Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online 315
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The entire transcript of the RIAA's 'perfect storm,' its first and only trial, which resulted in a $222,000 verdict in a case involving 24 MP3's having a retail value of $23.76, is now available online. After over a year of trying, we have finally obtained the transcript of the Duluth, Minnesota, jury trial which took place October 2, 2007, to October 4, 2007, in Capitol Records v. Thomas. Its 643 pages represent a treasure trove for (a) lawyers representing defendants in other RIAA cases, (b) technologists anxious to see how a MediaSentry investigator and the RIAA's expert witness combined to convince the jurors that the RIAA had proved its case, and (c) anybody interested in finding out about such things as the early-morning October 4th argument in which the RIAA lawyer convinced the judge to make the mistake which forced him to eventually vacate the jury's verdict, and the testimony of SONY BMG's Jennifer Pariser in which she 'misspoke' according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing.' The transcript was a gift from the 'Joel Fights Back Against RIAA' team defending SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston, Massachusetts. I have the transcript in 3 segments: October 2nd (278 pages(PDF), October 3rd (263 pages)(PDF), and October 4th (100 pages)(PDF)."
Like anybody on /. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Like anybody on /. (Score:5, Insightful)
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i see. well, it's not me. i've just started noticing his/her posts recently.
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As noted there was a guy who self-pwned himself once like that recently by not posting anon-when he replied to himself with a really racist comment.
I remember it well. But if you're talking about the one I think you are I gotta say that the troll(like all good ones) don't resort to sockpuppetry, they simply tack onto somebody else's previous post a seamless(okay, not always "seamless") transition into a non-sequiteur troll.
/. user is a good example of that type of setu
YMMV, but the only people who seem to reply to themselves here are Twitter and non-trolls who need a one-time AC sockpuppet to help set up their usually-sterile jokes. The "new_here"
Cue - no, Clue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue the DMCA takedown notice in 5, 4, 3... ;)
Thanks, NYCL. I hope that making this transcript available does something to help make the **AA strategists have to adjust to this "new" internet technology in a way more beneficent to all, instead of just trying to sue the pants off anyone who they think might have crossed their rather arbitrary lines...
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes
http://www.pawb.uscourts.gov/pdfs/transcripts.pdf [uscourts.gov]
While the states can not copyright some things
http://www.wfsu.org/gavel2gavel/briefs/01-897_report.pdf [wfsu.org]
They can allow turd parties to gouge like the RIAA.
http://www.sbscpublicaccess.org/transcripts.php [sbscpublicaccess.org]
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:5, Informative)
the transcript is public domain. as such, it should be easily available from any law clerk at the courthouse unless the judge orders the court case closed. now the RIAA could file a motion to close the court proceedings - but they would have to have a decent argument as to why that is necessary.
I wonder if this came out now because the RIAA decided to stop suing individuals and work via the ISPs.
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The leads us back to a story earlier about the attempts to broadcast the RIAA trial coming up (ongoing??). I do not remember the details, but the basics is that the RIAA claims that they want to educate consumers, while at the same time a group of lawyers for the defendants wants to broadcast the trial and the RIAA is trying to stop them. The defendants lawyers are claiming that broadcasting the trial would be education on the legalities of downloading music...
Sort of a catch 22 there...
Re:Cue - no, Clue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. The RIAA is like:
* We need new laws to make this illegal, hey Congress, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ahh, the problem is public perception.. we need to vilify file sharing. Marketing moguls, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ok, well maybe we can just scare people into our way of thinking. Lawyers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Maybe we can use impossible technology to force everyone into forgetting how to copy. Cryptographers, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Ok, how about just crazy ass rootkit technology? That's doable. Hey Sony scumbags, can you hook us up? DENIED.
* Boy oh boy, this is harder than making water not wet, we need an international conspiracy of ISPs to give us unaccounted power over all their customers. PENDING.
What other crazy schemes will they come up with?
* Maybe they'll start putting poison in cases of blank media (cause they obviously have this stupid idea that people still burn the music they download - look at the tax on blank media in Canada).
* What ever happened to that lawsuit against Apple? Are they making so much money from the iTunes store that they've forgotten their water tight argument that an 80 gig iPod would take $79,200 to fill? I guess math never was their strong suite.
