RIAA Threatens Harvard Law Prof With Sanctions 333
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Unhappy with Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's motion to compel the deposition of the RIAA's head 'Enforcer', Matthew J. Oppenheim, in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the RIAA threatened the good professor with sanctions (PDF) if he declined to withdraw his motion. Then the next day they filed papers opposing the motion, and indeed asked the Court to award monetary sanctions under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."
Re:Attorney-Client Privelidge (Score:1, Informative)
Only the conversations between the MAFIAA and their lawyers are subject to that privilege. Dispositions made in court are always on the public record (except when stricken from the record, of course)
Re:Attorney-Client Privelidge (Score:5, Informative)
If Mr. Oppenheimer has been the RIAA's attorney (meaning agent only) then there has to have been someone at the RIAA giving him directions and telling him what to do. Basically the RIAA is trying to hold both ends of the stick: when you ask the RIAA: "who's the person who can speak for the corporation about this litigation", they say it's Mr. Oppenheimer. When you then say "Ok, can I ask Mr. Oppenheimer some questions?" they say: no, he's actually our lawyer so he can't tell you anything.
Say the RIAA sues someone. This means they gathered evidence etc. But the RIAA is not an actual human, just a "legal person". So some human employee of the RIAA must be able to testify to things like "we told our investigators to look for X" or "this is how much money we lost due to this alleged infringement". The RIAA is trying to claim that the employee who knows all this stuff is at the same time the RIAA's lawyer, so he only knows this stuff as their attorney and can't testify to it. It's a clever way to avoid having to present their case.
Re:Legal language and strength of case (Score:5, Informative)
The case to which you are referring is Arkell vs Pressdram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkell_vs_Pressdram#Litigation [wikipedia.org]
The salient point is that Arkell's lawyers wrote to Private Eye saying "Our client's attitude to damages will depend on the nature of your reply". Private Eye's response was "We would be interested to know what your client's attitude to damages would be if the nature of our reply were as follows: Fuck off".
I recommend that people take this option more often. I *am* a lawyer - this is legal advice.
Re:RIAA reaching new heights of credibility (Score:4, Informative)
I know... I know... but still, the word you may be seeking is "extort" as in extortion.
Blackmail is "we will tell your secret if you don't do what we say."
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:5, Informative)
"was the Senior Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs for the RIAA."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Oppenheim [wikipedia.org]
"Mr. Oppenheim then became active as one of the lead litigators representing the record industry in the landmark "file-sharing" cases against peer-to-peer networks, including against Napster, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster and Kazaa."
http://www.spoke.com/info/p6QsSD8/MatthewOppenheim [spoke.com]
"It is not legal, ethical or cool to copy somebody else's CD for your own use."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright2.html [pbs.org]
See, he doesn't even agree with himself. What the RIAA does is not legal, ethical or cool since they copy the artists CDs for their own use. Bad Bad RIAA
More info on Matt Oppenheim (Score:1, Informative)
If, like me, you couldn't remember who this guy is, try:
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Oppenheim_Matt_14844608.aspx
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Your Honor (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the court can't impose sanctions under Rule 37 for fighting back.
Rule 37 says the court can impose sanction, basically, if someone refuses or fails to appear, respond, answer etc. when so ordered by the court:
(A) Motion; Grounds for Sanctions. The court where the action is pending may, on motion, order sanctions if:
(i) a party or a party's officer, director, or managing agent â" or a person designated under Rule 30(b)(6) or 31(a)(4) â" fails, after being served with proper notice, to appear for that person's deposition; or
(ii) a party, after being properly served with interrogatories under Rule 33 or a request for inspection under Rule 34, fails to serve its answers, objections, or written response.
(B) Certification. A motion for sanctions for failing to answer or respond must include a certification that the movant has in good faith conferred or attempted to confer with the party failing to act in an effort to obtain the answer or response without court action.
Re:What is Rule 37? (Score:3, Informative)
From the pdf, it sounds like rule 37 is saying "You haven't asked us nicely for this information outside of court first and you should"
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:4, Informative)
Uh... because (they say) that he wasn't actually subpoenead to testify, and so being "compelled" is Bad Juju. (They claim) Profession Nesson actually subpoenead someone other mysterious 3rd party, who is resident in Maryland and so can't be subpoenad to a Massachusetts District court anyway.
Now, maybe they're lying, but that would be pushing it even for the RIAA. It almost sounds as though they created some Fake Oppenheim, let Nesson serve him, and now they bitch-slap him for claiming that he served the Real Oppenheim.
So I guess those would be extraordinary steps too, but at least the reason for taking them is obvious: it'd be damn funny if that's what they've done. Evil Robot RIAA Doubles. It's all true.
