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Will Obama's DOJ Intervene To Help RIAA?
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 17, 2009 02:43 PM
from the jury-is-out dept.
from the jury-is-out dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's statutory damages theory — seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages — is being tested, the US Department of Justice has just filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case to defend the constitutionality of such awards, and requesting an extension of time (PDF) in which to decide whether such intervention 'is appropriate.' This is an early test of whether President Obama will make good on his promises (a) not to allow industry insiders to participate in cases affecting the industry they represented (the 2nd and 3rd highest DOJ officials are RIAA lawyers) and (b) to look out for ordinary citizens rather than big corporations."
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Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. Obama, the man of the people, has a Dept. of Justice filing an amicus brief in order to HELP the extortionate RIAA win their case?
Oh Lord, I wasted my vote.
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:4, Insightful)
Voting for either "side" in this broken two party corporate governance is a waste, the best you can hope for is that the guy who wins will fuck you less than the other guy.
that is unless we take control of our federal government by utilizing our state power, but who really paid attention to the local elections? Last time I checked, they were installed by the same corporations/banks that paid for McCain AND Obama!
Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself at opensecrets.org [opensecrets.org]
Parent
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem isn't the two-party system. That is a symptom. We as a nation have allowed the federal government to assume more and more of our states' powers in return for pledges to "fix" various societal ills. We have all forgotten the intention of the founders/framers to protect us from an overreaching federal bureaucracy, either through laziness or lack of education.
I would much rather have my state and federal taxes reversed, i.e., pay thousands to my state but only hundreds to the fed, that way my money would work for me and those near me, rather than to help subsidize loads crap 3000 miles away. It would also take some of the power out of the US Congress and make state senators and representatives more important.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the Obama Administration's DOJ is considering filing an amicus brief supporting statutory damages even when they greatly exceed demonstrable actual damages. While that theory being struck down in the instant case might be bad for the RIAA and no one else immediately, if such a precedent were established, it would greatly limit the use of statutory damages in most of the places where they are used, which are often in places where the easily quantifiable portion of direct harms is very small, but the diffuse impact may be very large. This does not benefit only, or even primarily, big corporations, its very common in laws that principally benefit individuals against big corporations (like many consumer protection laws) and other powerful interests (civil actions under many civil rights laws).
Amicus briefs are often filed by parties whose interest in legal precedent that could be set is largely tangential to the interests of the parties in the case; if parties have a direct interest in the case, they probably ought to be intervenors, not amici.
Parent
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be by no means a bad thing.
TORTS are supposed to right wrongs, not be a payday. So it is logical
and obvious that damages awarded in lawsuits have some relationship to
actual proven harm. That's that civil courts are for: to prove harm and
resolve the harm.
They aren't meant for social crusading.
Any ambulance chaser who isn't fodder for Lawyer jokes would tell you that.
If there is a public policy reason to FINE people and corporations then
the law should allow for that explicitly. It should not be done as a back
door hack for something that isn't meant for the use you're putting it to.
Want megabuck fines for piracy? Fine, make it a proper criminal offense with
the state being the only entity with standing and a proper burden of proof.
Something that is not serious enough for society to pay attention to and take
seriously should not have severe draconian consequences attached to it.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
TORTS are supposed to right wrongs, not be a payday. So it is logical and obvious that damages awarded in lawsuits have some relationship to actual proven harm. That's that civil courts are for: to prove harm and resolve the harm. They aren't meant for social crusading. Any ambulance chaser who isn't fodder for Lawyer jokes would tell you that. If there is a public policy reason to FINE people and corporations then the law should allow for that explicitly. It should not be done as a back door hack for something that isn't meant for the use you're putting it to. Want megabuck fines for piracy? Fine, make it a proper criminal offense with the state being the only entity with standing and a proper burden of proof.
Well said, jedidiah. Thank you. That is the issue that will be argued in SONY v. Tenenbaum, when the First Circuit sorts out whether the argument can be streamed over the internet. It is a very important discussion we need to have about the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I am sure that it did not hurt Halliburton to have Cheney as Vice President, your argument is defective because Halliburton has been getting no-bid contracts for a very long time, including plenty of lucrative no-bid contracts under the Clinton administration. If Halliburton's contracting largesse is the result of malfeasance, then you will have to paint both Democrats and Republicans with that brush, as they both freely participated in that behavior in their respective administrations.
