RIAA Will Finally Face the Music In Court 282
Falstaff writes "Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is expected to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA today. The refiling will mark a significant watershed in the RIAA's fight against P2P users because for the first time, the group's tactics, secret agreements, and fee splitting with MediaSentry are likely to come to light, thanks to discovery. Andersen's attorney says he'll be 'digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.' The judge has barred further motions to dismiss the complaint, which means the RIAA will have to face the music. 'Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there's a real chance of embarrassing information being released. "Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run," Lybeck says. "This is our case now, and they can't run."'"
If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully she won't settle for the carrot that the RIAA would probably dangle in front of her. She has the opportunity to bring all these lawsuits to a screeching halt.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me a pessimist, but her case against the RIAA will not change their tactics because they will buy their way out of the mess.
Now, if some DA or AG were to file criminal charges against the RIAA (God knows the FBI won't), then that would change their ways... But, alas, we live in the Corporate States of America.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure we'll soon see lawyers hopping onto it, specializing in counter suits against the RIAA if they simply try to buy their way out of an embarrassing trial. It's easy money for them.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Funny)
RIAAmbluance chasers?
better name?
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Informative)
I work for an ISP, and part of my job description is dealing with abuse complaints (including DMCA complaints.) The usual modus operandi when we receive a complaint is to verify that the address was in use, verify that traffic was coming from that port, and then send the user's name back. Someone else (not me) also contacts the user.
A few weeks ago, we got a request from a user who wanted to use the network to do research (it's a college town)--specifically research related to Bit Torrent. They wanted permission to conduct this research, and assured us that they would not be engaging in copyright infringement. They had written a special client which advertises hashes of the torrent, but never sends data.
Fast forward to about a week ago--two MPAA complaints against their IP address. We could also verify that there was no way that they were sending or receiving files--their traffic usage was actually pretty small.
My assumption based upon the data is that the company who sent the DMCA notification just looks at the IP addresses that the tracker advertises is a part of the swarm. They don't bother to download and verify that the torrent is what they think that it is, and it's in-line with other debacles of the sort (remember the usher mp3 one from several years back?), as well as some anomalies we'd seen where a notification time was shortly after a person had released their DHCP lease (sometimes the trackers don't immediately notice when a user has disconnected.) I'd love to say that I'm shocked, nay horrified that they would gather evidence in this way, but frankly, it makes good business sense. Why waste the time downloading every file? Almost everyone who gets tagged has been infringing copyright--there just aren't that many 'fake' files out there. And since almost everyone is actually doing it, they'll almost all settle. Those few who do not are easily handled by simply dropping the case.
For this reason, I would expect that blacklists like Peerguardian wouldn't really work all that well. Lots of people give me anecdotal evidence when I bring this up ("Well it works for me!") but that's kinda like saying that this elephant repellant is working because there aren't any elephants on my front lawn. I know a lot of people who engage in a lot of filesharing, and none of them have ever gotten DMCA complaints. Just based upon the number I see in my job, I know that they're not sending them to very many people, in general.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
Get a million people together (shouldn't be hard if all the torrent sites make note of the campaign) to chip in $1 or $10 each to make a matching offer: "We'll pay you to take this to trial."
Even if the RIAA outbids The Internets, it's still a PR coup -- "Look at what they were willing to do in order to hide stuff..."
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why bother? If they have to cough up a wad of cash every time they are wrong, would that not be more effective?
No, it wouldn't. It would let them buy their way out of a judgment against them that establishes a precedent. Having a precedent cited in future lawsuits would be far more expensive for the RIAA and the MPAA even if the settlement amount in this case were vastly more than what a judge would award to the plaintiff in this particular case. Not to mention the skeletons that would be dragged out of closets during discovery.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Funny)
Get a million people together (shouldn't be hard if all the torrent sites make note of the campaign) to chip in $1 or $10 each to make a matching offer: "We'll pay you to take this to trial."
Even if the RIAA outbids The Internets, it's still a PR coup -- "Look at what they were willing to do in order to hide stuff..."
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean as opposed to what we have now? Oh, wait...
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Funny)
Hay (Score:3, Funny)
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Well, duh.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
It wouldn't be about selling justice to the highest bidder, it would be about offering someone who was wrongly accused and maliciously prosecuted by the RIAA an incentive to take a gamble and see justice done. If all the RIAA has to do is flash some large bills and have their legal problems go away, then justice isn't served.
