Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online 315
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The entire transcript of the RIAA's 'perfect storm,' its first and only trial, which resulted in a $222,000 verdict in a case involving 24 MP3's having a retail value of $23.76, is now available online. After over a year of trying, we have finally obtained the transcript of the Duluth, Minnesota, jury trial which took place October 2, 2007, to October 4, 2007, in Capitol Records v. Thomas. Its 643 pages represent a treasure trove for (a) lawyers representing defendants in other RIAA cases, (b) technologists anxious to see how a MediaSentry investigator and the RIAA's expert witness combined to convince the jurors that the RIAA had proved its case, and (c) anybody interested in finding out about such things as the early-morning October 4th argument in which the RIAA lawyer convinced the judge to make the mistake which forced him to eventually vacate the jury's verdict, and the testimony of SONY BMG's Jennifer Pariser in which she 'misspoke' according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing.' The transcript was a gift from the 'Joel Fights Back Against RIAA' team defending SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston, Massachusetts. I have the transcript in 3 segments: October 2nd (278 pages(PDF), October 3rd (263 pages)(PDF), and October 4th (100 pages)(PDF)."
Cue - no, Clue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue the DMCA takedown notice in 5, 4, 3... ;)
Thanks, NYCL. I hope that making this transcript available does something to help make the **AA strategists have to adjust to this "new" internet technology in a way more beneficent to all, instead of just trying to sue the pants off anyone who they think might have crossed their rather arbitrary lines...
Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me guess on the whole jury convincing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the technical knowledge of your average joe...
media sentry guy and expert witness come in and bandy about as much technical jargon as possible while connecting it with vicious invective to nefarious terms like "theft".
defense asks them questions, which they answer in the same language, which may as well be fluent korean to the jurors.
In the end, jurors make decision based on the repeated misinformation from the media of the past 10 years equating downloading to theft, which was repeated amongst the foreign language the "witnesses" happened to be speaking.
The end.
Re:She is a dumbass (Score:2, Insightful)
Read the post I replied to. The OP didn't say the fine was justified because it was against the law, he said it was justified because of a statement made by the defendant:
"The reason why she got slammed with such high levels for each instance of infringement is because she tried to make the jurors feel stupid"
If you don't believe the law is ethical, there are proper channels to go through in order to change it.
That's irrelevant - that doesn't mean that such people should be fined excessively more for what they believe. If your point is to simply say that the law allows for such vast fines, then yes, we know what the law says, and no one is disagreeing with that point - that's a straw man.
Why did this take a year? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like anybody on /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. The RIAA is like:
* We need new laws to make this illegal, hey Congress, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ahh, the problem is public perception.. we need to vilify file sharing. Marketing moguls, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ok, well maybe we can just scare people into our way of thinking. Lawyers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Maybe we can use impossible technology to force everyone into forgetting how to copy. Cryptographers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ok, how about just crazy ass rootkit technology? That's doable. Hey Sony scumbags, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Boy oh boy, this is harder than making water not wet, we need an international conspiracy of ISPs to give us unaccounted power over all their customers. PENDING.
What other crazy schemes will they come up with?
* Maybe they'll start putting poison in cases of blank media (cause they obviously have this stupid idea that people still burn the music they download - look at the tax on blank media in Canada).
* What ever happened to that lawsuit against Apple? Are they making so much money from the iTunes store that they've forgotten their water tight argument that an 80 gig iPod would take $79,200 to fill? I guess math never was their strong suite.
* Direct hacking attacks on file sharers? They have your IP, I wouldn't put it past them.
* What about voodoo? That shit works right? We just need everyone in the world to submit some of their hair or skin so the witch doctor can make a voodoo doll, then we can jab em whenever they share files.. how will we know when they share files? EVERYONE shares files, we just have to jab everyone equally, that's easy!
Ok, now I'm just being silly.