* Direct hacking attacks on file sharers? They have your IP, I wouldn't put it past them.
* What about voodoo? That shit works right? We just need everyone in the world to submit some of their hair or skin so the witch doctor can make a voodoo doll, then we can jab em whenever they share files.. how will we know when they share files? EVERYONE shares files, we just have to jab everyone equally, that's easy!
Ok, now I'm just being silly.
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79.2K to fill an 80gig ipod? I thought they sued people for that much per song...
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They worked out each song cost about $3 and each song goes for about 3 minutes, and the typical compression is about 1mb/minute. Most of that is still accurate, except the price, so divide by 3. Still, no-one is spending $24k to fill their 80 gig iPod. I believe Apple's solution to this was to say "hey, you can use it for video too!!" and that just invited the MPAA to join the party.
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Actually, Apple quotes an 80Gig iPod as holding 24,000 songs. At iTunes' price of about $1/song, that is slightly less than $2
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The RIAA complaint about the iPod was before iTunes.. or at least that was my recollection. They estimated the cost of the songs from the cost of CDs.. and, of course, they did it poorly.. saying that people would pay $15 for a CD and only take 5 songs off each CD. Few $15 CDs have 15 tracks on them.. so you're not likely to reduce the cost per song down to less than $1 each.. so saying you're going to rip your CDs instead of using the iTunes store doesn't reduce that $24k to fill an 80 gig iPod. And yea
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The raw text of the transcript may be in the public domain, but the header, footer, line and page numbers may not be (I believe this was the reasoning in Oregon I think, for them asking some site to take down the listing of state laws, it might be somewhere else).
And yes, this is part of the set of things that are so ridiculous, they must be true.
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Cue the DMCA takedown notice in 5, 4, 3... ;)
the transcript is public domain. as such, it should be easily available from any law clerk at the courthouse unless the judge orders the court case closed. now the RIAA could file a motion to close the court proceedings - but they would have to have a decent argument as to why that is necessary.
My, you say that as if they would still not go ahead and file a DMCA takedown notice anyway, and later just say 'oops, our bad' instead of taking them to court.
It would cause some aggravation, and piss off the website owners, for next to no cost (lawyers on staff anyway), so why not?
That is their thinking.
As all of their other court cases except this one show, not having a case at all is no reason not to move forward with one.
I second the motion. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am also going to take a little time this holiday season to go donate a few bucks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org).
Please help support all of these people, without whom we would all be royally screwed by now.
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That's really awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Informative)
If one assumes that all the music on my computer is stuff that the RIAA can sue over(some isn't, not sure the %), and ignores that some of the stuff that I have comes from legal purchases and my own rips(some, but not all that much to be honest), and if one uses the $9,250 per song figure from the summary:
My computer has a value of approximately $207,900,000.
For perspective, the current price of gold is $871.20 USD per troy oz. Alternatively, about $28,000 per kilogram of gold.
$207,900,000 / $28,000/kg = 7425 kg of gold
A Ford F150 truck comes in with a weight of 2,197kg.
My computer is worth almost as much as three and a half Ford F150 trucks made of solid gold
You're right Adult film producer... I feel rich, powerful! Excuse me, I'm going to go buy a bigger basement and a new family now.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Funny)
If you hadn't compared that to a car of some kind, i would have been totally lost.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Funny)
I would have preferred how much money it's worth in regards to Libraries of Congress but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Funny)
I would have preferred how much money it's worth in regards to Libraries of Congress but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.
Libraries of Congress is something the Slashdot crowd is familiar with as we tend to deal with data storage. However, this measurement isn't appropriate when dealing with volumes of gold. Those who deal with financial issues on a more frequent basis know that the correct U.S. Government equivalency metric for gold is Fort Knoxes.
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0.177806631% of a Fort Knox.
Sorry, you aren't THAT rich.
Re:That's really awesome (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a flaw in your math. You stated that you would have 3.5 trucks made of solid gold. You failed to account for the difference in density between steel/aluminum/plastic and solid gold. Just for the sake of simplicity we'll say that the density of the materials in a Ford F150 average out to a little less than the density of steel. Conveniently this works out to right around 1 cubic meter of solid material. A cubic meter of solid gold weighs 19,300Kg, so you would be looking at only about 1/3 of a truck.