In fairness to Halliburton, one of the reasons they get these types of no-bid contracts from dozens of governments around the world is that there are very, very few companies that actually do what they are doing for these governments on the scale they do it, and Halliburton has specialized in filling that particular demand. Realistically, for some of the contracts that Halliburton gets there are no legitimate competitors and everyone knows it, making a bidding process a bit of waste, particularly if the matter is urgent. On the upside, there are now a couple different other companies trying to move in on Halliburton's business.
I have never understood the obsession with painting Halliburton as the ultimate Republican evil instead of a much more accurate shade of gray that both Democrat and Republican administrations shovel money to that sometimes gets these contracts because there really is no reasonable alternative under the constraints. We can't fix the world if we are in denial about the reality of it, and Halliburton is just another big government contractor like numerous others that was well positioned for the kind of contracting work that resulted from the nominal War on Terror.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it was never 'one man, one vote'.
but rather: one dollar, one vote.
get hip to how the world works, folks. this isn't a disney movie. the bad guys OFTEN win.
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Funny)
So if Obama is the bad guy because he won, does that make McCain the good guy?
No. They're both corrupt, rotten to the core, and beholden to corporate interests. Also, they kick puppies.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I've voted for a third party all of my life. I've never lived in a swing state, so my vote won't change
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, do you really think that McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden are equal?
Of course I do. They both had critical flaws which made both of them unsuitable to be our next president. Once we get past that, it doesn't matter what else you can say about them. They were both equal: really bad.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hate to break it to you, but the 2nd amendment as imagined by the Republican party doesn't exist. Interpreting it as being a right to personal firearms without any qualifiers is unjustified. Felons, children and those not trained to use them safely not have any protections that guarantee them access.
Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".
People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban
guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want
the moderate version of your little caricature.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".
People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want the moderate version of your little caricature.
The brutal irony here is that you, yourself, are guilty of the exact fallacy you're calling out the GP for. The fact that you can denounce the GP for focusing on the extreme fringe cases and then, with barely pause for breath, explain that everyone against you is an anti-gun extremist is really breathtaking
Regardless of where we, as a society, decide is proper to draw the line between what we legally permit in this debate, please understand that opinions on this (as in any subject) lie on a vast spectrum. There's a middle ground between banning BBs and allowing personal nukes.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the other amendments in the Bill of Rights are individual rights, but the 2nd is a collective right given to a group?
You claim the first clause "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state", overrides the second which states "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
So People references militia in this situtaion but when the same clause is used in the 4th amendment it refers to actual individuals?
I'm going to disagree with the notion that the people who enjoyed the right to bear personal arms, who saw such arms used in the defense of libery, would then limit their distribution to a subset of people deemed "the militia"
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, therefore the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
That's pretty cut and dried, it applies to regulated militias. Or in other words it applies only to those that are in a militia for the purposes of civil defense. All other gun rights are based upon which ones aren't taken away in law.
This correction is the way I have always interpreted the 2nd amendment, since a militia is not a standing army but a collection of citizens, the People, who in times of need must be able to defend their homes/communities/State. This clause in the US Constitution exists because it is the duty of the People to prevent the government from becoming corrupt and possessing too much power. The first course of action should be the ballot box, failing that then the jury box, and finally the ammo box if all else has failed. The US was founded in revolution, and the founding fathers believed strongly that We The People should be capable of revolution when the tyrannies of the government grow to unacceptable levels with no other recourse. These days, it would take a good deal of hardship and corruption to get the average American to accept the need for revolution, since those are rarely stable and comfortable events, but we may get there before too long.
Thomas Jefferson summed these sentiments up nicely,
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:4, Funny)
then you'd better come up with a definition of what you mean by "well-regulated," and who checks my "regularity."
While I don't want to be the person to check your regularity, I might recommend a diet that is high in fiber.
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open -- how about RIAA's new treaty? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think of that treaty that is being negotiated in secret? (the one that has popped up in 2 or 3 slashdot stories over the past half year)
Obama isn't being open about that one.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Obama worrying about the high rates of murder in Oakland, CA than worrying about an industry whose music isn't that great anyway.
Obama is 2-faced. He's all against torture at Gitmo, but then turns around and allows the RIAA to torture us with incessant doses of Brittany Spears and Lady GaGa. When will he end this madness?
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
We chose Obama because he is a step in the right direction, a step towards openness, a step towards making friends with the rest of the world, and I would even say a step towards cleaning up corruption (that's the point of openness, right?). We knew he wasn't perfect, that's not why we chose him. We chose him because we wanted a change in direction; that can take time, and won't all happen with one man.