Re:Uhg (Score:3, Informative)
What the fuck? I nominate the parent post for "most incomprehensible 5-scored gibberish on Slashdot". I sure hope it's just pure bullshittery that there are any musicians signing contracts with this individual.
Re:Uhg (Score:1, Informative)
From one AC to another: welcome to the internet, you are no longer required.
Re:Wasting resources (Score:5, Informative)
RIAA's lawyers actually wrote this in the threat: "Defendent's repeated failures to follow basic rules of procedure is making this case far more expensive and time consuming than it should be." hmm... I'd almost say something like, Plaintiff's repeated contortions of basic rules of procedure is making multiple cases far more expensive and time consuming than it should be.
Hmm. I would say something like that.
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I dislike reading anything from (Score:3, Informative)
I second this! Ray, please translate a bit for us poor unfortunates. A little color commentary would be nice, too!
Sorry about that, but the reality is... I don't have the time to do good writing. I don't get paid for this. My highest priority in the blogging part of my life is to get the facts and the litigation documents out, and let the rest of the world handle the commentary. If I got a million dollar grant to spend more time writing I'd do it but I don't see that happening any time soon. I can't even get many people to buy an MP3 from one of my affiliate advertisers.
People compare me to PJ [groklaw.com]. You shouldn't. She's a great journalist; I'm not in her league. I'm just a lawyer who tripped across a wave of litigation bullying, and realized that the internet might help to slightly counterbalance one of the bad guys' strategic advantages -- their information monopoly.
What PJ and I have in common is that we've both taken advantage of the federal courts' transition to electronic filing to give our readers actual primary source material to read, and in so doing to honor, rather than insult as many other news sources do, our readers' intelligence.
Other than that, my amateur-hour work shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as her deservedly award-winning web site.
Re:Full Story? (Score:4, Informative)
-the client
-the client representative
-the industry representative
-the principal
-the only person in the world who has settlement authority
-the attorney
It is clearly true that he was the person who has controlled these cases, and who had complete authority to settle the cases. He is the enforcer of whatever unholy agreement these 4 supposed competitiors made among themselves, and he is instrumental in whatever trickery was developed to ensure that only the Big 4 -- and no other RIAA members -- were permitted to participate in this litigation war. He is the enforcer.
He is clearly an appropriate person to be deposed.
Re:Your Honor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Full Story? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not questioning should Mr. Oppenheim be deposed only that if procedurally the RIAA have valid points on their objections? Even if they were technical like the place of deposition, fee, subject matter, etc.
No there is no merit to any of their contentions.
Re:The Real Issue: Universal Access to Knowledge. (Score:4, Informative)
This is all mildly interesting twitter, but assuming you're not just karma whoring, maybe you'd like to explain how the people who produce the content you so eloquently demand must be shared are going to make a living?
The system is clearly broken at the moment, and shady legal actions and stacking from large groups that rarely have the artists' best interests in mind hardly help. Their passe distribution and promotion mechanisms also have to go.
But all these poetic "information wants to be free" essays I see here (yours is honestly just slightly north of corny) inevitably fail to explain how artists are supposed to avoid starvation and homelessness when freedom-loving folk like you are hard at work "sharing" their work.
The other day I read an article on game piracy. It centered mostly on DRM, but it also identified the lack of availability of titles in most of the world as a driving cause for piracy. In other words, there are millions of potential customers who would gladly pay for a game, yet simply can't because they have no legal way to do so. So they simply pirate it. That got me thinking that maybe if we had an open, secure and global mechanism for micropayment (< $100 on average) transactions, that could be used as an effective way to allow independent artists to profit from their hard work. Sure, there would be some piracy, that's a given. But depending on your overhead, even if only 10% of a hundred million people who have access to your work could pay, you'd probably break even and then some.
But just offering up empty prose on how everyone must "share" (and where is your shared content, BTW?) is and how eeeevil the **AA people are is, as usual, nothing but empty prose.
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:4, Informative)
I remember at least one case the RIAA lost where the other party filed for legal expenses to be paid by the RIAA.
2 of which I am aware. Atlantic v. Andersen $108,000, Capitol v. Foster $68,000.
Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:3, Informative)
On Slashdot? Hardly anybody reads the legal documents.
As the person who actually hosts the litigation documents, and can read the backlinks, I can tell you that you are dead wrong about that. While it is true that visitors from Fark or Reddit or Digg are more likely than not to skip reading the litigation documents, a substantial majority of the visitors from Slashdot actually do read the litigation documents, and spend time doing so.
And most Slashdotters, when pressed, are able to back up their arguments with substantiation, unlike yourself.