No MediaSentry, says Tenenbaum team
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v Tenenbaum, Joel Tenenbaum, backed by a team of Harvard law students led by professor Charles Nesson, has, “filed a motion objecting to the inadmissibility of MediaSentry materials on the ground of illegality,” says Recording Industry vs The People.
Says the introduction to the motion »»»
The recording industry’s only evidence that Joel Tenenbaum ever downloaded or shared music on KaZaA is the evidence collected by MediaSentry. MediaSentry collected this evidence in violation of federal and state criminal statutes that restrict wiretapping and require that private detectives be trained and licensed. It collected this evidence at the direction and under the supervision of lawyers for the recording industry, including opposing counsel in this case.
These same lawyers have used MediaSentry evidence to fuel not only this prosecution, but also their entire five-year campaign against tens of thousands accused of sharing music online — a litigation campaign that has earned their recording-industry clients more than $100 million in settlements.
In orchestrating this campaign, built around illegally obtained evidence and targeted at individuals, most of whom faced millions of dollars of potential liability without the assistance of counsel, these lawyers violated the ethical rules governing our profession on an unprecedented scale. We respectfully request that this Court remedy this ethical violation by suppressing all MediaSentry evidence in this case.
In the first recording-industry prosecution to go to trial, the jury returned a verdict of $1.92M, or $80,000 per song for 24 songs. We submit that, with stakes this high, the federal courts should make clear to the world that the kind of gross abuse of federal process that we have seen in the last seven years will never again be permitted.
If this Court grants our motion to suppress, we anticipate moving for a directed verdict for Joel Tenenbaum on all claims.
Stay tuned.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Harvard law students – p2pnet talks to Harvard Tenenbaum Team, April 1, 2009
Recording Industry vs The People – Defendant files motion objecting to MediaSentry evidence in SONY v. Tenenbaum, June 23, 2009
$80,000 per song – Jamie Thomas-Rasset’s $1.92 million playlist, June 19, 2009
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June 24th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
While I totally agree that all the MediaSentry “evidence” should be thrown out, Joel’s team will probably need to make an iron-clad presentation on that point in order to make it happen. The courts haven’t been very cooperative on this point so far.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
The judge wil almost certainly rule it admissable, just like Judge Davis did in the Jammie Thomas trial. I think it’s highly unlikely that a judge would just gut the RIAA’s case based on an argument that’s hardly clear-cut and which has been ruled in their favor in the past.
Personally, I think they’d have a better chance of getting it suppressed by arguing the unreliability of it.