Joe Tenenbaum's case

While on this side of the Atlantic, waves from a shipwreck last month are subsiding, an equally interesting intrigue connected with copyright RIAA (with these letters will scare children), sound recordings, professors and students of American universities will flare up in the New World. True, no one tries to prove his innocence this time, just the opposite - the defendant admits that he is guilty, but the case promises to be one of the most interesting lawsuits in copyright history. About everything, however, in order.

The case of Joel Tenenbaum (Joel Tenenbaum), which will be discussed today, began the year before last. A Boston University student, Joe, is no different from thousands of other students. Including using P2P to search and download interesting music to it. Therefore, the story, as it should be, begins in a very classic way - with a fine of $ 3,500 back in 2003, in response to which Joel offered the RIAA a compensation of $ 500. When it came to court, where Joel did not have a lawyer and the 25-year-old boy had to defend his rights himself, he offered $ 5000, but this amount was again rejected.

Judge Nancy Gertner, who fought the lawsuit, attended to the fate of a graduate and introduced him to Charlie Nesson, a Harvard law professor. It was this accident that became a turning point in the fate of Tenenbaum and, quite possibly, copyright in the form to which we are accustomed.

A few words should be said about Nesson itself, also known as “Charlie a billion dollars” (Billion Dollar Charlie). This person is not just a well-known lawyer and a respected professor, he is a person who makes history. For example, Nesson was one of the lawyers leading the case that formed the basis of the book , and then the film “Civil Lawsuit”. Therefore, as soon as Charlie agreed to take the case of a student who was accused of copyright infringement (distribution of music), the case immediately acquired a very interesting shade and intrigue. Until now, did not have to give up on it.
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Some doubts were, however, the professor. The first question he asked himself was: “How the hell am I going to do this? I am not a criminal lawyer. ” The answer was found very quickly - the court case could be a great lesson for Nesson’s students from the Harvard Law School, who probably never had the opportunity to participate in court on such an exciting issue. The students locked themselves in the university library, and Nesson called it all "the network, as a learning tool." By the way - Charlie was one of the co-founders of the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society at Harvard University ten years ago, he even leads an account on Twitter .

But back to the case itself. Obviously, the first question for both Tenenbaum and Nesson was how to get the judiciary to pay attention to the growing problem in the environment of copyright and, in particular, the enormous greed of the RIAA? Now we know that The Pirate Bay did not save the so-called. “ Protection of king-kong ” (which was very loud, otherwise every second would not have learned anything about this case). Charlie Nesson knows this as well, who chose a slightly different way of doing business, which he himself calls "radical transparency." None of the RIAA lawyers, who, at the sight of Nesson, begin to bark like yard dogs, did not expect such “transparency” bordering on arrogance.

There is a completely adequate reason for this - Nesson is having fun with representatives of the accusing party, fills out official apologies, submits a request for webcasting of each court session (this item has already been refused), scares everyone and everyone with his thorough knowledge of American law - with this nothing can even the judges do it, because they cannot come to the file with a reference book. And this crazy desire to record everything , including even the usually confidential calls of lawyers, which is most annoying to the RIAA. Perhaps they still do not know that every document (jokingly) involved in the case is carefully scanned and laid out on a special portal in the network created by Nesson’s students, where they carefully process every bit of information in the hope that there is a legal and constitutional way to protect the person. from attacks "recording studios."

All this is reminiscent of sheer madness if it were not for one “but”. Is there a way to beat madness? If you asked Charlie Nesson about this, the answer would be quite specific. In his opinion, this case is not an attempt to protect Joel himself, but to urge people to open discussion on the issue of copyright since 1976. And if the US government turns its attention to Nesson, and most likely he will have to do it, then for the record industry in general, and the RIAA in particular, interesting times may come.

It is also important to understand that the main purpose of this “discussion” is not to change the situation with claims to P2P users (this is illegal, so far, and nothing can be done about it), but to reduce the amount of fines that the RIAA readily writes to all defendants. So, if Joel's first fine was only $ 3,500, then if he loses the case, he faces an amount of $ 150,000 for each song. A fantastic amount, almost forcing the culprit to go broke: the maximum amount of the fine is $ 1,000,000, this money is usually paid for a lifetime. The goal of Nesson is to “land” the size of fines, to make them reasonable and adequate.

The bottom line is that a typical “RIAA – private person” lawsuit, being a civil case, is a criminal offense, the right to which is considered only by the state. It is also important that no court tried to view P2P as a non-commercial “fair use” of modern technologies. The US government, however, still rejected all the arguments of Nesson on this issue, but it is not so significant.

The important thing is that Nesson is firmly convinced of the need for public debate on the subject of copyright, which will not happen until the government deems it necessary to invade this area. But with the colossal public outcry that occurred in Europe after the trial of TPB and all the information on the case made available by Nesson and his students, the copyright holders, professors and the government are interested in the dialogue to take place.

As Charlie himself says: “Such a dialogue cannot take place anywhere except on the Internet. The 1976 Copyright Act does not even acknowledge the existence of such a thing as the world wide web, which has now changed everyone’s life beyond recognition. ” In his opinion, the entire legislative framework related to the issues of copyright holders, and in particular the 1998 document (also called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act , due to which it did not fall into the public domain), needs to be processed.

While George W. Bush was president, such an initiative would in fact be killed in the bud. But now, when a person is sitting at the head of the White House, he is technology savvy, and the head of Nesson, Elena Kagan, the former head of the Harvard Law School, has become the chief prosecutor of the United States, it is possible that the changes that Nesson and his students will find a place in the new legislation.

It remains only to hope that rationality will triumph over greed. However, when the case is conducted by a person who openly offers the RIAA “to take part in an erotic excursion,” we can safely believe that the current state of things with “piracy” will change drastically in the near future.

In the footsteps of ArsTechnica