.
Cheers!
January 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
My understanding is, NOT ONE case actually brought before court has lost to the RIAA, and the only one “guilty” verdict was recalled by the judge himself.
In the clip, the newscaster, when talking about the distortion demands, decribes how “most just pay it”, while “some take the matter to court and lose”.
Hopefully, the streaming coverage of the court proceedings won’t be “made possible” by any of the MSM sources that would taint the whole thing with such blatant misinformation.
January 18th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Mayyyybe
they should NOT stream it, just stream it to one computer let them record it and post it to TPB
It should be allowed because its going to end up on the BitTorrent network anyway
Thus distribution!
January 20th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Two more days.
They are still fighting this, and my understanding is that the hearing will
take place on the 22nd, regardless of whether this issue is settled or not.
In other words, if the RIAA fight(read .. stall) long enough the hearing will come and
go and not be streamed ( can’t stream unless the issue is settled ).
If I am misunderstanding this, someone please, correct me.
I hope I am wrong.