RIAA’s DoJ horns in on Tenenbaum case
p2pnet news view Politics | RIAA News:- The Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old.
Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision â rather than the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions involving punitive damages â was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages.
Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file.
And interestingly, the government brief asked the judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial.
Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief.
Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA.
Does this filing confirm those fears?
Ray Beckerman – Recording Industry vs The People
March, 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.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
“And interestingly, the government brief asked the judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial.”
Don’t both sides need to have this judgement going into the trial?
Seems a little unfair to the process itself.
“…it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief.”
This doesn’t surprise me.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
Might be an inane question, but why is the DOJ involving itself in civil copyright infringement claims? Don’t they have better things to do with tax payers money?
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
It was uncosntitutional in 1919, it is unconstitutional now.
Some parasites in the governement administration want to conduct themselves like constitutional criminals?
Fine with me. The people will prosecute them.
The governement must be for the people and by the people and not by the corportions for the corporations!
It is time to take back our country and get ride of the corporate parasites.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Reader’s Write Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
because the defendant asserted that the US laws that allow these high “damages” awards are unconstitutional.
That’s why the goc is in this time where the coversheet is not titled “US of A vs. Tenenbaum” but “Big foreign Corp’s that bribe the well known MAFIAA senators like F. and B. to make those rediculous laws for them vs. Tenenbaum” itself has its attorneys argument for these laws.
On a sidenote read the GOV’s attorney arguments regarding the sentencing in that case of the 20 minutes guns and roses streaming. It sounds as if some song streaming is more sinister then eating little babies when you believe the USDOJ guys.