The proposal to raise money to encourage the plaintiff to not settle her case and let the courts decide the matter would create a nice hedge for the plaintiff just in case the RIAA makes her a better offer than what a jury might award. It's important for this case to proceed, because without taking the RIAA to task on its methods in a case that forces it to come clean on everything, it's basically a corporate sniper, shooting down one individual after another, bamboozling courts with technobabble, and in most cases the individuals don't really have the resources to take their cases to court even if they may have been wrongly accused. Ever notice how they've been picking on mostly lower-income people, students, the elderly, young families, children, single parents-- the very folks who are the least likely to have the resources to wage a court battle and are most likely to settle whether they're guilty or not?
Airing the RIAA's dirty laundry in regards to its methodology is the only way to help individuals who are being picked-off one by one. And getting together and pooling resources in order to defend the collective of internet users who may find themselves in the RIAA's crosshairs is really our best hope of having a fighting chance to defend ourselves against false, nebulous accusations that could cost any one of us thousands of dollars whether we shared anything or not. If their methods are really that sloppy and inaccurate, nobody should assume that just because you PERSONALLY didn't share, that you're immune. I don't lose sleep over my former roommate's filesharing over my network (my house, I paid the bills for everything, and shared it under the rent), but if the RIAA's methodology isn't airtight (and it obviously isn't), I want the world to know...just in case.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
She's fair and doesn't put up with bullshit from lawyers or defendants. If she finds in favor of the RIAA, it's going to be on the basis of the law and not because of pressure on her. At the very least, she's going to be very suspicious of their arguments and have some critical things to say about them and their tactics in open court--even if they do win in the end.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00000019&cycle=2008 [opensecrets.org]
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00009638&cycle=2008 [opensecrets.org]
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Informative)
In a technical sense you're right, but that entirely ignores the political aspect.
If the DMCA passed with a veto-proof majority--and I seem to recall that it did--vetoing it will serve no practical purpose other than delaying it slightly and getting his name off it. That's nice in a "principles > all" sense, but it also weakens him as president for no gain. That means when even worse legislation comes up, with something much closer to the <66.6% support for his veto to be worthwhile, it will be that much harder to kill that bill. The opposition will rally around "let's kick him while he's down!" and the president's own party will have more trouble getting anybody to stand by or switch their votes for fear they're going to lose anyway.
None of this is to say that Clinton didn't ACTUALLY support the DMCA; he might very well have. It's simply saying that a president not vetoing a bill doesn't automatically mean he supports it. I wouldn't hold a president responsible in a situation like that where his veto does nothing anyway. (Though ironically I'd personally think better of him for doing it in the face of all those reasons not to.)
DMCA was passed on a voice vote (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, a veto proof majority would have required the cooperation of a good number of Democrats in congress.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Informative)
I also seem to remember that the DMCA being passed unanimously by both the House and the Senate before Clinton signed it into law. You want accountability for bad laws? Talk to your legislators.
My point about Judge Brown being a Clinton appointee was merely to help elucidate where she falls in the political spectrum, and you do a disservice to judges everywhere by reflecting any "sins of the father" on appointees of any President. Was Sandra Day O'Connor partially responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal because she was a Regan appointee? Is Justice Alito complacent for his role in any laws that may have been broken by the Bush administration purging thousands of emails by being a Bush appointee?
I think the answer you're looking for is no, they are not. Get some perspective, old-timer.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If a law is passed with more than a 2/3rds majority, vetoing the law is a pointless gesture of defiance and gains you nothing except a couple of weeks. A law would have to be really heinous for you to piss off Congress by defying a unanimous vote, and the DMCA just doesn't rise to that level. Besides, I think a lot of people assumed the courts would overturn it as having an unconstitutionally long term anyway. They didn't, in large part due to all the Bush Sr. and Reagan appointees on the court.
Clinton didn't give us the DMCA. The predominantly Republican legislature did. He was completely powerless to overturn the law. There's no way to know if he would have signed it had it been passed by a narrower margin. That said, I would love to see every Democrat in Congress who voted for that law sitting on the curb begging for change.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Interesting)
However, even if she's set on this, showing support from the outside will help her (and her lawyer, who I'm sure is hoping for a nice chunk of change) to reaffirm her will. If she's not completely set on it, outside support would help her see that this has effects reaching more than just the time the RIAA forced her to waste.
The best way I can think of to do this is a personal letter. Something short, personally signed, saying "You're fighting the good fight, tally ho!" and made via snail mail. Obviously, getting her home address might not be the best idea. Does anyone know a good way to go about this? Perhaps send mail to the law firm/individual representing her?
