Obama administration sides with RIAA in P2P suit
The Obama administration has sided with the recording industry in a copyright lawsuit against an alleged peer-to-peer pirate, a move that echoes arguments previously made by the Bush administration.
A legal brief filed Sunday in a case that the Recording Industry Association of America is pursuing in Massachusetts argues that federal copyright law is not so overly broad and its penalties not so unduly severe that they count as "punitive." Current law allows a copyright holder to receive up to $150,000 in damages per violation.
The brief says "the harms caused by copyright infringement" on the Internet include limiting "a copyright owner's ability to distribute legal copies of copyrighted works. The public in turn suffers from lost jobs and wages, lost tax revenue, and higher prices for honest purchasers of copyrighted works."
The Obama administration's choice to intervene in the Massachusetts lawsuit comes after the Bush administration joined the RIAA's lawsuit against Jammie Thomas. It, too, defended the constitutionality of the statute--one of the Justice Department's duties--that a jury decided Thomas had violated. (Thomas has been awarded a new trial.)
The Massachusetts case could prove to be an important one. A group of Harvard law school students, with the help of Harvard law Professor Charles Nesson, is providing defendant Joel Tenenbaum with an aggressive legal defense. They aim to convince the courts that the law the RIAA relies on is so Draconian it amounts to "essentially a criminal statute" and is therefore unconstitutional; that it grants too much authority to copyright holders; and that it violates due process rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Those are the arguments that the Justice Department is attempting to refute. Its brief says that while the administration "does not address" the nonconstitutional arguments, "if the court finds it necessary to reach the constitutional questions at this time, then it should reject each of defendant's constitutional claims."
It adds: "The remedy of statutory damages for copyright infringement has been a cornerstone of our federal copyright law since 1790, and Congress acted reasonably in crafting the current incarnation of the statutory damages provision. Congress sought to account for both the difficulty of quantifying damages in the context of copyright infringement and the need to deter millions of users of new technology from infringing copyrighted works in an environment where many violators believe that their activities will go unnoticed."
Until recently, a top Justice Department official was representing the RIAA in the Massachusetts case. In early January, Barack Obama picked Tom Perrelli for associate attorney general; he was listed as a "lead attorney" for the RIAA in the case and had filed a formal notice of withdrawal less than two weeks earlier.
On February 4, Obama picked as associate deputy attorney general Donald Verrilli, who represented the RIAA in the Jammie Thomas case. Verrilli didn't file a motion to withdraw from the case until last week.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
Something is offered for sale, you either pay the required price, or do without. If no one buys, the seller will adjust. The buyer can not change the terms, can not just take without paying the required price.
The law, is the law, is the law, is the law.
The DOJ is not SIDING with the RIAA, they are providing their interpretation of the law as it relates to points raised by Jamie Thomas' attorney. The DOJ does not involve itself in every litigation relating to copyright and certainly takes no sides when it does.
The DOJ is not a pawn of the RIAA. If it felt the RIAA's position was wrong it would have supported Thomas.
In several cases the evidence was thrown out because the RIAA used unlicensed Private investigators. This is where the RIAA is the actual law breakers. They should be regulated and have a watch dog assigned to them since they are acting as a monopoly.
D~W
he's a kid that uploaded 20-some songs on kazaa and got hit with a fine of over $200k. unless they have logs that show the files had been downloaded thousands upon thousands of times, i don't see how the fine should be any more than $1000.
as for this tidbit: "limiting a copyright owner's ability to distribute legal copies of copyrighted works.". unless he hacked into itunes to disable the songs he was sharing from being sold, i don't see how this bit of law can be used against him. too many lawyers these days trying to sell crimes in excess of the ones that were actually committed... might as well tack on a few million to the fine for mental anguish caused to RIAA execs...
One particular case on that show I remember was the RIAA's lawyer DENYING they were suing this 14-year-old girl, and she held up the legal paper work from that they mailed her and she put them in their place. That moment is when I lost all respect for the RIAA.
Also, take a look at the the legal filings from the RIAA. It's all Windows users, especially the older versions of 98, ME, 2000 and XP. I've never read a case (if it's unsealed) that had Linux, Mac or other named. Furthermore, how does the RIAA get its info for the case? The Constitution forbids anybody from obtaining evidence gathering with a specific warrant. I applaud anybody fighting the RIAA. Also, is doesn't surprise an un-Constitutional agency is teaming up with a group of un-Constitutionalists.
