Friday, November 14, 2008

RIAA seeks to adjourn upcoming trial in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum

In SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the case where Mr. Tenenbaum is represented by Prof. Charles Nesson and his CyberLaw class at Harvard Law School, the RIAA has asked the judge to postpone the trial.

Motion to Adjourn PreTrial Conference

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net



Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet 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 intellectual property portable music player

4 comments:

Jadeic said...

Who do they think they are kidding?

Dave

Unknown said...

I'm guessing they're hoping to postpone the trial until his law-class is over :)

Anonymous said...

My wish is that Prof. Nesson takes the RIAA and their hired thugs to school, teaches them some class and stands them in the corner.

Anonymous said...

I see this motion as fishing.

Remember, this case is about Copyright infringement that took place on a certain date in the past. My understanding is that the ONLY computer the defendant had AT THE TIME IN QUESTION was disposed of before the case was filed.

Now, the Plaintiffs want to examine 2 other computers of Defendant. My understanding is that neither of these machines were yet manufactured on the date that MS detected someone/something sharing a list of files that the Plaintiffs are suing over.

As such, this is clearly fishing. Neither of these machines existed on the date in question, so clearly will have no evidence of the shared folder and P2P software that was in use on a date prior to their manufacture. Therefore NONE of this should be allowed.

As to the Burnt CD's, they admit that the CDs in question are music CDs. Music CDs contain wav files and no metadata that can be used in any way to identify a specific copy of the music. Also, since they are music CDs, they cannot be a backup copy of the DATA files on the machines that were disposed of, so why is this needed? They are not suing for pirate CDs, they are suing for P2P file transfers on a certain date. The CDs are NOT evidence of such transfers, and therefore should not be allowed

Remember, they tell people that the evidence has already been secured. If that is the case, let them go to trial with that evidence. Of course we all know that without a hard drive exam to show the shared files and the P2P software match, and that the defendant possessed such a drive, their evidence actually cannot tie anyone to the infringement.

As for the second part, more time needed because the Defendant wants to add the RIAA as a counterdefendant, I dont think the Judge should give them this one either. Being able to file suit without any responsibility for the judgment for fees if it turns out you were wrong about a given case does not seem fair. My opinion is the RIAA should be a named party in all of these cases, since it is their lawyers who are actually doing the suing.

The RIAA attorney has been a part of this case since DAY ONE. The only thing that the Defendant wants to change is to make the corporation who is actually leading this lawsuit responsible for any actions their suit causes.

The bottom line is the RIAA, failing to be able to prove their case-in-chief, are fishing to see if they can uncover evidence, ANY evidence to go after defendant. They are hoping that if they can show defendant did something bad sometime, that they can avoid an award of fees in this case.

I hope the Judge sees thru this attempt and keeps everything on schedule for the trial.

Albert