July 2009

The RIAA warriors are suing another kid for file sharing. Joel Tenenbaum faces a huge judgment for willful copyright infringement. Defense attorney Charlie Nesson, of Harvard Berkman Center fame, appears to have been out-gunned by the corporate lawyers. His effort to raise the level of the discussion to something more philosophical has been stymied by the judge’s stubborn refusal to ignore the law.

I hope Joel has an appeal coming based on incompetent representation. The whole Mister Chips thing is great in the classroom, but Nesson doesn’t seem to have brought any discipline to the courtroom. He certainly hasn’t been an effective advocate so far. Maybe tomorrow he will save Joel’s bacon with a brilliant summation or something.

Here’s a short list of what sux so far:

• No expert witnesses have been called by the defense to speak to economic issues. Did Joel’s downloading of thirty bucks worth of music cause CD sales to drop by half over the last decade?
• The defense intended to call John Perry Barlow as an expert witness on the zeitgeist or something. Since Barlow couldn’t focus on what he intended to present, couldn’t provide a report for the plaintiff’s attorneys on just what the heck his expertise was intended to reveal, the judge ruled that he couldn’t appear.
• The kid has admitted he’s guilty of downloading thirty songs so the whole issue now seems to pivot on willfulness. The verdict is pretty clear, but the amount of damages remains to be decided and they could go as high as a four and a half million bucks. Just based on his admissions, statutory damages could be awarded of thirty thousand per work, so that would be $900,000. But if willfulness is factored in the damages could go to $150,000 per song.

Tune in to twitter on Friday to hear what Nesson has up his sleeve.

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