Thank you.
He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.
Here's some background on Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10110922-38.html [cnet.com]
Do not expect any change from the previous administration's stance on IP matters. It's going to be pretty much corporatist justice, if not more so.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Informative)
Intellectual property piracy: "This is theft""
Heck if you 'like' Holder for those views, during the Clinton administration, he promoted that Free Speech should be limited [newsbusters.org] . Heck, there are even videos of him on YouTube speaking about to this....
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Interesting)
He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.
It may or may not be a token gesture, but it certainly makes me smile to read the White House's new Copyright Policy [whitehouse.gov]:
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you not noticed or already blanked-out the fact that it was Obama's new administration that placed these RIAA lawyers in the DOJ in the first place? A Slashdot reminder of that fact was linked right in the article above.
You call it "optimism", but I call it "delusion".
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Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:5, Informative)
We chose Obama because he is a step in the right direction, a step towards openness, a step towards making friends with the rest of the world, and I would even say a step towards cleaning up corruption (that's the point of openness, right?)."
Goodness, I wish I had your youthful optimism about the world. *Sigh*....well, just give it a few years, with experience and seeing how it all works, that optimism and hope for the world fades. Enjoy it while you have you illusions. After that, you learn to just look out for yourself.
Well I agreed with that comment a hundred percent. And I'm 60. You can call my optimism dumb, but you can't call it youthful.
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Re:I commend you for admitting it (Score:5, Insightful)
When the republicans hoist up someone who has a plan for their office besides attacking abortion and gays...
Citation please.
OK, Republicans are against abortion, and for the most part, always will be. You see, we see it as killing babies. You may not think it's a baby, but a simple DNA test will prove that it really is a separate human than either the mother or the father. So, yeah, we see it as killing babies and will continue to stand against it. Neither a mother, nor anyone else should have the "right" to kill anyone else that is no threat and has committed no crime.
Besides, after eight years of a Republican president, many of those with a Republican controlled congress, we still have abortions and gays. So....
Citation please.
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Who is dumb enough to believe a politician? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, really?!? Believing Obama isn't in the pockets of Hollywood (incl. the MPAA and RIAA), trial lawyers, and the unions is as naive as believing Goerge Bush wasn't in the pockets of Wall Street, big oil, and the bible-thumpers.
Every politician is someone's bitch. Hollywood most assuredly produced the carton of cigarettes to buy Obama. And you can bet that they expect results.
Re:Who is dumb enough to believe a politician? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Who is dumb enough to believe a politician? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Who is dumb enough to believe a politician? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I know it's the summer of '94 all over again for conservatives, and your juices are flowing with insurgent glee, but the "liberal media" myth has been pretty thoroughly debunked and is, in fact, as old as the nostalgia you're currently experiencing.
Oabama's got enough real deficiencies and faults that we don't need to be wasting time making shit up. Thanks for playing! Sign in next time.
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Re:Who is dumb enough to believe a politician? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it, where do you people get that everyone thought of Obama as a messiah? I don't know anyone that did and I know a lot of people that voted for him.
No one in their right mind thought Obama would solve all the problems but that he would cease the landslide that Bush was causing and so far this seems to be true with the closing of Gitmo.
Of course Gitmo isn't closed yet so the jury is still out there.
As for the stimulus bill you seem to be confused about who's pushing for what. The vast majority of Americans are asking for a giant pork bill. Whether that is good or bad for the population should be debated heavily as there are far reaching consequences to borrowing that much money which was previously something the former administration liked doing. Obama never asked for 800 billion, that all came from Pelosi as you say and I've seen a number of republicans acting quite childishly about how it is being developed without their input. If they didn't act like such babies about it I'd be more inclined to believe them or at least feel bad for them since it's good to have opposing viewpoints in a debate.
Of course the idea of borrowing several billion dollars to give people a tax cut is also quite absurd as we have to pay that money back somehow which will be in higher taxes down the road. This is of course what the republican agenda is all sore about right now as they want more tax cuts.
I think we can all agree that fear and panic are emotions that should not be involved in bill making especially with a stimulus bill as large as the one on the table. It's forcing all of congress to move too quickly and they will end up making even more poor decisions. Remember, congress had an even lower approval rating than Bush did and for good reason! I wish I could say Pelosi was helping to change that but she is just as ineffective as the republican she replaced.