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Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Informative)
500 Island Corporate Center
7525 Southeast 24th Street
Mercer Island, Washington 98040-2336
It's a relatively small practice - two partners and a dozen attorneys all told - so I would expect that anything mailed to Tanya Anderson c/o Lory Lybeck will reach her attention.
Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:5, Insightful)
Which isn't good, if there's one thing which judges don't like it's having their cases tampered with in that manner. I'm just surprised that it's taken as long for the judges involved to start getting cranky about being used.
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:5, Informative)
Its only if they have a reasonable data retention policy already in place, and can show that the deleted or destroyed information or records were destroyed in accordance with that plan - and that they have been following that plan rigorously and not just in this one instance, that they can justify not producing the records. If for instance they have formally established and been following a records retention policy whereby they state they will destroy email records after holding them in backup for say a 5 year period (higher in some industries where its specified by law how long you must preserve those records), and have done so and thereby cannot produce records from before that period, then a judge should not hold it against them during discovery. They made a plan, stuck to it prior to entering litigation, and the court has to recognize there is a cost associated with maintaining and backing up such data that should have a logical limit when the utility of that data has been reduced by the time that has passed. If however they have not followed that policy, don't have such a policy, or give the appearance of selectively applying it to hide potentially damaging evidence, they can have it held against them (possibly with the assumption that the information in question was damaging), and they can be fined by the court. They can even have the court summarily find in favour of the prosecution. They can be fined if they cannot produce the evidence in a reasonable period of time, and will usually bear the brunt of the cost of producing those records - no matter how difficult or expensive that may be - as long as the other side can produce sufficient cause to justify the importance of that evidence to their case. Sometimes the other side can be required to pay for some of the cost of course, if its reasonable. This can be extended well beyond physical records and emails, to include IM traffic, chat logs etc, all of which an organization bears a responsibility to back up and maintain. You can even be held liable if your backups cannot be restored due to changes to technology over time - you are expected to transfer those backups to a new format, or maintain the old equipment required to restore them etc. If you failed to place backups in offsite storage and they were destroyed in a fire, thats your fault too for not taking reasonable precautions and storing the backups elsewhere. I expect a few companies are going to get bit badly in the next few years when they cannot produce backups of all the IM traffic that passed over their networks for instance - because if anything that happened during those IM sessions has any bearing on anything legal, its a record that needs to be backed up, period. If you and I discuss a business deal, and then I send you an email that just says something like "About our conversation yesterday, lets do it" and the lets do it implies a verbal agreement to pursue a business deal, that email is a legal record, same thing if we agree via IM chat
So simply removing evidence by destroying it is not necessarily of any benefit to an organization when they hit the courts. The courts can and should take a very dim view of someone who deliberately destroys damaging evidence
IANAL, but I used to work for some who dealt with records retention, discovery etc, and picked up some of the details. Its surprising how many companies and organizations do not have and do not follow a logical retention policy with regards to data (apparently about 40%
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:4, Insightful)
It is more analogous to telephone conversations. Most telephone conversations are not recorded and kept for any real length of time either (although, they *can* be, and can be used in court also). There is no expectation that IM messages would be logged, whereas it's reasonable to expect email messages to be.
However, if IM is purposely or inadvertently logged... it should certainly be discoverable.
Just my $.02
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I am not aware of any penalty for the failure to produce discovery evidence simply because a record is not kept (or even mis-filed). Often/sometimes it is a 3rd party that comes in to perform some discovery anyway.
If the company has a written policy that their IM system is not to be logged or cached (other than manual copying and pasting into a separate document, such as Word or an em
I found the "???" (Score:5, Funny)
I see...
1. Get contract to find copyright violators.
2. The "???" is: Just grab folks that may look guilty.
3. Profit!
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I'm just hoping the discovery phase of things actually find something instead of random paper shredding by the guilty.
RIAA Karma (Score:5, Funny)
Judge Says: Overrated.
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Funny +1
So... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Paul Harvey quote? (Score:2)
This will be more than interesting. I hope that they have all the legal advice and tech advice necessary to pull the fingernails off of the **AA legal team, one at a time, no pain killers.
Facing the Music (Score:5, Funny)
That alone should be suitable punishment for the stuff that they've tried to inflict on the general public.
Re:Facing the Music (Score:5, Funny)
Now, now... I don't like the RIAA one bit either, but considering the music they produce... No, I'm against torture in any form. Not even against the RIAA.
Face the music (Score:5, Funny)
Since the RIAA already owns the music, I guess this won't really frighten them much.
Re:Face the music (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not afraid!
You will be. You will be.
