Saturday, March 14, 2009

RIAA's "victim impact statement" in US v. Kogill seeks restitution + forced public service announcement

In the criminal case against a Kevin Cogill, for uploading unreleased Guns 'n Roses Tracks, the RIAA has submitted a "victim impact statement" in support of a request for restitution and an order directing the victim to participate in a "public service announcement".

In a previous criminal case, US v. Dove, the rationale of the RIAA's "victim impact statement", and with it the RIAA's restitution request, were rejected by the Court.

US v. Kogill, victim impact statement

[Ed. note. How's that for "cruel and unusual punishment"? An order directing someone to do a public service announcement for the RIAA? -R.B.]


Commentary & discussion:

p2pnent.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

8 comments:

Eric said...

The RIAA is neither the victim or a party involved in the lawsuit when it's a criminal case. They are a trade group whose stated goal is to stop people from sharing music *through any means necessary*. It would be like MADD submitting victim impact statements to every DWI case.

How is this not prejudicial to the defendant?

raybeckerman said...

Particularly coming from Mr. Linares, whose averments "under penalty of perjury" have always proved to be -- shall we say -- exaggerated.

Alter_Fritz said...

Wait a sec, Ray,
you mean Mr. Linares is still free and not behind bars?

Last I remember he stated more then only one time under penalty of perjury that he himself had oversight and all that stuff about the investigators they were using.
And as we learned in the last few weeks, something about this statement must be wrong since the plaintiffs claim that they themself were doing the work, not the 3rd party that linares claimed he was observing and had personal knowledge and control over.

Alter_Fritz is now seriously confused that Carlos Linares is still free and can write stuff in businesses he had no dealing with since RIAA is not a victim as was pointed out already!

Alter_Fritz said...

Hm, I thought "making available" is not an exclusive right in your copyright laws.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/cogillnewcharges.pdf
I'm too lazy to lookup the text of the other paragraphs mentioned in that document, but now I'm even more confused then before!

Any lawyer dare to explain?

Anonymous said...

Hey Alter_Fritz, I'll explain and I am not a lawyer.

The lawyers used by the lying, cheating, thieving RIAA are just about as low as you can get. They have created this mess that they are finding themselves in right now and it is only a matter of time before they get bit in the rear from some judge.

Anonymous said...

Sidenote fact. The IFPI (RIAA's international henchmen) successfully lobbied a law into action in Sweden that makes a person that looses against them in a civil process in court will be forced to pay for a newspaper ad with the persons picture on it saying what a horrible humanbeing that person was for filesharing...

Anonymous said...

Alter_Fritz, I am not a lawyer either but you have an excellent point.
The defendant was charged with

506 (a) (1) (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;

but not with

506 (a) (1) (C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

The penalties under 18 U.S.C 2319 are not the same for each offense.

I will not speculate as to why this may have been done, but the exclusive distribution right in 17 USC 106 (3) only covers the transfer of ownership and/or possesion of a physical copy of the work, and not the work itself. This just does not happen during an over the wire copy. The ownership and possession of each copy does not change.

just a biased observer

Alter_Fritz said...

Dodgy,
such a medieval thing they managed to get written in german copyright law too when they lobbied the allegedly corrupt politicos in germany the last few years when the german "UrhG" was "modernized".(*)


But hey, medieval punishments like pillory somebody seems to fit perfectly into the mindset of those technophobic, competition fearing dinosaurs at Warner, EMI, SonyBMG, Vivendi and their straw men at RIAA/IFPI and co.

And in germany it seems these ultra medieval dinosaurs were so rabid and had fun in making this happen that this modern day pillorying is even mentioned 2 times in the law!
(*) http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__103.html
and
http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__111.html

(But when it comes to have the proceedings before a sentencing publicly ... well, we see how much they like that one right now in Tenenbaum)