Saturday, March 14, 2009

RIAA lawyers admit they "could not confirm" whether 1st Circuit Judicial Council had acted in response to Judicial Conference suggestion

In SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the RIAA's supplemental brief to the First Circuit Court of Appeals represents that the RIAA lawyers "could not confirm" whether the 1st Circuit Judicial Council had acted or not, and therefore did not address the issue at all in the lower court.

RIAA supplemental brief

[Ed. note: This would seem to be reason enough in and of itself to deny the RIAA's petition. The fact that they had not even told Judge Gertner of the existence of the resolution negates any possibility that Judge Gertner was acting outside of her discretion in failing to enforce it. And the fact that the RIAA lawyers couldn't "confirm" the resolution pretty well "confirms" Tenenbaum's argument that the legally prerequisite public notice had not been given, thus invalidating the "resolution". These damning admissions render even more bizarre the RIAA lawyers' refusal to present to Judge Gertner the information and arguments they should have made in the first place, had they been acting competently, and were the resolution lawfully enacted. -R.B.]

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:

Alter_Fritz said...

<shameless Anti-RIAA plug>
While we wait for the ability to hear the oral argument, how about listening to some great "RIAA-safe" music in the meantime?

http://sites.google.com/site/sxsw2009torrent/

Thanks to Ernesto of Torrentfreak for the reminder
</shameless Anti-RIAA plug>

raybeckerman said...

Comment rejected because it misunderstood the facts.

Everyone knows now about the 1996 Judicial Council "resolution".

That's because the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals brought it to everyone's attention.

At the time of the briefing of the motion in the lower court, however, neither the RIAA, nor Prof. Nesson, nor the amici, nor Judge Gertner, knew about it... apparently because it was never publicly vetted and posted as required by law.

DreadWingKnight said...

Question:

If the public vetting and posting is required by law and was not done, does that (at least potentially) make the resolution invalid?

raybeckerman said...

I believe it does render it invalid.