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."
modern version of sending pictures (Score:5, Interesting)
"Stop this (perfectly legal thing) or our teams of lawyers will fuck up your life" seems to be the new iteration of having thugs beat up a family member or sending pictures of your kids playing outside.
The intent is merely to scare people.
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:4, Interesting)
He's a suit. 'nuff said.
Legal language and strength of case (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, when you have a strong case things are different. I'm reminded of a business acquaintance who had a case against a powerful US trade group some years ago. His lawyers said the case was unanswerable, spent a morning summarising it on one side of a letter, and sent it off. The other side promptly settled out of court. The other famous example was the UK satirical magazine Private Eye, which once received a long and very threatening letter from the lawyers of a notorious fraudster. Their reply was something on the lines of "We have had your interesting letter and we have taken legal advice. Our lawyers advise us to tell you to f**k off".
Given this history, the one liner back (in effect "bring it on") is surely instructive.
Uhg (Score:1, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder if the RIAA (and for that matter the MPAA) will ever change.
Must we wait for the old fogies currently running the joint to die of old age before younger people, who've grown up with modern tech and know how futile the legal threats/proceedings are, finally get in charge?
When the client is a lawyer ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Attorney-Client Privelidge (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on the court, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney-client_privilege [wikipedia.org]
Plus, he can still tesify on actions or decisions he took on behalf of his client, and why, without revealing any conversations and/or communications with the client. After all, he was representing them...
Re:Uhg (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Uhg (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not because they are clueless. Music business just revolves around seedy people. I know. I am starting up agent myself. I have a history of 15 years of tech development and know my local law quite well. I am sought up by young bands around me because I can tell them gazillion seedy practises of how to actually get a licing out of their music.
These discussions always take a place in some smoky studio with booze flowing. If my client and moral quibles, he will do by himself. I have one of these. He has honestly tried to break out for 10 years and is a very talented vocalist and guitarist. I can't help him because he finds my methods unsavory.
I do not collect by success. I have a fixed price which I take from the first album or by selling them to a bigger label. I have very little investement in myself, but they know I can help and are willing to sign my contract because they are only obliged to work with me until they get to bigger stages.
Anyway. Music is dog-eat-dog on business side. Those who try to make a living out of it, are quite heartless cynic people. But brilliant, talented cynic people.
Have fun supporting your local artist. Your pennies will never feed him. Do the math and calculate how much an ethical unknown artist would have to sell and tour to make ends meet. Don't forget to calculate expense of light techicians, sound technicians, roudies the bus driver, etc. Those salaries usually go untaxed and the venues pay grey. Try to work in proper taxation, insurances and what the heck not. A gig should cost $100/person and CD another $100 for the poor sods.
Music is not a business of scarce resources. It is of scarce customers. That's why the biggest front of the business looks so brutal.
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is Rule 37? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd be thankful if NYCL, or another /. regular legal eagle, would explain Rule 37 in normal English, or if possible in engineering English.
I tried reading the rule myself, and it was so chock full of legal terms that I fear I summoned a succubus.
NYCL, please start annotating your submissions! (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people are still not understanding what this means, its implications, and its likelihood for success.
It's important to translate things out of legalese and analyze it in the context of the proceedings.
Slashdot is a tech site, not a legal one, so while the general community can see "aha", "touche'", and "gotcha" moments in, say, the realm of computer science or electrical engineering, we don't see it in legal context without some actual analysis. Feel free to qualify things with "this is my opinion" or whatever, but analysis and translation is essential.
Re:When the client is a lawyer ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a lawyer - and therefore not technically (heh) or morally inclined to post other than anonymously. But what Oppenheimer is doing is using the attorney-client privilege to create a legal "black hole" whereby some substantive operations of the company (the RIAA) that businessmen commonly have control over are instead controlled by the lawyer, creating a situation where documents that would otherwise not be privileged magically are. Most companies would rather pay someone in lower management a lesser salary than the relatively high salary of a lawyer to do everyday tasks, but on a strategic level it sometimes makes sense for a company to pay a relatively astronomical fee to a lawyer for the lawyer to act as an employee in lower or middle management.
