The RIAA has appealed to the court system to disallow the Web Cast streaming of the proceedings in the forthcoming case against Joel Tenenbaum. Their argument? They are afraid the results would be edited out of context and make them look bad.
Really?
How can they possibly look an worse? Considering that they have waged a [...]
A Harvard law professor has filed a counterclaim in the case of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum. The counterclaim insists that the suit originally filed against Mr. Tenenbaum was illegal and unconstitutional.
Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson insists that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of [...]
In all of the time that RIAA has been intimidating and extorting music down-loaders they have come out ahead in the courtroom twice (by my admittedly imperfect count). The first time, in Capitol vs. Thomas, the ruling has recently been overturned because the judge, in his ignorance of copyright law, had instructed the [...]
With increasing frequency, colleges and universities around the country are telling the RIAA to find other ways to identify file sharing students. In the past the colleges have collaborated with the RIAA (much like the French collaborated with the Nazis) when the burden was light.
But as the RIAA has increased their demands for [...]
The RIAA has suffered some humiliation recently. Their crack investigators are being hounded as unlicensed charlatans in many states, Universities everywhere are regretting past collaborations, and the courts are getting a feel for the law and starting to rule against them.
The most recent incident involves their wrongful case against the disabled single mother, Tanya [...]
There is a lot of attention focused this past week on the RIAA and their continued crusade against music piracy. Most of this attention has been negative in nature and this most recent example is no different.
It seems that Central Michigan University has filed a a complaint with the Michigan Department of Labor [...]
The proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement hopes to crackdown on pirating of music and DVDs and the counterfeit labeling of goods by enacting draconian laws in the member states. The Australian government seems to be looking at a plan to start searching MP3 players at airport security checkpoints. The reason? To seek out and [...]
Ray Beckerman, well known for his selfless defense of individuals sued by the Music And Film Industry Association of America otherwise known as the MAFIAA (doesn’t that seem fitting??), has published a paper in the American Bar Association’s Judge’s Journal that describes how the RIAA intimidates pursues it’s questionable legal actions against supposed [...]
The RIAA has come up with a new, improved sliding price scale that they’ll be charging students accused of P2P file sharing. If the student engages the RIAA legal team in any way, the cost of the settlement jumps from $3000 to $7000 or even $8000.
It sounds to me like the RIAA is [...]
Today, May 16, 2008 will likely be the RIAA’s Pearl Harbor. On this day, (a day that will live in infamy for the cruelly manhandled recipients of RIAA extortion letters), a U.S. District Court Judge, Michael Davis noted in a brief that he gave erroneous instructions to the jury and might require a [...]
The RIAA has contended that the simple act of making music files available to file sharing programs like KaZaA constitutes infringement.
In fact, in this particular case, Atlantic v. Howell, Judge Neil V. Wake had originally granted the RIAA a summary judgement against the Howell’s. This judgement was based upon the premise that [...]
In pursuit of their mission to suck the lifeblood and very souls from the musicians who provide the real product in the music industry, the RIAA is seeking to lower the royalty rate that the artist gets for each downloaded track from its current 4.5 cents per song to about 2.5 cents a song.
4.5 [...]
In 1984 the Supreme Court of the United States determined in a case between Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Company vs. Sony what constituted ‘Fair Use’ for video and VCRs. As time has gone by, the intent of the law has been modified to include many aspects of copying media.
As the MP3 player [...]
It looks like the RIAA is losing favor with at least one of its corporate sponsors. Recently EMI was purchased by the private equity firm Terra Firma and the new owners are finalizing plans to reduce its financial help to both the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the [...]
As the RIAA continues to roll itself into a smaller and less impressive organization they keep making silly gestures that only reinforce my ’Oh-So-Low’ opinion of them. It seems that they have teamed up with some other backwards thinkers and created "The Copyright Alliance". Well, they had a little fete’ in DC this week that [...]
A jury of her peers has found that the woman accused of downloading and sharing copywrited material across the internet is guilty and has ordered her to pay $220,000 in restitution.
This verdict was met with shocked disbelief. As one lawyer put it, “A verdict of $222,000 for infringement of 24 song files worth a total [...]