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Everyone needs to speak their piece on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to various Obama web sites where public submission of comments are facilitated is exactly where people should go to voice their view on these matters. If it is clear to Obama that people are watching and responding, he will have a much more difficult time ignoring the situation and the people and will have an even more difficult time going back on his word. People are still up in the air about Obama's credibility and one negative is worth more than a hundred positives and I know he is well aware of that fact. This early in his presidency, he cannot afford to let his credibility slip. He can't make excuses. He has little choice but to respond as he would be expected.
Re:Everyone needs to speak their piece on this (Score:5, Informative)
Going to various Obama web sites where public submission of comments are facilitated is exactly where people should go to voice their view on these matters.
Exactly. Here [whitehouse.gov]'s the one I know of. If there are others, would appreciate the links.
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Re:Everyone needs to speak their piece on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what I wrote to them using your link - thank you NYCL...
Are you going to allow ex-RIAA lawyers, now members of your Department of Justice staff, intercede on behalf of the RIAA in cases where they are finally being brought to task in regard to their unconstitutional attacks on ordinary citizens?
You did know that the RIAA hired companies to act as Private Investigators in states they held no credentials to act as such, right?
You did know that the RIAA has brought copyright infringement cases against 80+ year old grandmothers who never had a computer?
You did know that the RIAA has brought copyright infringement cases against deceased people, then tried to get the 10 year child of said deceased individual alone to scare them into saying they did something, when they may or may not have?
You did know that the RIAA has continuously cried about losses (to piracy) during years that they've made their highest levels of profit, which was mostly due to people who have lent songs for others to listen to (much like yesterday's radio)?
You did know that the RIAA has (as a conglomerate of Recording Companies) continually raises the flag that piracy hurts the recording artists, which habitually it's the recording companies that immorally force contracts onto artists that strip them of most of the money they could make - such as charging them for media, distribution (shipping) fees and breakage - for ELECTRONIC downloads of their songs - which have NO media, NO distribution fees, and NO breakage?
The RIAA (and it's movie industry equivelent, the MPAA) are abominations to the citizens of this country, whose outdated business models leave them gasping for breath, trying to find any way they can possibly survive, which has led them to file law-suit after frivolous law-suit (nearly every time someone has stood up to them with any merit whatsoever, they've dropped the cases), tying up the court systems, in an effort to get the government to force the public to keep funding these dinosaur business relics which are better off extinct.
Thanks for your time and patience.
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The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises (Score:5, Informative)
You can track the progress of Obama's many campaign promises at http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/ [politifact.com] - its pretty interesting.
Re: The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promis (Score:5, Informative)
St. Petersburg Times: owned by the Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a journalism school well know for its uncommon (in today's world) approach of unbiased reporting and the primacy of fact over sensationalism.
Gotta say, props to you for linking to a neutral site, when there are so many sites "Obama broken promises" sites maintained by partisan hacks.
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Re: The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promis (Score:4, Interesting)
ACK! ACK ACK ACK!
Living in Clearwater (and having the St. Pete Times as my newspaper), I assure you that they are NOT neutral in any sense of the word.
In addition to their editorial page being constantly slanted left, they regularly spin their new stories in the same way.
I have been following the politifact.com site since I found it weeks ago. In fact, I subscribe to the RSS feed here: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/feeds/updates/ [politifact.com]
My main problem with this site in particular is that they count broken promises as "in progress" or "compromise", and they add new promises all the time. This doesn't just track promises made during the campaign: if he says (as president) he'll do something next week, and then he does it, it counts as a "Promise Kept". This ensures that their numbers always skew to the "Promise Kept" side.
That said, I find the site entertaining, if irritating. I just hate the idea that anyone things it's "Fair" or "Neutral".
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Constitutionality != Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Constitutionality != Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because the US federal administration argues that something is constitutional does not necessarily mean that they think it is a good or fair policy.
The issue isn't the argument, the issue is their conflict of interest.
You shouldn't use your job as VP to award no-bid-contracts to companies you used to run.
You shouldn't use your job at DoJ to aid a plaintiff you used to represent.
It reeks of corruption and distracts from the argument when it's brought to light.
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Tsk, tsk (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they even RIAA lawyers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes I know they worked for the RIAA before. But do they still do so?
If they don't also still work for the RIAA are we sure these lawyers actually even give a damn about the RIAA? Unless they have stocks and shares or whatever in the RIAA companies then what's in it for them if they no longer work for them?