Re:Face the music (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Face the music (Score:4, Funny)
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Since the RIAA already owns the music, I guess this won't really frighten them much.
Where's NYCL when you need him? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but it sounds like the RIAA is going to want to settle and prevent discovery from happening since they don't want all the sordid details of their dealings brought to light.
But that makes me wonder . . . if they do in fact settle, won't this just embolden all the other lawsuit recipients to file against the RIAA too? They can settle malicious lawsuits to keep them from going to trial to their heartss content (*snicker* we know they don't have hearts), but ultimately they're going to have to either WIN a malicious prosecution suit or stop engaging in malicious suits alltogether, no?
Re:Where's NYCL when you need him? (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080313-andersen-attorney-on-riaa-suit-they-cant-run-now.html [arstechnica.com]
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IANAL, but it sounds like the RIAA is going to want to settle and prevent discovery from happening since they don't want all the sordid details of their dealings brought to light.
I would be fine with a settlement if the price they had to pay would be enough to fund EFF for a few years, and if they agreed to stop sueing willy-nilly. I have no issue if they keep going after true-infringers (because I am not one of them).
Ultimately, any funds to the EFF would serve a legal arms race against issues that are much more important than being forced to obtain music legally without infringing on somebody's copyright.
Keep Legal Filesharing Legal (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, many Open Source installers are available via BitTorrent. Their use of p2p is crucial to their success, because it reduces distribution costs.
P2P is also crucial to the success of struggling musicians who offer their music online for free, as a way to promote themselves. Direct HTTP downloads can lead to bankrupcy if their songs become sudden hits. I myself offer Bit Torrent downloads [geometricvisions.com] of my piano compositions.
(While I presently work as a software engineer, I'm studying piano with the aim of changing careers into music. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.)
In your letters to your legislators, please emphasize the legal uses of P2p.
Re:Keep Legal Filesharing Legal (Score:5, Insightful)
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And I feel very compassionate for the RIAA, so I'd love to be merciful.
Whale Song (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose it is natural. If, for some reason, all humans perished today and whales evolved to become the dominant species and have song and tale and language. If they then go on to develope technology. Will they one day sue?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Wait... birds don't sing any more? The MAFIAA must have got to them! The whales will be next, mark my words.
Also, if you count my imitative monotone grunts as "song", you're more generous than most. I don't think I'd come out too well in this poll : Who do you want to continue singing, a) Smauler, or b) a nightingale.
It ain't over... (Score:4, Funny)
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Swing that fat gut around (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll Just Change Tactics (Score:4, Insightful)
From the RIAA's perspective, this has been a wildly successful strategy because it successfully struck fear into the hearts and minds of consumers.
Re:They'll Just Change Tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Except, in this case, full discovery is not going to lead to a small win. If it is determined that they have knowingly engaged in illegal activity - and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that their investigation fits that category - then, they are in a pretty bad spot. A security company not licensed in a state can not engage in investigations in that state. That is illegal. They can not install root kits across state lines, that is illegal also. Hacking is illegal. While the RIAA can claim that they themselves did not commit these acts, it is a reasonable conclusion that they would have encountered any number of these questions in any due diligence prior to awarding security contracts. It is also reasonable that they are aware of the legal issues because of that whole Sony root-kit mess a few years back.
And lawyers who are providing legal advice how to break laws are called co-defendants, not attorneys and they do *not* have attorney-client confidentiality in conspiracy and RICO cases where they are named as co-conspirators.
The fear goes away if you know they have no evidence they can present in court.
The RIAA is a trade organization. If you can crack some of their larger members away - and that is quite possible - then the RIAA loses its ability to speak for the industry. The RIAA has not paid out a single penny from any settlement it has won. Add on a lot of punitive damages and criminal charges and the RIAA can be broken quite decisively.
Settlement should not be an option (Score:5, Interesting)
In this particular case, pursuing it to the full extent should actually REDUCE the burden on the court system by severely restricting the RIAA's ability to file new suits.
The only way I could see a settlement working in the long run is if it's equivalent to an unconditional surrender with all sorts of guilt admissions. I just can't picture the RIAA agreeing to that, and the plaintiffs should not settle for less.
THIS is the opportunity. Do not let it slip through your fingers.
They'll be facing the music? (Score:5, Funny)
PLEASE tell me it's William Hung!
Why wait for a judgement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Though there may be contracts holding them to the RIAA directly or indirectly, such contract will either become expired or after this case, be challenge-able.
misleading title (Score:4, Funny)
There, fixed that for you.
