Thursday, August 23, 2007

University of Tennessee Student Makes Motion to Quash Subpoena in Virgin v. Does 1-33

Tip of the hat to Jon Newton at p2pnet.net who brought this to my attention.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that in Virgin v. Does 1-33, the RIAA's attempt to obtain the identities of students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, "John Doe #28", a student at the University, has made a motion to quash the subpoena which has been served.

According to the News Sentinel, this is the first attempt to attack the challenge to the RIAA's discovery proceedings in Knoxville.

Knoxville News Sentinel article

Litigation documents:

Motion to Quash*
Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion to Quash*

The student is represented by Johnnie Louis Johnson III, of Memphis.

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Keywords: digital copyright online law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs




4 comments:

Unknown said...

excellent, and good luck. go vols!

AMD FanBoi said...

I notice that Doe #28 isn't attacking the previously proven weak point that the law (Cable Act of 1984) previously relied on by RIAA Plaintiffs to justify their rights to such a subpoena has been judged at least once as entirely inapplicable to college/university Internet systems.

And even if it did apply to the college/university system itself, that it does not permit release of personal information to non-governmental bodies which, much as it wishes to act otherwise, includes the RIAA.

raybeckerman said...

Hey folks I recently received this comment:
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Casper said...

Hey, I think you're awesome and everything - I just wanted to point something out, though, and I don't immediately see any other place to do so. The link you have to the Weird Al song has some cross-site scripting (javascript) from SonyBMG.com . I am no expert in such scripts, but I know what Sony likes to do to 'protect' music (rootkits!?) and I know that javascript can be abused for many, many purposes.... Just thought I would point it out to you somewhere. Keep on being awesome, and I love your blog, too, by the way!

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Can anybody tell me if I should be taking any action on it?

Alter_Fritz said...

while i'm no expert in understanding js code well, the code for http://sonybmg.com/wt/zomba/wt_zomba.js and http://sonybmg.com/wt/wt_sonybmg.js does not look as if "They" do any bad beside tracking what browser you have, screenresolution what songs you might have downloaded from one of the sonybmg sites and such data.
Remember guys, an IP address is not a person, you delete tracking cookies regularily, and to prevent that javascript code like in this case from sonybmg.com will get executed if you visit dontdownloadthissong.com there is this nice plug in for mozilla firefox named noscript
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722