p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- RIAA victims aren’t like murders or rapists or bank-robbers.

The latter get their day in court, guaranteed, and if necessary, the state will pay to make sure they’re provided with the means to mount a ‘full and adequate legal defence.

But it’s not the same with RIAA victims.

It’s apparently unaccountable, and the completely innocent people RIAA legal thugs attack are found guilty by the RIAA and made to suffer publicly,  and for years on end, without any chance of redress.

Out of more than 40,000 people who’ve received RIAA subpoenas, only Jammie Thomas actually appeared in court, and even then, the judge who presided eventually over-ruled his own decision, saying the case needed to be heard again.

But, it’s unlikely Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music and their RIAA will be able to chalk up a victory against her because among other things, the RIAA largely relies on the evidence of one Doug Jabcobson and  Jammie’s expert witness, Yongdae Kim, a specialist in group and network security at the University of Minnesota, on her side, has already trashed his testimony.

Another famous case is the one in which a team of Harvard Law students are representing Joel Tenenbaum, shown on on the right with his father, Arthur and mother, Judie.

But, p2pnet posted yesterday, “before the Harvard group took his case up, he was defending himself with the help of his mother, an attorney who specializes in family law.

“Not at all coincidentally, Mrs Tenenbaum recently gave a talk to the American Bar Association citing not only her son’s case, but also that of Brittany Kruger, another completely innocent student whose life has been turned inside out by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music`s RIAA.”

How did the talk go?

Here’s Judie Tenenbaum who is herself a musician – a professional harpist — as well as a family lawyer »»»

Joel contacted me with the information about Brittany’s case and my presentation at the ABA’s Section of Administration Law and Regulatory Practice midyear meeting on February 13, 2009.

I was specifically part of the Recent Developments in Education Law Panel. I wanted to emphasize to the audience that most of these cases like Joel’s involved students. I briefly explained how the students’ information was made available to the RIAA, etc.

I wanted to make sure that the presentation had a “human element” to it.  So, I began my presentation by reading excerpts from the letter that Brittany had written only days before my presentation. I also excerpted the letter from an Ohio father who wrote to Charlie [Nesson - the law professor leading the Harvard team] about his daughter’s situation.

After reading these excerpts, I began reading from the  detailed “outline” that I had made to guide me through the remainder of my presentation time. All together, I had a total of 15 minutes to say what I had to say.  I started reading some of my outline, but next thing I knew, I wasn’t looking at the outline at all. I realized that I was running out of time and wouldn’t be able to present all of the information in my outline.

It was a small audience, but they all were sympathetic and “horrified”.

Inevitably, someone knows someone who was sued, bothered for money, who illegally downloaded and hopes they don’t get “caught”, etc.

Also in the audience waiting to make the subsequent presentation was a panel dealing with issues of  Recent Developments in Communications Law. The panel included representation from the FCC, Chris Riley, Policy Counsel of the Free Press, etc.,

They were all in the audience listening and came up and spoke to me after my presentation.

Russell Frisby, of Fleishman & Harding, Washington, D.C. came up to me. He suggested that we check both the FCC and FTC Rules on Customer Proprietary Network Information.  I had the sense that everyone was trying to be helpful and supportive Chris Riley was well aware of all of the goings on with Joel’s case.

Everyone was sympathetic to what was and had happened and wished us luck.

Many times, not only at this meeting, people have come up to me and said “thank you” for doing this, etc.

When Judie says “Inevitably, someone knows someone who was sued, bothered for money, who illegally downloaded and hopes they don’t get ‘caught’, etc,” it’s worth bearing in mind that of the literally millions of Americans who routinely share music with each other, only a very tiny handful have ever heard from the RIAA.

And only one of them, Jammie Thomas, has ever been to court.

But this has never been about aggrieved plaintiffs genuinely trying to have things set to rights.

It’s about four huge companies — Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and the smallest of them, Warner Music (US) — using law systems around the world  to gain control of how, and by whom, music is distributed online.

Stay tuned.

April, 2009

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 9:25 am and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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