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You should try to get a mortgage with your music collection as collateral.
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I think that is a bit over the top, millions. A 1TB drive, will be about 930GB when formatted. That is 930.000MB. Say your average MP3/AAC is 5MB and costs about 1 dollar, you could stuff 186.000 dollars worth of music on it. Still a lot though.
Question: Can you insure a harddrive based on the price/value of it content?
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The point is to use the $9,250 figure that the RIAA uses to sue so your 186.000 dollars of MP3's would get you sued for 1,720,500,000. One harddrive worth almost 2 billion, so cute 3
Re:That's really awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Just think... The computer that you're using might be worth a million dollars, maybe 20 millions dollars if you download a lot of music.
Don't be modest, at "a lot of music" like say 1000 CDs * 15 songs and $10000/song as in this case you're ranked 178th on countries by GDP ahead of "Kiribati" and "São Tomé and Príncipe". Is it really any wonder this sort of thing threatens the world economy?
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The computer that you're using might be worth a million dollars, maybe 20 millions dollars if you download a lot of music
At $9,250 per song, I have the feeling there are people out there whose computers would be worth far more than 20 mil.
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dam i'm only at 136mil.
Well, fire up that P2P and get crackin'!
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Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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What is this "woman" thing you speak of?
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is this "woman" thing you speak of?
Oh, come on, you know them. They look nice, they are generally flat and sometimes folded in the middle.
To Mr Beckerman (Score:2, Funny)
Dear Mr Beckerman,
This trial transcirpt is an absolutely fascinating resource. As a lawyer myself, it provides me with plenty of things to think about.
I was simply hoping to ask you what you think of the Plaintiffs' lawyers. In England (where I practise) there is no concept of lawyers (or barristers, anyway) identifying with the case they seek to advance. On Slashdot, I have seen your disregard, to put it mildy, for the lawyers representing the RIAA.
My questions are these. To what extent do you think that t
Re:To Mr Beckerman (Score:5, Informative)
To what extent do you think that the RIAA's representatives believe the case that they advance?
I don't know.
To what extent do you think that matters?
I think it matters.
Do you think that they are bad people
Yes.
or poor counsel for advancing that case?
Yes that too. I think they are a disgrace to my profession.
And then on a different tack, when one is dealing with litigants in person in a case that might have national repercussions, how can one deal effectively with those defendants if you have no confidence in their willingness to abide by confidentiality agreements and every fear that they will post the details on the internet?
I have no idea what you are referring to.
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I'm replying here since I know you'll probably get an email alert. Please provide this kind of stuff in text or xhtml format excepting for the rare case where absolute positioning of elements is required. I find pdf format really annoying to deal with since it's hard to manipulate/search/sort/etc using standard tools. Thanks. S
Sorry. It was the decision of the federal court system, not my decision, to adopt *pdf as the format.
Anyone RTFA? (Score:5, Funny)
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Its way too long for me. Can someone sumarize please using the medium of dance.
Yes. [bash.org]
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From reading the opening arguments and some of the first witness, the prosecution attempts to make the case that an IP address, MAC address, a consistent username, and a specific taste in music identifies a single person. The defense tries to make the case that they don't. There's more on both sides, but I'd rather not dress up as a member of the Geek Squad and tango while I replace a hard drive.
Re:Anyone RTFA? (Score:5, Funny)
Its way too long for me. Can someone sumarize please using the medium of dance.
Sure!
Basically, the RIAA said: You are a pirate! [youtube.com]
the "copyright infringement is stealing" argument (Score:5, Interesting)
This includes commercials which are screened just before your favorite movie and printed ads in mainstream newspapers (which says "Piracy is stealing").
I have explained my son that this is a lie, because "piracy" and stealing are two different concepts, but many thousands of peruvians don't know this difference.
did I mention that the "Piracy is stealing" commercial showed before movies had the MPAA logo at the end?
Re:the "copyright infringement is stealing" argume (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just you, the rest of the world is also subjected to this bullshit.
"Disingenuous" is what some people call it. I think that's too polite.
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The worst is when I pay for a DVD and am forced to watch this shit. I'm talking about the 1-minute "piracy is stealing" commercials which play at the start of the disc, and cannot be skipped due to DRM.
It is offensive to me, to think that I have paid good money for this, only to be forced to listen to this shit every time I watch my movie. The pirated discs don't have this defect.
