Thursday, March 04, 2010

RIAA writes letter opposing Lindor's request for pre-motion conference for attorneys fees motion

In UMG Recordings v. Lindor, the RIAA has filed a letter opposing defendant's request for (a) a 'memorandum endorsed' order precluding an attorneys fee motion under the Copyright Act or , in the alternative (b) a pre-motion conference for an attorneys fees motion.

March 4, 2010, letter of Eve G. Burton to Hon. David G. Trager


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

5 comments:

derivative said...

These guys remind me of the ancient computer game of robots, where the robots' next move was utterly predictable. Sometimes you would win for awhile, sometimes you would die, but it was always up to random chance and your own skill -- there was no real skill on the part of your opponent.

Anonymous said...

I believe that the accepted practice is for journalists to add disclaimers/disclosure statements about possible conflicts of interest. My personal opinion is that serious bloggers like you should do it also. That would require you to add a prominent notice on all of your blog articles about cases in which you are counsel.

- Y0

Justin Olbrantz (Quantam) said...

"I believe that the accepted practice is for journalists to add disclaimers/disclosure statements about possible conflicts of interest. My personal opinion is that serious bloggers like you should do it also. That would require you to add a prominent notice on all of your blog articles about cases in which you are counsel."

If you look through all his posts, you'll see that unlike many of the others, he never adds editorial comments to posts about his own cases. From a statistic standpoint this seems to be a deliberate attempt to ensure there isn't a conflict of interest.

derivative said...

@anonymous:

"Conflict of interest" usually means that person A is writing something that might influence person B's behavior, so person A should disclose he is more personally involved to help person B figure what the true facts are.

So, for example, a true conflict of interest is when an investor writes opinionated coverage about a company he has just taken a position in. For Ray's terse factual writings about Lindor to affect somebody, that somebody would have to do a lot of technical reading, and would figure out Ray's involvement pretty quickly.

The concept of "conflict of interest" has been expanded by large journalistic organizations who want to pretend that they are above being bought, to the point where any poor journalist working for one of those needs to do his research to make sure he isn't the 6th cousin 3 times removed from anybody he writes about.

Even if it weren't painfully obvious to all but the most casual observer of this blog that Ray doesn't fall into either of these categories, as Justin points out, Ray has never editorialized on postings on his cases -- just printed the bare facts.

That's probably because it might be a TRUE conflict of interest to let his journalism take precedence over his lawyering for that client.

On the internet, it is caveat reader, and Ray owes no more to any of us than he has provided -- in fact, he has done a masterful job of separating the facts from the opinion.

In the real world, we have just seen in Tenenbaum what can happen when a case is just a vehicle to help propel a lawyer to higher celebrity, and Ray is correct in not falling into this trap.

So, if you are innocent, and just confused on the concept, there is no conflict of interest here. Otherwise, the only possible conflict of interest here is the anonymous RIAA troll attempting to stir up a controversy without revealing his true connections.

Anonymous said...

YO:

You say that, but I've yet to find a reader who was confused about which cases Ray works. His name being on the briefs he writes, and all. Find a real problem and come back.

jz