Will Obama's DOJ Intervene To Help RIAA? 546
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."
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: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.
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.
Re:Everyone needs to speak their piece on this (Score:2, Informative)
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.
What planet do you live on? That is extremely naive. "O" has already broken several promises:
* He was going to take public financing of his campaign.
* He was not going to have lobbyists working in his administration in the very departments they were lobbying.
* He was not going to write legislation behind closed doors.
* All bills were going to be posted online for a _minimum_ of 5 days before he signed them.
There are more, but my fingers are getting tired.
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.
Re:Get real (Score:3, Informative)
So you're ok with people having to pay $1200/song if they got caught downloading? You don't have a problem with the DOJ supporting overly harsh punishment?
Believe it or not the now overturned Jammie Thomas verdict was for $9250 per song file. Even the presiding judge has pointed out how ridiculous it was.
Is this a procedural issue? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's how I understand the motion. Can a lawyer comment if the DOJ's request is just standard procedure? On October 29, 2008, the Defendant (Denise Cloud) challenges the constitutionality of the statutory damages section of 17 U.S.C 504c. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.1a says that the Attorney General can intervene in any constitutional challenge within 60 days. This motion requests more time for the DOJ to study whether they should intervene beyond the 60 days. The DOJ may have 3 outcomes: They can reject the challenge. They can allow the challenge to proceed and not interfere. They can also support the challenge.
It is a new administration so we can't be sure which way they will lean. However it maybe that this administration is just more diligent and attentive than the previous administrations to this issue. The Bush administration seemed to be more focused on other legal issues.
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....
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.
Re:Paragraph(?) 7 of the motion (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are they even RIAA lawyers? (Score:3, Informative)
Cheney wasn't just an employee of Halliburton, he was on the board of directors, that means he was very strongly tied to the company and had strong interests in it. He was also a neo-con and Halliburton was a vessel for him to help push his political agenda of American strength and corporate interest worldwide. There was also some evidence that Cheney still had some ties to Halliburton whilst the government was pouring money into it.
This is why I asked about the lawyers, because there doesn't seem to be any evidence they were deeply involved in the company and it's ideas like Cheney was. If there is evidence of a strong vested interest as there was with Cheney then sure I'll view them the same way, but until then I'll remain cautious. There are still a lot of bitter Republicans willing to throw FUD left right and centre when it may well have no merit.
I'm concerned about people in power with ANY link to the RIAA, but I'm not about to decide absolutely that these people are going to push the RIAA's agenda when they don't even hold the very top post.
The RIAA had a lot of money and it stands to reason then that they'd go for people who are high up in the law circles to push their cases. It's also no suprise that people who end up in the justice department are picked from the same set- those at or near the top of their game.
It's good that this sort of thing is reported so that we can watch closely and protest the link, but it's not necessarily the end of the world that's all.
Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:those DOJ appointments were just plain stupid. (Score:3, Informative)
To be not giving them any ideas, now, eh?
Besides, I kinda doubt a presidential pardon would trump a disbarment...