Appeals Court Says RIAA Hearing Can't Be Streamed 208
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has overturned a lower court order permitting webcast of an oral argument in an RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston. As one commentator put it, the decision gives the RIAA permission to 'cower behind the same legal system they're using to pillory innocent people.' Ironically, the appeals court's own hearing had been webcast, via an mp3 file. The court admitted that this was not an appropriate case for a 'prerogative writ' of 'mandamus,' but claimed to have authority to issue a writ of 'advisory mandamus.' The opinion came as a bit of a surprise to me because the judges appeared, during the oral argument, to have a handle on the issues. The decision gave me no such impression. From where I sit, the decision was wrong in a number of respects, among them: (a) it contradicted the plain wording of the district court rule, (b) it ignored the First Amendment implications, and (c) there is no such thing as 'advisory' mandamus or 'advisory' anything — our federal courts are specifically precluded from giving advisory opinions."
Yay, we get Soviet Show Trials now in America (Score:3, Insightful)
Can they appeal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Justic in the legal system. (Score:5, Insightful)
*In this life there is no justice, only law. In the afterlife there is justice.*
Don't remember who said it, and I probably mangled up bad enough to make it unrecognizable.
Who to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wow. (Score:1, Insightful)
Heaven forbid you'd have to do some background reading when an article came around that dealt with something complicated.
Re:No Justic in the legal system. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the after life there's no justice either, unless the atheists are right.
If they are, you're just dead, just like the rest of everyone who died, and everyone is equally dead. That's maybe the lowest form of justice, making everyone the same, but it's at least some.
If they are not, you will be judged by an arbitrary set of rules that you (most likely) did not adhere unless you just happened to guess the right religion. In other words, you will be judged by laws that you did not know you are to uphold, probably laws you did not even know about and had no way of knowing. That's justice?
Even our legal system is superior to that scam.
Re:Who to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot the obligatory "Blame Canada" !
Looks fairly reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to go against the /. groupthink, but after listening to the MP3 of the hearing and reading the opinion myself, I have to agree with the appeals court's decision. Admittedly I can't speak to the advisory mandamus issue (I'll leave that to another poster [slashdot.org]), but a common-sense reading of rule 83.3 would suggest that the court's authority to allow broadcast is indeed limited; otherwise I would expect 83.3(c) to have been written something like "A party may petition the court to permit..." or just "It is permitted to...". Given that, and since Tenenbaum's side didn't argue any higher authority (except the right to a public trial, and as the judges stated, that's not being infringed any more than in any other trial), I have to agree that the decision is fair and reasonable.
Now, I certainly don't think this is a desirable outcome. But the purpose of the courts is to enforce the rules, and if they can't enforce their own rules, that doesn't give them much moral authority to enforce others, does it? What really ought to happen--as Judge Lipez says in his (her?) concurring opinion at the end of the PDF--is for the rule to be reexamined in light of Internet technology so this sort of problem doesn't reoccur.
No incentive (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no incentive to trust a system where lawyers get more and more control of the government despite civil society no desiring such an outcome. The lawyers "make law" in courtrooms. Civil elections don't mean a thing. Most Congress men and Senators are lawyers.
The law is written by layers for lawyers everyone else be damned. Win or lose the lawyer profit. "Justice" is rigged to advantage the lawyers the rest of society be damned.
Re:Yay, we get Soviet Show Trials now in America (Score:3, Insightful)
I love the way slashdot gets more upset about a trial over music and copyright as it does over guantanomo bay.
Hint:
Gitmo is bigger threat to your liberty than whether or not kids get to take music without paying.
And what if another faction is right? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "the Christian system" and moreover there is no widespread faction of Christianity that actually has this as a pivotal part of their theology. And even if they did, they still allow for people to be judged afterwards anyway. So hair splitting aside, GP was substantially right.
And then there are all those other factions. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, all of myriads of denominations. They can't all be right. Most people are going to hell. You might as well accept that you're going to roast, and enjoy your mortal life while you can.
Re:There are more people in jail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Justic in the legal system. (Score:4, Insightful)
I shall not be ignorant, yet I must not question the Lord's abilities (Matt 4:7, Deut 6:16, or 1 Cor 10:9 if you prefer that one)? How am I supposed to learn if I cannot try?
Before you say it's not relevant and out of context, so is yours. Cor 10 preaches to people who already heard the word and is supposed to keep them from forgetting it. And again it tells the listeners that they should have faith and not test the Lord.
It's not a long way from blind faith to ignorance.
Did you even read your own link? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would love to know what "higher values" are served by closing this trial like this
The trial isn't closed. There is still a record, the courtroom is still open to members of the public, and both the trial and the result are covered by the media.
A closed proceeding is one in which access is restricted, no record is made or the record is entirely sealed, and the media has no access to any information on the matter. None of that is true here.
You vastly overstate the situation and egregiously misunderstand both the mechanics and the impact of this decision. We don't generally broadcast trials and never have. There are many reasons why we shouldn't. It is not as though all trials conducted in the past have been closed because no one has ever broadcast the entirety of the trial. I mean, really now. The very fact that you are reading and commenting on this story is proof that a public trial is ongoing.
Re:Yay, we get Soviet Show Trials now in America (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a threat to your liberty insofar as it is used against American citizens. So far it has not. Whether it will is an open question.
It is a boon to your liberty for reasons that caught me by surprise when it was first explained to me. My partner, who has done tours of duty in the middle east, explained that everyone in the world knows about Gitmo. Its mere existence persuades people to talk, even to help us.
There doesn't even have to be anybody there for it to achieve this effect. The bad press alone is what does it.
Its value as a deterrant and as an intelligence tool against people who are not in it is big, and could compete against your civic objections to it.
Re:Yay, we get Soviet Show Trials now in America (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a word for using this sort of "deterrent". That word is "terrorism".