Re:Why did this take a year? (Score:2, Insightful)
the court reporter sells those. they get paid per page or something like that as far as i know.
so since "RIAA-Richard" is not a nice man, he did not provided nycl with a courtesy copy back those days.
Oh, ianl so better trust nycl then me on that one
--
A_F
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cue the DMCA takedown notice in 5, 4, 3... ;)
the transcript is public domain. as such, it should be easily available from any law clerk at the courthouse unless the judge orders the court case closed. now the RIAA could file a motion to close the court proceedings - but they would have to have a decent argument as to why that is necessary.
My, you say that as if they would still not go ahead and file a DMCA takedown notice anyway, and later just say 'oops, our bad' instead of taking them to court.
It would cause some aggravation, and piss off the website owners, for next to no cost (lawyers on staff anyway), so why not?
That is their thinking.
As all of their other court cases except this one show, not having a case at all is no reason not to move forward with one.
Re:the "copyright infringement is stealing" argume (Score:2, Insightful)
They do it here in america too, and the stupidest part is they come to the conclusion:
"Buying pirated movies is stealing"
Uh, no. Not only are pirated movies not stolen, but buying black market goods is not stealing either. Sure, it might be illegal, and sure, the cops can confiscate it w/ out compensation, but last I checked it's not stealing.
Re:"when she testified under oath... (Score:3, Insightful)
There does admitedly appear to be some wiggle room within the "the whole truth" thing, which is to say you are only required to completely answer the question put to you as opposed to telling truths you know but haven't been asked, but lying under oath is still illegal as far as I know no matter what.
Perhaps the defendent's lawyer should have objected, but if she's an expert in the field it would have been a fairly gray area and probably a quite applicable question and would likely have been overruled.
On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, while copyright infringement is not stealing, it's sort of hard to come up with a laymans term for what it is that correctly explains what it is to a non technical jury. Realistically it's a breach of contract, but contracts you don't explicitly sign, verbally agree, or make any explicit acknowldgement of contract, don't make a lot of sense to the average person(which one might argue is why the case is flawed to begin with).
I second the motion. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am also going to take a little time this holiday season to go donate a few bucks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org).
Please help support all of these people, without whom we would all be royally screwed by now.
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is this "woman" thing you speak of?
Oh, come on, you know them. They look nice, they are generally flat and sometimes folded in the middle.
Thank NYCL? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't thank NYCL, I worship him!
Praise to NYCL and the Virgin Thomas!
Re:the "copyright infringement is stealing" argume (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst is when I pay for a DVD and am forced to watch this shit. I'm talking about the 1-minute "piracy is stealing" commercials which play at the start of the disc, and cannot be skipped due to DRM.
It is offensive to me, to think that I have paid good money for this, only to be forced to listen to this shit every time I watch my movie. The pirated discs don't have this defect.
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one of the things I don't understand about America and Americans. My understanding is that your Constitution includes the Right to bear arms so you can rise up against an oppressive or corrupt government.
The 2nd amendment prevents the government from taking the right to the ability to rise up, it does not imply that the government must tolerate armed insurrection. Those who bear arms against the government have placed themselves outside the rule of that government and become an enemy. If they prevail and form a new government they will presumably not have themselves punished. If they do not prevail they will either be killed as an enemy or forcibly brought back under the rule of the government through the courts and prison system.
So you have the right to keep and bear arms but waging war on the government is only legal if you win. LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes gives an explanation of unalienable rights under the title "Not All Rights Are Alienable" which would probably help your understanding of this. It is available at Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] you can search for the title without the quotation marks. It's worth reading the whole book though.
Surely you have enough people with guns to force the issue.
From the Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Have a read of the list of things they put up with before the Declaration of Independence was made (the list is in the Declaration, also at Project Gutenberg).
The copyright problem is likely transient, ie temporary. The people who have been voted out will leave office. Things can still be dealt with in court and through other legal means. The situation isn't so bad that it is worth the suffering a civil war would cause. Having guns doesn't mean you give up easily on peaceful methods.