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)."
the "copyright infringement is stealing" argument (Score:5, Interesting)
This includes commercials which are screened just before your favorite movie and printed ads in mainstream newspapers (which says "Piracy is stealing").
I have explained my son that this is a lie, because "piracy" and stealing are two different concepts, but many thousands of peruvians don't know this difference.
did I mention that the "Piracy is stealing" commercial showed before movies had the MPAA logo at the end?
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Just think... The computer that you're using might be worth a million dollars, maybe 20 millions dollars if you download a lot of music.
Don't be modest, at "a lot of music" like say 1000 CDs * 15 songs and $10000/song as in this case you're ranked 178th on countries by GDP ahead of "Kiribati" and "São Tomé and Príncipe". Is it really any wonder this sort of thing threatens the world economy?
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:3, Interesting)
The leads us back to a story earlier about the attempts to broadcast the RIAA trial coming up (ongoing??). I do not remember the details, but the basics is that the RIAA claims that they want to educate consumers, while at the same time a group of lawyers for the defendants wants to broadcast the trial and the RIAA is trying to stop them. The defendants lawyers are claiming that broadcasting the trial would be education on the legalities of downloading music...
Sort of a catch 22 there...
Re:That's really awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is to use the $9,250 figure that the RIAA uses to sue so your 186.000 dollars of MP3's would get you sued for 1,720,500,000. One harddrive worth almost 2 billion, so cute 3
Re:the "copyright infringement is stealing" argume (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This just says it all: (Score:2, Interesting)
Lots of companies incorporate in Delaware because their laws are sweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_corporation
http://corp.delaware.gov/faqs.shtml#numcorps
Also, see the question right below.
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:2, Interesting)
The raw text of the transcript may be in the public domain, but the header, footer, line and page numbers may not be (I believe this was the reasoning in Oregon I think, for them asking some site to take down the listing of state laws, it might be somewhere else).
And yes, this is part of the set of things that are so ridiculous, they must be true.
Re:Why did this take a year? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought court proceedings were public records -- why did it take a year for the transcript to be available?
1. The transcripts aren't free. I think this one cost around $2500.
2. For awhile the court reporter was on maternity leave. I don't know about other delays.
3. This was a gift from the Joel Fights Back" [facebook.com] legal team. If they hadn't gotten me one, I don't know if I'd ever have seen it, because the RIAA lawyers do not have the courtesy to share transcripts with their adversaries.
Re:To Mr Beckerman (Score:1, Interesting)
In England, clients come to me with a case. I advise them as to the merits. Sometimes, in spite of the fact that I have told them that I don't think their case will be successful, they choose to go ahead.
That is not my choice. It is theirs. Is it not possible that the RIAA has gone to lawyers, the lawyers have advised and the RIAA has opted to carry on?
That is why I think it is important to recognise that the lawyers don't necessarily believe the case. They have to been hired to do the best job that they can.
As to my last question, that you said you didn't understand. I conduct cases on behalf of large corporations. Without wanting to breach privilege, these cases involve similar facts and the protagonists are exteremly angry people.
The ones that we fight are ones where we have no confidence that if we agreed a confidentiality claue that the litgant would refrain from breaching it. For commercial reasns, it would be preferable to keep it secret, but if it got out that we had settled, it would be commercially damaging.
The way that this relates to the RIAA litigation is that a party could get into litigation and then reach a settlement in principle but would bqalk at a confidentiality agreement.
What I was asking, is how you would react to someone who didn't give a shit about confidentiality and would jeopardise a reasonable settlment for reasons that they would not espouse if they were properly represnted.
Tom
Re:Why did this take a year? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
You got it right.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a flaw in your math. You stated that you would have 3.5 trucks made of solid gold. You failed to account for the difference in density between steel/aluminum/plastic and solid gold. Just for the sake of simplicity we'll say that the density of the materials in a Ford F150 average out to a little less than the density of steel. Conveniently this works out to right around 1 cubic meter of solid material. A cubic meter of solid gold weighs 19,300Kg, so you would be looking at only about 1/3 of a truck.
Re:Why did this take a year? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The transcripts aren't free. I think this one cost around $2500.
You must have missed the irony and analogy here. An electronic court transcript is just a bunch of bits on a hard drive somewhere, whose creation price has been (arbitarily) set at $2500. Since the electronic document is now in the ether of the Internet, no one will ever again pay $2500 for it, they will pay $0. Does this remind you of anything?
Of course this isn't actually a good example, because the creation cost (the court reporter's time and equipment) is probably already paid for by the time the transcript is sold.
See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1059301&cid=26084387 [slashdot.org] for the rest of my thoughts on IP, creation cost, and the value of someone's time, creativity, and ideas.
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, Apple quotes an 80Gig iPod as holding 24,000 songs. At iTunes' price of about $1/song, that is slightly less than $24k.
And it wasn't Apple doing that - it was Napster or other people selling subscription services (e.g., why pay $24k to fill up your iPod, when you can pay $15/month and get all the songs you want?).
But yeah, no one is going to fill up their iPod with $24k worth of music. They're going to rip their CD collections (after all, iTunes makes it easy), and there are videos too...