Re:the "copyright infringement is stealing" argume (Score:4, Interesting)
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He sneaks into the theater, you insensitive clod! (Paying the theater by means of buying concessions instead.) ;-D
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I heard stories that they don't even show these in Sweden anymore since Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party have succeeded in making everyone just laugh at them. Can someone confirm?
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Is it okay if your camcorder recording includes the anti-piracy notice?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4 [youtube.com]
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commercials which are screened just before your favorite movie
Oh man, nothing shits me more (well, that's not completely utterly true) than buying a DVD, slotting into my player and having to sit through a minute long "You would not steal a handbag, you would not steal a car..." spammercial. How about this, I bought the fucking DVD, doesn't that mean I am NOT a target audience for spamming me with this ad that I can't skip, can't fast forward through and generally does nothing apart from pissing me off?
A small light int he darkness though, I recently worked out t
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And that goes back to one of the premises that pirates (me included) use to download whatever we like.
Pirate products are usually better quality, less malware and user harassment, and cheaper to boot. Why pay for worse quality when free is better quality?
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They do it here in america too, and the stupidest part is they come to the conclusion:
"Buying pirated movies is stealing"
Uh, no. Not only are pirated movies not stolen, but buying black market goods is not stealing either. Sure, it might be illegal, and sure, the cops can confiscate it w/ out compensation, but last I checked it's not stealing.
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Here in Korea, they go one step beyond that. "Loaning a disk to a friend is stealing." People at work probably think I'm stealing since I install my own OS and Free software.
I also download music at work. Shock! It's legal because it's CC'ed ( Jamendo [jamendo.com]). When I tried to help a coworker out with some teaching material, she said she needed a license for it. I tried to point out the author's license allowed non-commercial use, but she refused to believe it.
They have these giant publicity campaigns but don't both
Document Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Mirror [pikhost.com] of the files. My webhost claims I have unlimited bandwidth.. :-)
file share (Score:5, Funny)
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Wonder what they would have to say if I started seeding this on a bit torrent client.
Nothing. Court records are not subject to copyright (Westlaw and their ilk aside).
Let me guess on the whole jury convincing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the technical knowledge of your average joe...
media sentry guy and expert witness come in and bandy about as much technical jargon as possible while connecting it with vicious invective to nefarious terms like "theft".
defense asks them questions, which they answer in the same language, which may as well be fluent korean to the jurors.
In the end, jurors make decision based on the repeated misinformation from the media of the past 10 years equating downloading to theft, which was repeated amongst the foreign language the "witnesses" happened to be speaking.
The end.
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.
Let us say that the files in dispute were downloads from the net - something that no one ever really disputed - downloads that weren't purchased through iTunes or any other legitimate source
- and that the jury wasn't buying the argument that she was not the responsible party.
She was the head of household. It was her account with the ISP. Her P2P nickname. Her machine.
That
This just says it all: (Score:5, Informative)
I rest my case.
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I'm surprised they didn't challenge them on misrepresentation.
If any of those companies are from delaware i'll eat my hat, and my dram chips.
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Lots of companies incorporate in Delaware because their laws are sweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_corporation
http://corp.delaware.gov/faqs.shtml#numcorps
Also, see the question right below.
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Why did this take a year? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why did this take a year? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought court proceedings were public records -- why did it take a year for the transcript to be available?
1. The transcripts aren't free. I think this one cost around $2500.
2. For awhile the court reporter was on maternity leave. I don't know about other delays.
3. This was a gift from the Joel Fights Back" [facebook.com] legal team. If they hadn't gotten me one, I don't know if I'd ever have seen it, because the RIAA lawyers do not have the courtesy to share transcripts with their adversaries.
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1. The transcripts aren't free. I think this one cost around $2500.
You must have missed the irony and analogy here. An electronic court transcript is just a bunch of bits on a hard drive somewhere, whose creation price has been (arbitarily) set at $2500. Since the electronic document is now in the ether of the Internet, no one will ever again pay $2500 for it, they will pay $0. Does this remind you of anything?
Of course this isn't actually a good example, because the creation cost (the court reporter's time and equipment) is probably already paid for by the time the tra
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the court reporter sells those. they get paid per page or something like that as far as i know.
so since "RIAA-Richard" is not a nice man, he did not provided nycl with a courtesy copy back those days.
