Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA Again In Tenenbaum 528
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Despite having had some time to get their act together, Obama's Department of Justice has filed yet another brief defending the RIAA's outlandish statutory damages theory — that someone who downloaded an mp3 with a 99-cent retail value, causing a maximum possible damages of 35 cents, is liable for from $750 to $150,000 for each such file downloaded, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions. Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for, and/or are directly connected with, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's RIAA.'"
Hope they remember that in Canada... (Score:2, Informative)
Hopefully they remember $750 to $150,000 per song when they go to court in Canada over the 300,000 songs they did not pay the artists for.
That'll be $225,000,000 to $45,000,000,000. ($225 million to $45 billion)
And since they were selling the songs, I'd suspect it should be the high end of that scale.
Re:Really? Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hope and Change, baby! (Score:5, Informative)
I like the guy, I think he's doing a fine job, but those appointments really stuck in my craw. They stank, and what we're seeing here is a prime example of why. But, I guess you gotta take the bad with the good. Let's hope the supreme court steps in.
Re:Newsflash: DOJ's Job in Litigation Against US L (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Crap (Score:3, Informative)
It's better to vote your conscience and lose than to vote for "the lesser evil" and be stuck with evil. Whenever someone says that they won't vote for a third party because they have "no chance of winning," remember that Mccain didn't either.
Re:Deep breaths here people (Score:3, Informative)
This is the President's job folks: to defend the laws passed by Congress
The requirement to defend the Constitution comes first.
Exactly, Culture20. The Constitution is our highest law, and the Supreme Court has made it clear that the 5th Amendment does not tolerate excessive 'punitive awards'.
Re:This isn't helpful (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hope and Change, baby! (Score:4, Informative)
Of course a large group of Americans would rather have no bill pass than one hashed through congress so thoroughly. Obama did the politically safe thing rather than the "right" thing.
Basically any legislation worth passing would have to be relatively uncompromising. The catch is any legislation that is uncompromising has very little chance of getting passed. If A bill doesn't pass now, I don't think it's possible for one to pass.
Re:Hope and Change, baby! (Score:5, Informative)
Leave OBAMA alone
He's our president and we'll do what we want with him, including criticize his bad acts, and praise his good ones.
Re:Money = Speech so they say (Score:5, Informative)
Hi there, I'm from Canada. You might remember us from previous political threads such as "Canada's healthcare isn't that bad." and "Dude, 1812 was almost 200 years ago. We have nukes now."
We have national funding for our political parties. In order to prevent, let's say, the "BSTFF (Beardo Should Totally get Federal Funding)" party from forming and pocketing a whack o' cash, you get a certain amount from every vote that's cast your way. I'm not going to bother looking it up, but it's about $1.50 per vote. So if you get a million votes, you'd get $1.5M. We had 13.8 million voters last election. 37%, or just over 5 million, voted for the Conservative party. (So that's about $7.5 million from Elections Canada.)
We also have campaign contributions and you can claim those on your income taxes. However, there are limits and those are enforced via jail time. Rather than cut-and-paste, here they are. [elections.ca] In short, you can only contribute $1,100 per year and companies / corporations / trade unions / etc cannot make them.
Now, this is where it gets interesting, is that we have spending limits on campaigns. Third-party limits are just under $200k total, across all electoral districts. It's just under $4k for each district. The parties themselves can spend a total of about $20 million for the bigger parties. http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/laws.html [www.sfu.ca]
That's not all. Each party has a certain amount of media time alloted to it. It works out to 396 minutes per broadcaster in total, with allocations given out based on some formula locked in Ottawa somewhere.
http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/laws.html [www.sfu.ca]
All in all, our system works out reasonably well as long as you've got people in Parliament who are willing to work together. We don't right now, so government shut itself down for 2 months.
Pay & Nominate NewYorkCountyLawyer? (Score:4, Informative)
If legally permitted (I'm Canadian) I'll donate $100 to the Democratic Party if they appoint NewYorkCountyLawyer to head up the Department of Justice. These stupid US laws/cases end up biting us here eventually; better to stop them at the source. Now if a thousand people on Slashdot do the same (and it wouldn't at all surprise me if far more would) that is $100,000.
How much did the RIAA and its minions donate? Looks like under $100K to manage to get their appointees in place. Our money should be as good or better than the RIAAs?
I want an appointee who actually works for the public, I'll put my hard money on the line to that end, and in return want NewYorkCountyLawyer as Attorney General of the United States. That is how the system works, right? Make donations, get the appointees and agendas you want?
Re:Hope and Change, baby! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with big government is that its easy to say its too big - but try and remove parts of it and you will suddenly realise that the great majority is a whole heap of actually necessary small things that add up.
This is a false dichotomy. The problem lies in the abuse of the structure of the Constitution. There is a design that accounts for the 'necessities' you're referring to: States.
Government can be big, in total. There are a lot of States, after all. But Federal government cannot, so long as it remains within the original design specification.
Re:Hope and Change, baby! (Score:5, Informative)
The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.
A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.
There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives [freestateproject.org]. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry [freestateproject.org]. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program [freestateproject.org]. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization [freestateproject.org], and, possibly, secession [freestateproject.org].
NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
Re:Newsflash: DOJ's Job in Litigation Against US L (Score:4, Informative)
Correct me if I am wrong, but the DOJ does not file a brief in every case, and does not always agree with the outcome of all cases tried in court. When the DOJ files a brief, this has nothing to do with their activities in the enforcement of the law, but rather their opinion about the judgement of the court after the fact. In this case, this was a civil suit, right? What enforcement of the "law as passed" was every required of the DOJ in this case?
None whatsoever.
Re:This isn't helpful (Score:5, Informative)
I think the problem is that the $22,750 in statutory damages for each of the 30 infringements that the court ruled to be just, could be construed as excessive.
The Court has NOT 'ruled it to be just'. The jury rendered that verdict, and the judge established a briefing schedule for the parties to submit papers on whether it was unconstitutional or otherwise excessive. The Court has yet to determine that it is just, and in my opinion will almost undoubtedly determine that it is not just, based on about 700 years of legal precedent.
Re:Summary full of errors (Score:5, Informative)
NYCL clearly has his "side". The statements in it should be considered to be nothing more than opinion, as they are, rather than statements of fact or actual precedent
True
because the courts have repeatedly explored and rejected his claims
False. The issue has never been decided in any of the RIAA cases. The only RIAA case in which it has been litigated to any extent was UMG v. Lindor, where
-the RIAA argued that it was a frivolous defense,
-I argued that it was not a frivolous defense, and
-the Judge agreed with me and rejected the RIAA's argument [blogspot.com].