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RIAA appeal filesharing court case webcast proposals
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 20 January 2009
Oh dear. The Recording Industry Association Of America is appealing that previously reported decision by US judge Nancy Gertner that a pending court hearing regarding their file-sharing lawsuit against individual music fan Joel Tenenbaum can be streamed on the internet.
As previously reported, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, who has been advising Tenenbaum on his case, first suggested the court hearing be streamed, arguing that as it’s of interest to the net community, coverage of it should be made available through the medium they prefer. Gertner, slightly surprisingly, agreed.
But according to Digital Music News, the RIAA last week appealed that ruling. As previously mentioned, while US copyright law generally favours the RIAA in file sharing litigation, when cases go to court the record industry’s case often gets caught up in technicalities.
The label body – which is trying to put its “sue first think later” days behind it – is presumably keen not to let the world at large tune in as one of its last file sharing lawsuits possible falters in court.
Gertner is yet to respond to the RIAA’s appeal. Needless to say, Nesson isn’t impressed, telling reporters: “If the RIAA’s position is to educate people about the business and legal climate of the music industry, it is unclear to us why they are appealing this decision”.
As previously commented, Nesson’s attempts to have the court case streamed may be a clever tactic in Tenenbaum’s defence.
There’s a chance the RIAA may withdraw the lawsuit rather than go through the PR trauma of possibly facing defeat on a file-sharing case in view of the whole world wide web (even if the defeat was based on tedious technicalities, normally relating to how evidence was collected).