Oh, ianl so better trust nycl then me on that one
--
A_F
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the court reporter sells those. they get paid per page or something like that as far as i know. so since "RIAA-Richard" is not a nice man, he did not provided nycl with a courtesy copy back those days. Oh, ianl so better trust nycl then me on that one
You got it right.
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Personally, I would be happy to punch out that many pages in a year.
The Key Is... (Score:2)
A catchy name for the Duluth jurors and/or decision might also help. I hate to label them "The Doughheads From Duluth", but if it helps prevent a similar miscarriage of justice...
"when she testified under oath... (Score:2)
...that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing'."
That one baffled me. I am neither a lawyer nor an American. However, I would assume that a witness' opinion of the legality of a given action is completely irrelevant. Establishing the legality of a given action is a task for the court, not a task for the witness.
So why was a witness asked about the legality of copying a CD?
And why was she breaking her oath (as NYCL is somehow implying) when she did not know the correct answer?
Re:"when she testified under oath... (Score:5, Informative)
"when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing'."
That one baffled me. I am neither a lawyer nor an American. However, I would assume that a witness' opinion of the legality of a given action is completely irrelevant. Establishing the legality of a given action is a task for the court, not a task for the witness.
Agreed.
So why was a witness asked about the legality of copying a CD?
Beats me.
And why was she breaking her oath (as NYCL is somehow implying) when she did not know the correct answer?
She knew the correct answer. She was deliberately misstating the law in order to improperly inflame the jury against Ms. Thomas, convincing the jurors that even had Ms. Thomas done nothing but copy some CD's onto her hard drive, that in and of itself was a copyright infringement.
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Sorry to play the devil's advocate, but was that wrong of her, even if she was deliberately lying?
Given that we have witnesses to establish facts, not legality, does a witness commit perjury when she lies about legality?
If this wa
Re:"when she testified under oath... (Score:4, Informative)
Ms. Pariser is a lawyer and therefore an officer of the court even when she acts as a witness rather than as counsel for a party. Knowing misrepresentation of the law by an officer of the court is unethical and a potential cause for disciplinary action.
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witness commit perjury when she lies about legality
*ahem*
Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
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There does admitedly appear to be some wiggle room within the "the whole truth" thing, which is to say you are only required to completely answer the question put to you as opposed to telling truths you know but haven't been asked, but lying under oath is still illegal as far as I know no matter
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Violating copyright is (in the US) breaking some type of law (because you're not allowed to do it). It's however not stealing. It would be like arresting somebody that's speeding for "theft of speed" or something like that. Theft is making somebody else goods disappear, depriving somebody else from a tangible object or the use of a non-tangible object. When you're breaking copyright, every/anybody you 'stole' it from can still 'use' their own copy so they're not deprived of anything but a small (if any) par
Because they say it is. (Score:2)
Short of a revolution in the US or a major civil Rights movement on the part of consumers where millions of people march in protest of IP laws on the corporate headquarters of these IP giants and the capitol, I don't see any changes coming from this. The current generation of USians lacks the motivation for any sort of anti-monopoly revolution. If real change were to occur, it would take at least a vietnam level uprising against US IP policy.
The problem is that IP Policy is very nebulous and difficult to un
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has never really been the freedom loving nation it aspires. when it started, it had slavery, when that ended there was an apartheid of Blacks, after that there were constant conflicts over religion internally. (In fact, religion has caused the US Public school system to be torn apart.) The list goes on. The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination. The whole secularism and tolerance thing has been around only since the early 70s.
You can't really have a true open and transparent democracy when such a huge percentage believe in a Monarchical Autocratic universe. The last 8 years, the US presidency has boiled down to "Jesus wants me to be president." My significant other has been told "Jesus wants Christians to run Windows", and "Linux is a Demonic Operating system". So telling the public "Jesus says making copies of music is wrong." and they will believe it. Because thats just the way the USA is.
Re:Because they say it is. (Score:5, Interesting)
The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination.
Racism and sexism are smokescreens for the US's blatant classism. And it's far from Christian; the national religion is the worship of money. You won't find Bibles in any public school I know of, and students have been disciplined for even talking about religion. The Constitution itself states that the government cannot institute a national religion. We were founded as a secular nation.
