Tenebaum vs RIAA TV hearing adjourned
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- “The last thing Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG RIAA attack lawyers want is for people to see them live and in full, glorious colour – legal warts and all,” p2pnet said when the news broke that judge Nancy Gertner (right) ruled oral arguments in the P2P file sharing case in which the defendant, student Joel Tenenbaum, is represented by a team of Harvard university student lawyers led by Charles Nesson, could be televised live.
Strangely, the RIAA tried to get Gertner to back down, at the same time engaging in its usual stonewalling tactics.
Wrote Gertner in an earlier decision »»»
At previous hearings and status conferences, the Plaintiffs have represented that they initiated these lawsuits not because they believe they will identify every person illegally downloading copyrighted material.
Rather, they believe that the lawsuits will deter the Defendants and the wider public from engaging in illegal file-sharing activities.
Their strategy effectively relies on the publicity resulting from this litigation …
Gertner has listened to the RIAA plea, but instead of dumping the case, has adjourned it until Ellery 24, “to give the appeals court time to fully consider plaintiffs’ petition for mandamus or prohibition,” says Recording Industry vs The People.
And significantly, she doesn’t get into whether or not the case should be televised.
Rather, she wonders how it should be made to happen.
Here’s what she says in full »»»
The Plaintiffs’ Motion to Stay (document # 733) is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The motion is denied to the extent that it seeks an unlimited stay of the hearing scheduled for January 22, 2009. The Court, however, will postpone the hearing until February 24, 2009 for the reasons stated below. The Court grants a limited continuance, first and foremost, because there is no emergency related to the hearing originally slated for January 22, 2009.
The motions set for argument at the hearing raise legal issues which can be properly addressed at a later date. Just as importantly, postponing the hearing will allow the First Circuit an opportunity to fully consider the petition before it, particularly because a number of claims presented in the petition for mandamus were never raised in their current form in the district court. Indeed, several of the Plaintiffs’ claims involve questions of “how” the recording will be made and distributed and not “whether” the hearing can be recorded under Local Rule 83.3:
1. With respect to the Plaintiffs’ objections about who will record the proceedings, these matters can be readily addressed. The Court’s Order permitted the Courtroom View Network (”CVN”) to provide audio-visual coverage of a single upcoming hearing. CVN is a private company that regularly records courtroom proceedings for various subscribers; it is not a party in this case. See Decl. of John Shin at ¶ 4 (document # 719) (stating that CVN has covered more than 200 proceedings in courtrooms around the country); see, e.g., In re Zyprexa Products Liability Litigation, 2008 WL 1809659 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 4, 2008); E*Trade Financial Corp. v. Deutsche Bank AG, 582 F.Supp.2d 528 (S.D.N.Y. Oct 14, 2008); Nov. 26, 2007 Order, GVA Market Neutral Master Limited v. Veras Capital Partners, No. 07-cv-00519 (S.D.N.Y.). Neither the Plaintiffs nor the Defendant specifically proposed another entity — either non-profit or for-profit — to record the proceedings. As a result, the Court authorized only CVN, making clear that its Order did not permit any and all recordings, but only the recording specifically presented for the Court’s approval.
2. The question of where and how CVN’s recording is made available on the internet is a separate but related issue. Because CVN offers a “narrowcast” service, its recordings are generally only available to subscribers — i.e., those who pay for access to CVN’s recording. Because of this ability to limit viewers, CVN audiences vary according to the explicit directions of the presiding judge. In this case, the Court has sought to ensure that the audio-visual recording is publicly available for all non-commercial uses. In response, the Defendant proposed that the Berkman Center for Internet and Society would act as a subscriber to the CVN recording and would make that recording publicly available on its website. In the absence of a counterproposal from the Plaintiffs, the Court accepted this arrangement, allowing to Berkman Center to host the video recording so long as it was not edited and provided gavel-togavel coverage.
3. The Order, however, did not limit the availability of the recording to the Berkman Center’s website. The Plaintiffs are also free to subscribe to the CVN recording and to make it available to the public at a website of their choosing, subject to the same conditions.
4. If there are further issues with respect to the way in which the Berkman Center presents the video recording, those concerns can surely be addressed. They do not go to the question of “whether” a recording of this hearing should be made available to the public, but “how.”
If you want to capture the RIAA live (so to speak 
) and in action, contact Courtroom View Network counsel Jonathan Sherman @ 202-237 9605.
Petition for Writ of Mandamus or Prohibition
Motion for expedited consideration or stay
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 21st, 2009 at 11:28 am
I just knew this would happen. (angry) First a stay and then they’ll weasel out of it completely. That adjournment is more than a month away and they’ll have plenty of time to figure out something.
I reckon that if they can’t bend/bribe/extort that judge to their will, they’ll simply drop the case, settle or whatever. One way or another we’re not going to see these bastards put on the spot. (even angrier)
If they were put on the spot, there’s a good chance that this one trial will derail their whole extortion campaign. No wonder they’re getting out of it any way they can.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
I really hope I’m wrong.
February 8th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Sadly, they’ll probably succeed at getting out of it. I’ve never been involved with any legal proceedings, and I have only a cursory knowledge of the system. However, it seems to me that there isn’t any mandate for plaintiffs to see it to the end (for example, why are they allowed to settle instead of being forced to choose between seeing it through and forfeighting?)
I mean, I can see settling being an option for the defendant, who didn’t initiate the trial and is pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place. But the RIAA (or, pretty much any plaintiff, ever) has no business dropping cases. IMO, that should be made illegal, for all cases. Or, rather, dropping the case should always be an automatic loss, not a way to weasel out of things.
I am glad, however, that a judge is sticking up to the RIAA, and doing what they can to force the RIAA to go public. I’m sick and tired of their hiding away in a courtroom, avoiding the prying eyes of the not-so-dumb public! I hope this works out, and the RIAA is exposed for what they are.