While highly unethical, it's not illegal. Oppenheimer MIGHT be subject to sanctions for doing it, but might not be. Probably depends on the judge and the jurisdiction.
the legal system (Score:2, Interesting)
This is going to turn Nesson on (Score:4, Interesting)
Nesson loves this stuff. He represented Ellsberg (the guy that stole and released the pentagon papers) against the us government. In classes he loves telling stories of how he stood against government intimidation to protect Ellsberg's location (e.g., being followed everywhere, never using phones in his home or office, taking elaborate trips arranged through fantastic means to have in person meetings away from the watching eyes of the us government). The government was breaking law after law to find Ellsberg and put him away, but Nesson managed to hide him long enough to prepare for defense and turned the government's own illegal actions back at them to get the case thrown out.
This is just the type of action the RIAA can be sure will get Nesson even more excited about this stuff. He'll just wear it a badge of honor.
Re:Uhg (Score:4, Interesting)
You can make it, you just might not make it big.
My dad's been self-employed as a musician for fifteen years now and gets by. It's enough for him to support himself and help support the family. The trick was his business experience and not being too caught up in his art to not find new markets. He does a fair number of kids programs, but also a bunch of festivals, concerts in small venues, and a few big openers. It's about living within your means, selling your name and music at every opportunity, and not spending $50 on gas for a $40 show.
Full Story? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the full story behind this? I'm only getting the RIAA's story. It appears that Professor Nesson wanted to depose Mr. Oppenheim on January 22. But sometime after January 9, the RIAA objected citing attorney-client privilege, the depositions were to be held in Massachusetts and not Maryland, there was no fee, there was no confer and meet, etc. Then Professor Nesson filed a motion to compel. I didn't read that he answered their objections. The RIAA then filed for monetary sanctions.
I am not a lawyer but dispositions and motions to compel seem to be fairly commonplace in lawsuits like these. The RIAA seems to have valid points on not allowing Mr. Oppenheim. Filing for monetary sanctions however is really overboard though.
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if he represents the interests of the artists
He doesn't. Nobody represents the artists, who get screwed over badly. The artist doen't even hold copyright to his own recorded performances, the label does.
If you want to know just how badly the RIAA labels screw over their artists, read any treatise by any RIAA musician (except Mad Donna or the dufus drummer from Metallica). There are good ones by Courtney Love and Steve Albini that will make you feel REAL sorry for the fools who sign with major labels.
Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hate to side with the RIAA but, if the allegations in their motion are true (and you'd think they would be; they are simply claims about the proceedings themselves that the judge can easily verify) then the issue is simply that Nesson has repeatedly failed to follow the court's rules governing discovery. He has not subpoenaed the witness or given notice of taking a deposition before moving to compel it. He has not conferred with the plaintiffs regarding the motion before filing it. He has not filed the required initial disclosures. All of these, under either the Federal Rules of Civil procedure or the local rules of the court are grounds for the dismissal of Nesson's motion and, possibly, monetary sanctions.
This sounds to me like a solitary instance of the RIAA's being in the right in court. Sorry everyone!
Re:Your Honor (Score:5, Interesting)
Your Honor, we would like you to impose sanction against him. He's not supposed to fight back. Please punish him for fighting back. Our strategy doesn't work when intelligent lawyers fight back. This must be put to an end right now.
Pathetic RIAA.
whisper_jeff, you really hit it on the head. I see you've already been modded to +5 Funny. I wish you could be modded to +10 Funny AND Accurate.
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:3, Interesting)
Another name for such a system is fascism. It's not pretty, as we have seen all too often.
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:5, Interesting)
What contract? What TOC? I don't recall signing a contract the last time I bought a movie.
Modifying a movie is just like buying a book and then writing in the margin, or tearing out pages -- do you think that is illegal too?
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone (especially on forums like this) likes to jump on option (c), forgetting the basic problem that a system is definitely not automatically bad just because it's complex. Far from it, when you're describing a tremendously detailed world such as our own, it is inevitable that your laws would become complicated and labyrinthine.
Re:Capitalism at it's best. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.seasteading.org/ [seasteading.org]
Although there's still some rules in maritime law. But spacesteading isn't practical yet.
Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet if RIAA had stuck to suing copyright infringers, none of us would have ever heard of NewYorkCountryLawyer.
May well be so. I only came into the fight because of my hatred of bullies, and because these bullies were so obviously wrong on the law, wrong on the facts, and immoral and unprofessional in their behavior.
You might have otherwise heard of my alter ego, Ray what's-his-name, in other contexts, but probably not in this context.