Our national god is the god of mammon. We worship green pieces of paper. Hell, the mammon-worshipers are so afraid of Jesus they no longer even use the word "Christmas" in advertising. "Holoday tree?" What other holiday (outside Druidism) has a tree? Do they call it a "Holiday Menorah?"
We're heading into a depression because the high priests of finance are greedy morons.
As to racism, nobody would object to Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey moving in next door to them. It's the crack smoking gang bangers that they don't want moving in. Their color has nothing to do with it; what it has to do with is the fact that they're poor violent thieves. Most anybody would object to blue eyed Billy Bob Meth guy just as vehemently. It isn't a matter of race, it's a matter of class.
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why do Americans allow their Democracy to be defined by Corporations that have their own interests, and not the nation's, at heart?
Because, Corporations are loaded with money with which to buy COngresscritters. You, living on social security, do NOT have the same amount of money to buy a congresscritter. Today's rate of a congresscritter is about $2,000,000 excluding "sponsored" educational trips to Swiss Alps and Carribean.
Why does anyone who tries to exercise that right get put in gaol or executed?
Because it upsets the status quo dumbass. If you start questioning and succeed, others will rise, and ultimately the corporations will be overthrown leading to rule "by the people", "of the people". Something that n
MAC address (Score:2, Informative)
I'm hardly an expert but, I have been reading the pdf's a bit from the beginning and so far one glaring problem I see is that the MAC address referred to in the opening statements was the MAC of the cable modem and nobody had the MAC address of the actual computer.
I shall keep reading now. I suggest anyone that may be sharing copyrighted material also read it. The more you know the better off you will be if the RIAA ever comes knocking on your door.
Thanks again Ray! great stuff!
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Of course. Why would it be otherwise?
On the other hand, one of the big criticisms of the RIAA cases (and a good reason to secure your wifi) is the fact that it's irrelevant to them who actually committed the infringement. They just get the guy paying for the 'net access.
So you can cost somebody >$4000 by hopping on their WiFi and torrenting a few songs. Sucks.
Audio Book Format (Score:4, Funny)
Would anyone care to make an audio book out of this?
I'm curious about the content (I like learning how things work), but don't want to wade through that many pages. On the other hand, if I could listen to it in the background while I'm doing something else ...
Any thoughts about technical testimony? (Score:4, Interesting)
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No. It's fine to fine the defendant $221,976.24 for willfully breaking the law. If you don't believe the law is ethical, there are proper channels to go through in order to change it.
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Read the post I replied to. The OP didn't say the fine was justified because it was against the law, he said it was justified because of a statement made by the defendant:
"The reason why she got slammed with such high levels for each instance of infringement is because she tried to make the jurors feel stupid"
If you don't believe the law is ethical, there are proper channels to go through in order to change it.
That's irrelevant - that doesn't mean that such people should be fined excessively more for what t
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My point was that there is nothing wrong with punishing people who willfully break the law with greater fines than people who accidentally break the law or break the law while not aware of the intricacies.
I think that's what the OP is getting at, too- they hit her with such high fines because they thought that she was willfully breaking the law, knew it, and was trying to slide past.
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Honestly, it's like fining someone $10,000 for jaywalking or a speeding ticket because they say it isn't wrong, Totally cruel and unusual.
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Legitimate channels like Jury nullification [wikipedia.org].
Posting anonymously so that I don't get booted off any jury I get picked for. If they find out you know about jury nullification, they don't want you on the jury! If I'm ever on a file-sharing jury, I will refuse to convict, and do everything in my power to convince my fellow jurors of the same.
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I cant seem to find out what finally happened after the verdict -- did she (Thomas) have to pay up the $222,000.00 ?
Nothing happened with it. It was set aside [blogspot.com]. A new trial is scheduled for March 9th.
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Ray,
In another part of this thread it was (humorously, perhaps?) suggested to make an audiobook of these transcripts [slashdot.org].
I took this suggestion seriously and elevated it to a platform [librivox.org] which it would be more appropriate for here [slashdot.org]. This site hosts audiobooks that are read of public domain manuscripts and released into the world. If support is gathered through the discussion to the "suggestion" that I posted, it would be a matter of time before we could do a proper production of the Recording Industry versus
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