I got three words for you: (Score:2)
Or on your head, it'll sound the same due to the fact that it's made of the same stuff as the bench is. XD
Money will buy this out (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Money will buy this out (Score:4, Insightful)
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OTOH, if she tries to fight for The Greater Good or something, this might not get settled. Still
Chances (Score:4, Insightful)
But from what we have seen from this woman, well... I think it's pretty obvious that she is very pissed and she will not settle for anything less than victory in this.
If I were in this position, I would be recording every phone call and saving every e-mail. I hope they're dumb enough to try to threaten or bribe her, because she seems like the kind of person who is going to make that kind of information public and make the RIAA look much worse than they already do.
Lawyer just filed the suit (Score:3, Informative)
Do not count all your chickens... (Score:3, Interesting)
They still have a lot of money and I would not put it past them to make sure their little cartel stays in good order. They have more average Americans, and even most artists to fleece!
ITS ON (Score:3, Funny)
Victory Means Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
RIAA is a front organization. It is just a way the record companies to use to interface with the legal attack dogs. They have no real assets to give up. They pass all their ill gotten gains back to their masters.
If there is a serious legal setback, then RIAA just dissolves, and comes back tomorrow under another name. The legal pit bulls, and the record companies who control all this carnage will remain untouched. To really make it stop, you need to have the courts pierce the 'corporate veil' to make the operators responsible.
The whole mess only stops when the individual record companies who are sponsoring this blatant attack on their own customers are financially penalized.
Sending a few lawyers and CEO's to prison would also help. But, that isn't going to happen.
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Secondly, I'm cheering because I don't want to be the target of "illegal p2p" because I download the latest version of Linux. There be legal p2p as well as pirates me matey...
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Actually, a friend of mine was in a band and had their CD done at a professional studio. It cost them a ton of coin to produce it on their own. Even selling every copy they had pressed they just broke even on making it. So, they lost money when you took into account the gas money for trucking them around. And that was selling them at 15 bucks a pop.
Then again, if you own the studio I'm sure you get much lower rates.
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Also, I'd wager that the studio's a one time fee. Pressings are cheap once all the mastering is done; so the more distribution you get, the easier it is to break even.
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I'll pay fifteen bucks for a CD, no problem. But if someone copies that CD instead of buying it that's only fifteen bucks, not 9,000 times however many tracks are on the CD, which is what the RIAA is demanding. They're better off shoplifting it: the fines are unlikely to be more than a few hundred dollars.
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Then, being the good little net-citizen we all hope they are, they share it with the rest of the fsking planet and 100,000 people download it from them and sources obtained from them.
$1,500,015 is the total then. Right?
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, what does it matter if we have committed copyright infringement? We are still a member of society who has an interest in seeing the innocent not being railroaded by the Music Industry. We still have an interest in stopping the Music Industry from illegally violating our rights, hacking into our computers (Federal crime by the way, much worse than copyright infringement), and extorting people for large sums of money.
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not people here illegally download and share copyrighted music isn't the issue. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that most Slashdotters don't file baseless lawsuits against random people who are unprepared to defend themselves from the full force of a massive corporation's legal department realizing most will capitulate and just settle regardless of any wrongdoing as a tragically misguided attempt to strike fear into the heart of someone who gets the latest Britney Spears release from bittorrent.
Big companies are abusing the legal system due to circumstances brought about by new technologies and the Internet. Meanwhile real (and innocent) people are having their lives and livlihoods ruined in the crossfire. So yes, we care a lot about that.
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Hey, if you go to an obscure enough definition, it actually fits humorously well!
Speak for yourself, Kemosabe. (Score:2)
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That is the definition of stealing music.
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All m'alls eyes are bleeding from reading that.
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:5, Funny)
Come now, it's simple, really:
y'all - singular subject or object. "Y'all bring a truck?" = "Good sir, did you bring your cargo vehicle?"
y'alls - singular possessive. "Is that y'alls truck?" = "Does this vehicle belong to you, my good man?"
all y'all - plural subject or object. "All y'all git yer guns?" = "Gentlemen, did each of you bring a sidearm?"
all y'alls - plural possessive. "Are all y'alls guns in the truck?" = "Sirs, are your firearms all stowed in the vehicle?"
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I also want to inform you that a slander lawsuit is on its way. Hey, what, it's the new fad to sue randomly for trivialities! I'm just hopping on the bandwagon!
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Trust me, ignorant idiots exist across the world. There's no lock in the southern states for THAT...
On-topic, while I'm not expecting it, I'd LOVE to see if Congress might have a hearing or two after this case is over...
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