There is one thing that I have to correct however: people CAN go and collect evidence on their own, as long as they are not tresspassing on private property or eavesdropping on private conversations in someone's home or 'out of the public eye'.
That means no phone tapping, no internet tapping, no internet monitoring, etc. By the LETTER of the law, even connecting to a torrent file to find out who is downloading something illegally is verboten, as it really should be.
It is totally legal to lend a book and other physical media, so none of this P2P would be illegal at all under these laws. It is only sharing media with a friend. The DMCA made "digital" copies follow a different set of rules than physical media.
Please do your research.
"and the need to deter millions of users of new technology from infringing copyrighted works "
This is where copyright enters the punitive realm. If I was in this interesting group of Haward law students, I'd insert the knife exactly here.
Sure the Obama administration sides with RIAA. That's in the text, read up. They - the Executive branch of government, interestingly, interpret current copyright law to be within the bounds of the Constitution. I think it might as well have declared this a Constitutional issue for the Court to decide and that the administration, for reasons of principle, would abstain from voicing an opinion.
It's just 'Siding', nothing serious or unusual, The US government does so relentlessly.
What will be interesting is to see if the judge has the guts to go against the government. I think doing so would be a significant win for democracy.
Boston Tea Party , October Revolution, Cuba ,South Africa A partied Government , Fall of Roman Empire
English Empire . Point here is We must come to a fair Standard of Fair use. Or we face a point where a total break down of population support will force change and Target RIAA much as the people target AIG. All i can say Copyright Law should be limited to changing media Formats As things change older Formats should be less copyright Restrictive . We don't still pay the Caveman for the wheel.
Oops no wait, more of the same.
No Change for you!
Maybe 20 dollars for the former and 5 dollars for the latter. The fact is that the prices for those things have been illegallly kept high for MANY years now. I mean, it BARELY costs the recording industry 5 cents a song (when taken with .25 million CD's sold) to make a song. Maybe even less, even counting pressing costs.
I voted with hope for our administration in office, can I take it back?
Sigh
I do not endorse the use of the following options, but I do recognize that they exist and must be taken into account when setting prices.
Consumers have a third option of black market sources, and have used them since pre-historic times. Somebody else does the stealing, or sells at cost plus their markup without paying middleman (including the government) costs.
Consumers could use the fourth option and do their own stealing, but that entails higher risk; and for most, very little opportunity.
That isn't a 'black market'. It also doesn't help that the companies in question here have, for many years, been overcharging for their products and trying to 'milk' the customers in America and other first world countries. If they would charge a REASONABLE AMOUNT (5 dollars a CD, 25 cents a song or less) for their products..... people might actually buy the things legally.
The losing battle the RIAA and the major record labels are fighting is about CONTROL, not about the rights of the authors. The major record labels are watching sales decline during an era where music is more in use than ever. You would think that the RIAA and the major records labels would have learned something during the .com boom and Napster. Rule number one of retail...don't sue your customers, they may decide to take their business elsewhere.
As with any changing economic environment, business has to adjust to the market conditions. The real problem is that the economy of the music industry has shifted from an economy of control to an economy of trust. Neither the RIAA, major record labels,the "justice department", nor congress have shown the ability to adapt, to trust and be trusted.
My experience is that music lovers, and artists alike find this lack of vision by the above mentioned parties pitiful and appalling. Thank GOD for independent music and the internet.
jtolbert
http://www.vurbia.com
- by Tonsotunez March 25, 2009 9:45 AM PDT
- You want the truth .... you can't handle they truth...
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(34 Comments)"DOJ Sides With RIAA" One Day Later
By Thomas O'Toole -- On most days you can learn a lot browsing the Internet. Yesterday probably wasn't one of those days. Consider the following evidence, which I turned up while trying to find out about the latest wrinkle in Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, No. 03-11661 (D. Mass.) -- the Department of Justice's just-filed amicus submission in that case...
http://pblog.bna.com/techlaw/2009/03/doj-sides-with-riaa-one-day-later.html
[Hint: "...the DOJ's submission would have looked the same, even if the office was not brimming with RIAA attorneys].