It is possible that these lawyers were just doing it for the money and don't actually give a damn about the company they were working for.
Does anything have anything more damning than that they used to work for the RIAA? do they still? are they receiving money or incentives still from the RIAA?
Implied conflict of interest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, there's an implied conflict of interest in intervening on behalf of former employers.
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Oh dear! (Score:3, Funny)
Why is anyone surprised?
You actually were dumb enough to expect different?
Sony v. Cloud (Score:3, Funny)
In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud,...
So they've finally done it. The RIAA's legal expertise has lead them to sue the internet.
an "ordinary citizen" can wrong a corporation (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because Party A is an "ordinary citizen" and Party B is a "big corporation" doesn't mean that Party A should be able to harm Party B with impunity.
NewYorkCountryLawyer, for all the good work he is doing, seems to include verbiage like this in almost every post that makes it to the front page. Over and over... the industry is suing "ordinary folks"... they should stop suing "ordinary folks"... evil big corporation vs. noble, innocent ordinary folks...
I happen to be in the camp that the historical reasons for copyright are no longer extant and that massive reform should be done. But this verbiage disturbs me.
Our legal system should provide facilities for party A to address grievances with party B, whether B is big and A is small, or vice versa. It shouldn't be the goal (as the verbiage seems to suggest) that the legal system should be rigged to favor the smaller party in a dispute.
Re:an "ordinary citizen" can wrong a corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
A regular person does not have resources to fight civil lawsuits that may last indefinitely. It is not in an individual's best interest (typically) to drag out a proceeding and exhaust every legal option in pursuit of a victory. A big corporation, however, does and can benefit from it.
If the system were rigged towards the smaller party, I agree it probably would be equally injust (see the current state of patent law).
It would probably be helpful to the average working man if judges limited the scope of the better-funded party's arguments in a case. But that wouldn't make it just.
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those DOJ appointments were just plain stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have two lawyers with proven track records of a) using evidence that was obtained illegally, and b) suing people with no evidence at all, c) suing the wrong people, and d) participating in a campaign of frivolous litigation.
The only way the administration could have done worse was to appoint Jack Thompson.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh yes, because the Republicans have done so much to help the little people from the big business RIAA. Both parties are on the side of the RIAA. If you thought a vote for Obama would change the RIAA legal battles, you were sadly mistaken.
Well we know that the Bush DOJ was anxious to intervene on the RIAA's behalf. We don't yet know that about the Obama DOJ. This will be an interesting test.
Re:That's not even possible... (Score:5, Informative)
...seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages...
I've only seen up to 8000, anything over 9000 would just be ridiculous.
:)
But seriously, the actual damages are around 35 cents per download. (70 cent wholesale price minus ~35 cents expenses=35 cents lost profits). The now discarded Jammie Thomas verdict was 23,000 times the actual damages (9250 per song file).
Interestingly, when the record companies are defendants [blogspot.com] they sing a different tune, complaining that even 10 times the actual damages is unconstitutional.
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Re:Paragraph(?) 7 of the motion (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Let me guess McCain would have been different? (Score:5, Informative)
the Justice Department has to support the laws as written before the courts
Yes but every member of the Justice Department, and indeed every attorney, takes an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. Not a particular provision, or interpretation of a provision, of the Copyright Act. I.e., while we are bound to protect and defend "the law", the chief "law" we are bound to protect and defend is the Constitution of the United States. The United States Supreme Court has held that punitive damages which exceed by more than nine times the actual damages are presumptively unconstitutional. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Northern District of California, and the Eastern District of New York have held that statutory damages may well be subject to the same principle. No cases have held to the contrary. And two excellent law review articles have argued forcefully that the statutory damages scheme of the Copyright Act, providing for MINIMUM damages of $750 per infringement, is in fact unconstitutional as applied to the micropayment p2p file sharing cases -- i.e. if each 99-cent song file creates a $750 to $150,000 liability.
Indeed the RIAA's damages theory is not even consistent with basic tenets of copyright law, of long standing, that statutory damage awards are required to bear a reasonable relationship [blogspot.com] to the actual damages sustained.
So the DOJ should stay far away from defending this nonsense. They have much more important things to do than to ensure that college students be exposed to damages which even the courts recognize are ludicrous. See, e.g., the last 3 or 4 pages of Judge Davis's decision [blogspot.com] in Capitol v. Thomas.
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