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:3, Interesting)
The RIAA complaint about the iPod was before iTunes.. or at least that was my recollection. They estimated the cost of the songs from the cost of CDs.. and, of course, they did it poorly.. saying that people would pay $15 for a CD and only take 5 songs off each CD. Few $15 CDs have 15 tracks on them.. so you're not likely to reduce the cost per song down to less than $1 each.. so saying you're going to rip your CDs instead of using the iTunes store doesn't reduce that $24k to fill an 80 gig iPod. And yeah, the "it's for videos" excuse was concocted by Apple before the video iPod and after the RIAA complaint. It basically went no-where because Jobs talked to em.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
0.177806631% of a Fort Knox.
Sorry, you aren't THAT rich.
Re:She is a dumbass (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, it's like fining someone $10,000 for jaywalking or a speeding ticket because they say it isn't wrong, Totally cruel and unusual.
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has never really been the freedom loving nation it aspires. when it started, it had slavery, when that ended there was an apartheid of Blacks, after that there were constant conflicts over religion internally. (In fact, religion has caused the US Public school system to be torn apart.) The list goes on. The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination. The whole secularism and tolerance thing has been around only since the early 70s.
You can't really have a true open and transparent democracy when such a huge percentage believe in a Monarchical Autocratic universe. The last 8 years, the US presidency has boiled down to "Jesus wants me to be president." My significant other has been told "Jesus wants Christians to run Windows", and "Linux is a Demonic Operating system". So telling the public "Jesus says making copies of music is wrong." and they will believe it. Because thats just the way the USA is.
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:3, Interesting)
why do Americans allow their Democracy to be defined by Corporations that have their own interests, and not the nation's, at heart?
Because, Corporations are loaded with money with which to buy COngresscritters. You, living on social security, do NOT have the same amount of money to buy a congresscritter. Today's rate of a congresscritter is about $2,000,000 excluding "sponsored" educational trips to Swiss Alps and Carribean.
Why does anyone who tries to exercise that right get put in gaol or executed?
Because it upsets the status quo dumbass. If you start questioning and succeed, others will rise, and ultimately the corporations will be overthrown leading to rule "by the people", "of the people". Something that neither congresscritters nor corporations want. Hence, to prevent anyone else from trying to do what you do, they make a Che Guevara out of you.
I accept that Democracy here in Australia is not what it was.
Democracy in Australia follows the Westminister model, which is why the past and present political dingos can get away with Orwellian internet, crappy telephones, a overtaxed economy, subsidies to woolworths and Coles, while beating the sydney man to death with council and state taxes.
Any thoughts about technical testimony? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What happened to the Lady Ms. Thomas? (Score:3, Interesting)
I cant seem to find out what finally happened after the verdict -- did she (Thomas) have to pay up the $222,000.00 ?
Nothing happened with it. It was set aside [blogspot.com]. A new trial is scheduled for March 9th.
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:5, Interesting)
The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination.
Racism and sexism are smokescreens for the US's blatant classism. And it's far from Christian; the national religion is the worship of money. You won't find Bibles in any public school I know of, and students have been disciplined for even talking about religion. The Constitution itself states that the government cannot institute a national religion. We were founded as a secular nation.
Our national god is the god of mammon. We worship green pieces of paper. Hell, the mammon-worshipers are so afraid of Jesus they no longer even use the word "Christmas" in advertising. "Holoday tree?" What other holiday (outside Druidism) has a tree? Do they call it a "Holiday Menorah?"
We're heading into a depression because the high priests of finance are greedy morons.
As to racism, nobody would object to Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey moving in next door to them. It's the crack smoking gang bangers that they don't want moving in. Their color has nothing to do with it; what it has to do with is the fact that they're poor violent thieves. Most anybody would object to blue eyed Billy Bob Meth guy just as vehemently. It isn't a matter of race, it's a matter of class.
Re:What happened to the Lady Ms. Thomas? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ray,
In another part of this thread it was (humorously, perhaps?) suggested to make an audiobook of these transcripts [slashdot.org].
I took this suggestion seriously and elevated it to a platform [librivox.org] which it would be more appropriate for here [slashdot.org]. This site hosts audiobooks that are read of public domain manuscripts and released into the world. If support is gathered through the discussion to the "suggestion" that I posted, it would be a matter of time before we could do a proper production of the Recording Industry versus Jammie Thomas in audio format.
Could you comment on the potential legality of such an effort and reaffirm that the transcripts truly are "Public Domain"? Could you additionally answer the question of whether you'd think it would be a worthwhile effort? Would you imagine it being able to grip a target audience and hold their attention? Perhaps an abridged version would be better to exclude parts that are overly dry and boring? Is this case truly historical enough to be preserved in an audiobook fashion? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated since you are much closer to the Jammie Thomas case than the casual /. reader.
Best regards,
Rob
Re:What happened to the Lady Ms. Thomas? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think this is a troll, sort of (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm replying here since I know you'll probably get an email alert. Please provide this kind of stuff in text or xhtml format excepting for the rare case where absolute positioning of elements is required. I find pdf format really annoying to deal with since it's hard to manipulate/search/sort/etc using standard tools. Thanks. S
Sorry. It was the decision of the federal court system, not my decision, to adopt *pdf as the format.