I only first discovered Slashdot when one of my litigation documents in Elektra v. Santangelo got 'Slashdotted' one day in the Summer of 2005. I traced the backlink to this place I'd never heard of, where an intelligent Talmudic discussion was going on, among a bunch of people who seemed kind of like lawyers, but who clearly were not lawyers, but who seemed smarter than lawyers. It looked like an ordinary message board, but it obviously was a whole 'nother thing.
Things haven't been quite the same since.
1. Spend a lot of time on Slashdot.
2. Get the word out.
3. Have a lot of fun.
4. ???
5. No profit whatsoever (in the financial sense).
Re:Your Honor (Score:3, Interesting)
I would think this strategy runs the risk of insulting the judge.
You mean going to an appeals court and telling them that she is acting totally outside the jurisdiction of a federal judge and flagrantly violating the law?
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:3, Interesting)
The transaction was identical to buying a book or buying a sixpack of beer. (Wait, scratch that: unlike movies, I have to show my id to buy beer.) Do you think books and beer aren't purchased either?
Furthermore, it's not even like shrinkwrap software, where after you think you bought it, you are then presented with a license that claims you didn't, after you open it up or when you install it. So it can't even be compared to that can of worms.
Don't believe the previous paragraph? Think I'm full of shit? Ok. Look at your CDs and DVDs: do you see a license? Can you perhaps quote one of the terms from any of these secret licenses that aren't even included inside the packaging? You said "You are LICENSED to use it within certain limitations" so perhaps you could explain what those limitations might be. Do you even know what the license says? Are you claiming that a person can be bound to a contract that they not only never signed, but has never even been shown to them even after they have signed? We're way beyond shrinkwrap EULAs and into Catch-22 territory here.
Can you explain the "own it now on DVD" ads? "Own" is their word, not mine. How about the "On sale, January 23" ads? "Sale" is their word, not mine. (Do you think I'm making this up?)
To recap: music and movie disks are advertised as purchases instead of licenses, they are transactionally treated just like purchases rather than licenses, and even after the purchase (which it should be too late to change the rules anyway), no license is presented and no claims are made by the publisher that it wasn't a purchase.
Dude, are you sure you have thought about this? Were you paying attention to what actually happened, the last time you handed your cash over in exchange for a shiny disk? It was all right there for you to see (or not see, in the case of the license itself).
Re:Who is this guy, & why does he not want to (Score:3, Interesting)
It gets worse: Do you even recall seeing one? Do you remember thinking you had bought it, opening the box, and finding a page of legalese making the preposterous claim that you hadn't really bought it, but that they would graciously grant you permission to watch the movie provided that you agree to the following conditions? I don't.
Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:3, Interesting)
We, generally speaking, are only smarter than your average lawyer as pertains to computers, the internet, technology, or other generally geeky/nerdy topic. I'm sure your average lawyer would thoroughly trounce us on other less geek-centric topics.
Well, we're going off topic here, but I will tell you that in my experience:
-in the world of science and math one will occasionally come upon a genius
-in the legal world, in 34 years of encountering thousands of lawyers, I have met many reasonably intelligent people, but only 1 genius.
Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is the RIAA may be a bunch of cruel bastards, but at the end of the day they are just protecting their copyright.
Shows how little you know. The RIAA doesn't hold copyright: the media companies that fund the RIAA's activities do. And they're the ones who are morally (if not legally) responsible for the RIAA's reprehensible tactics. The Recording Industry Association of America is a group of hired guns, no more. Don't try to make them into some kind of unsung heroes ... because they're not.
Seriously, why don't you study this issue for a while, examine some of what the RIAA has done to "protect the bloody artists", check out the damage done to our legal system. Then come back and tell me that they're "just protecting their copyright." The reality is very different: they're screwing us ALL over, bigtime, in order to protect their masters revenue streams. And they're doing it by any means necessary, legal or otherwise.
Honestly, if you're a troll you're a fairly subtle one. Look, if the RIAA had stuck to suing people that had provably committed copyright infringement, using accepted and legal methods of investigation and had only asked for reasonable damages, nobody here would bother discussing the matter. Ray Beckerman would likely be spending his time on more productive work, not defending people who cannot be shown to have committed infringement yet are being destroyed anyway. But, that's not what the RIAA is all about, their activities are not legitimate, and that's a fact.
Really, clue up.