p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- “You may have noticed that posting has been very slow as of late,” said Keith Henning, a Little Rock, Arkansas, attorney who’d been publishing a copyright blog called “copywrite.org,” states another blogging lawyer, Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs The People notoriety (in a good way ).

This was back in October last year and, “After seeing that Prof. Patry is closing down his blog, I am following suit,” he said, continuing, “The reasons for ending the blog are the same as why I have not been blogging much and why Paltry is quiting.”"

Actually, Keith,  not long after announcing his retirement from the blogging community, Bill Patry changed his mind and went back online.

But I know exactly how you feel.

There are too few people willing to name the RIAA and the major corporate music industry labels for what they are – bottom dwelling scum.

Harsh? Talk to any of the thousands of families around the world who’ve had their lives turned upside down by corporate greed.

Keith gives four reasons for packing it in.

• There are some strange people out there. You would not imagine the strange and abusive emails I recieve because of a stance I take on something as benign as balance in copyright law.

I can certainly relate to that. The trouble is, however, it’s no longer benign. And that’s because the music industry has spend literally millions of dollars successfully transforming it from a simple commercial matter into a major crime.

• Time. I only have a limited amount of time, and I would rather spend my academic time writing articles on domain name disputes or orphan works, arguing with people who actually know what they are talking about. My academic career needs work, my marriage need work, my work needs work. Something has to give, and this is it.

The phone calls I get are the worst. On average, I receive about one phone call every other day from someone being sued for file-sharing music. I have my response memorized. There is no good news for (usually parents of) someone getting sued by RIAA, et, al. I believe that given the right case I could win.

 

I have a dozen arguments against these suits and a complete plan of attack ready, starting with having the record company prove they are the rightful holder of rights, that each file contained both what it purported to be and that it was a enough to be infringing, that the sharing does not equal distribution, that the collection of information equaled unlicensed private investigation, that the collection of information was without permission and equals hacking, abuse of process, etc.

 

However, no person with anything to lose would do anything but write the $4-5k check and go on with their lives. The sadness in their voices pains me. This is the reason I didn’t do criminal law or family law or even personal tax law. I love the law, I don’t like the messiness of peoples lives. I really love IP law. If someone would give me a full time IP law teaching gig, I would likely die in that job.

 

However, I really can’t take anymore of these calls from people being hijacked by record companies for (what is usually) their life savings, or more.

Thanks for what you did, Keith, and all the best for the future.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

January , 2009

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Freedom, P2P, RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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