RIAA’s black days between class actions and noteworthy witnesses
That the legal crusade of USA recording companies against P2P haven’t obtained any practical result until now is an hardly refutable matter of fact. If this wouldn’t be enough RIAA, the well-known labels organization and the most active in the harsh defense of copyright at the cost of repeatedly charging the dead and innocent people, will soon have to face daunting judicial adventures, potentially able to bury the massive lawsuits campaign under accusations of unconstitutionality, conspiracy, abuses, fraud and more.
The assault to the majors legal redoubt starts from Boston, where the Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum has been sued with the indictment of having downloaded “at least” seven audio tracks and shared 816 tracks on the P2P network KaZaA/FastTrack in 2004. The 24-years-old young man has offered 500 dollars to the majors for an extrajudicial agreement, but RIAA has rejected the offer demanding at least 12,000 dollars as a compensation of the alleged damage suffered for the copyright infringement on the above said tracks.
The affair has turned pretty interesting when Tenenbaum has been granted with the defense from Charles Nesson, a nearly legendary Harvard Law School professor that founded among the other things the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Nesson’s biography includes his involvement in several cases before the USA Supreme Court, in the scandal following the leak of the so-called Pentagon Papers, in 1971, and his involvement in the case that inspired the movie A Civil Action starring John Travolta.
Joel Tenenbaum is only one of the many, unlucky victims of RIAA appeared in court with no lawyer on his side, but he couldn’t get a bet luckiest than the Nesson involvement: the law professor intends to demonstrate in front of the court that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act approved in 1999 is unconstitutional, because it lets RIAA and other private organizations to enforce a criminal law in civil lawsuits. If this wouldn’t be enough, Nesson states that the majors have abused the legal process to intimidate the alleged culprits with the prospect of long and costly lawsuits, effectively turning the courts in “low-grade collection agencies“.
RIAA has replied to Nesson’s accusations through the spokeswoman Cara Duckworth, who strengthens the principle for which the majors legal persecution is a fair response to the multi-billionaire losses theoretically suffered due to the unauthorized file sharing. “What should be clear is that illegally downloading and distributing music comes with many risks and is not an anonymous activity“, Duckworth menacingly growls.
All of the majors’ boldness has however vanished when in the case SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum Nesson has brought into play a witnesses list that is outstanding to say the least: called upon the demonstration of the law misuse by RIAA there will be remarkable names like Lawrence Lessing, author of the seminal work Free Culture, John Perry Barlow, former member of the band The Grateful Dead and co-founder of no less than the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Scientific Director of the European Community P2P project P2P Next Johan Pouwelse and other great names of the academy.
RIAA will have now to face a formation virtually able to tear down any mere wish of legal reprisal against Joel Tenenbaum’s sharing habits and, if Nesson’s accusations were accepted by the judge and the jury, able to stop once and for all the Holy Crusade of the recording labels against P2P in the States and not only there. As a corroboration of the fundamental importance of the case, RIAA’s first reaction has been fear: the organization has demanded and obtained the adjournment of the trial from the scheduled date of December 1st to March 30, 2009.
The other great boulder threatening to fall upon the heads of recording industry execs is the second class action started against the labels, which follows the one already set up by Tanya Andersen after her historic victory in the Andersen v. Atlantic case. The location shifts from Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri, where the defendant of the Atlantic Recording v. Raleigh case has counterclaimed against RIAA for violations of the federal law Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), fraud, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, conspiracy and more.
In this case too, as like as in the Tanya Andersen one the indicted is the recording companies tactics to sue innocent people and ask for exaggerated compensations. The class action involves any US citizen that have been “falsely accused” of illegal downloading and sharing (and the list isn’t short), have had to deal with legal fees trying to defend him or herself from such accusations and have had the computer violated “without permission or authority” by the majors inquirers.
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