What I’m Actually Fighting
Posted by Joel Tenenbaum
Over the years, my position has been misconstrued to be against a great number of things: intellectual property, artist rights, paid-for music, artists being paid, or even capitalism itself.
Let me clarify: I am against none of these things.
What I am against is the massive litigation campaign the RIAA has pursued against individuals like me who are simply crushed by the immense power of their machinery. I rail against the myth that the legal system is set up “impartially.” Public defenders are only available to individuals charged by the state with a legal crime; those of us charged civil offenses — no matter how high the stakes — are left to fend for ourselves in a system that is almost impossible to navigate competently without the aid of an attorney.
If you receive a notice from the RIAA, you are guilty until proven innocent, and the vast majority of people do not have the resources to fight the charges. For example, when I received my notice from the RIAA, they sent me a 1-800 payment number. When I called to challenge the charge, the call-center only wanted to know if I would pay by money order or credit card. They were not given instructions on how to handle an individual who said “neither.”
Once the lawsuit began, I simply figured that getting to trial was a matter of continuing to show up to court and complying with discovery requests. What I learned was that without an attorney, you will not even make it to trial. The RIAA immediately buried me in a litany of legal motions that I didn’t know how to respond to because they were draped in the kind of legalese only judges and attorneys understand.
Then, they called me nearly every week, reiterating their threats of larger and larger damages. Without an attorney, I didn’t know that I had legal rights to deny responding to their phone calls. Moreover, I didn’t know that I should have demanded their aggressive communications with me be in writing. (Pro-tip: if you are subject to an RIAA suit, write to the opposing attorneys and court demanding all communication be carried out by mail or fax.) Without an attorney, I didn’t know that I had legal rights to keep a written record of attorney conversations which literally left me shaking. And during trial, the RIAA took the record they’d compiled of me — through 16 hours of interrogation, a copy of my current computer’s harddrive (not even the computer on which the alleged infringement took place), interviews with everyone I knew (including friends from high school with whom I haven’t spoken in years), every webpage I’ve ever made — and selectively highlighted, often in disingenuous language, anything that fit their smear narrative of me as essentially a pathological sociopath who never paid for music and was eager to take down Bruce Springsteen, rather than the simple and unremarkable token member of the generation of millions of file-sharers that I was.
Professor Nesson and his team of capable students have argued how the music labels are abusing law and the federal court’s civil process in order to punish me beyond any rational measure of the damage I allegedly caused. They do this not to recover compensation for actual damages (which are impossible to determine), but rather to deter others from file-sharing. Through my attorneys, I’ve learned that deterrence of society in general is not allowed as justification for a lawsuit in civil court — making my case an absolute abomination of the legal system.
Judging by the response we’ve seen, this campaign will end up costing the RIAA far more than the $16 million in legal fees spent in a single year. As the RIAA continues unsuccessfully to fight modernity on old battlefields, it only postpones the moment when it learns that it can only dig into its former prosperity for so long without adapting.
Joel Tenenbaum, please just kill yourself. You do not deserve to exist as a human being. You are a disgrace. This website is a disgrace Joel “fights back.” Why would you fight back if you did something illegal AND IMMORAL knowingly?! Fuck you!
EFF should sue Constantin Film for the Hitler parodies removal, the vlogbrothers should should sue Viacom for their attack on YouTube, Gary Fung DID sue the CRIA/Canadian Government for the legality of BitTorrent, which does not host infringing content, rather “infringing” content, those three (plus the fourth guy) Swedish ThePirateBay guys should sue the RIAA
and Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas should trump the evil, capitalism and law exploitive, greedy, fearful and reprehensible RIAA.
YouTube is a video sharing site. ThePirateBay is a BitTorrent site. It’s easier to find “infringing” content on YouTube. And anyway, YouTube hosts the content so making profit is actual piracy. ThePirateBay is file sharing.
I am a jerk and an idiot. I kiss Bitch Maniwol’s ass. I love exploiting capitalism.
As much as I sympathise and honestly believe that you are on the right side of the argument I am not sure that your ’stand’ will mean a great deal when the history of music distribution is looked back on. The music industry will not save itself by bankrupting one or two names out of hundreds of thousands in the hope that this will scare the rest. Equally ’stands’ like yours won’t result in any progress being made to change copyright law or to change the way the music industry works. In the end copyright law will stay the same but the music industry will change drastically and adapt itself deferentially to the practices of millions of internet users because it will have no other commercial choice. Copyright law will then be an irrelevant issue because it won’t be practiced in the way it was here. This episode and the few thousand others like it just represent futile attempts to stave off the inevitable by a panicking music industry.
The music industry is like one guy with a pistol being set upon by an incomprehensibly massive army - his pistol won’t do any good but he will still fire it before they get him. You are just the unlucky bastard that the bullet hits. — gabrielcasey
intellectual property - good
artist rights - good
paid-for music - no idea what this is but according Mark D. Pesce, extracting money from the viewers? no. extract from the advertisers.
artists being paid - GREAT. JUST THE NOT THE FUCKING RIAA.
or even capitalism itself - capitalism good, most capitalists evil. the same can be said for most ideologies. in fact, completeness of an ideology is evil right? Communism, capitalism, fascism, anarchy, totalitarianism, etc
Hey Joel, why didn’t you use those arguments here?
youtube.com/watch?v=cQzbY7FB98k
youtube.com/watch?v=GCOlaxeywlM
Mr./Ms. Lee Fan,
Good question. Two reasons really:
1) Unlike Cara Duckworth, I’m not a professional spokesperson. I’m just a physicist. The two CNN clips you link to represent the first two times I’ve ever been on national television. You’ll notice in the Campbell Brown interview I’m not even looking into the camera properly, and they were forced to cut away from me when I drank water. There was one moment when the earpiece told me, “LOOK into the camera and stop drinking!”
So, about half of my thought process was dedicated to “OMG, I’m on Campbell Brown!” and the other half was dedicated to the incoming conversation. Believe me, I’ve done this interview 100 times in my head with better responses.
2) On Campbell Brown and John Roberts, you really have no time to say anything. Any nuanced dialogue on an issue can’t really be covered in a 5-minute exchange of talking points. This blog allows me the space to express real responses in a way national news can’t really allot time for.
However, public programming gave me a much better chance to explain myself:
http://buphy.bu.edu/~jesusina/text.html
Thanks for your interest.
Joel
Whoa, you actually replied to me? Cool, though I have no way of knowing if that’s REALLY you. Mr., btw. or just HLF.
And yeah, I guess it makes sense. We’ve all replayed things differently in our heads. But it seems the interviewers were a.) jerks and treating you guilty until proven innocent or b.) actually in favor of file sharing and wanted to draw out deeper arguments by playing devil’s advocate.
Anyway, good luck with everything. I hope you defeat the RIAA even though the chances seem pretty slim…have you met and/or are you collaborating with Jammie Thomas?
Meh, I don’t really expect you to reply again. Again, good luck. And God bless.
What would happen if a million people walked towards the RIAA HQ in Washington DC and openly confessed to downloading music illegally to the RIAA? Would they all be arrested?
Imagine some dystopic society similar to 1984, as Abraham Morgan also mentioned, where the need for a search warrant is suspended and everyone’s computers are checked for illegal content. Assume all these people will be imprisoned. Just how much of the world would be imprisoned?
Hey Joel, I just had this crazy idea. I’m not an expert or even in intermediate in copyright law or legality and what not, but you could try to call out the RIAA. Tell them that if you’re found innocent, make them pay for all your legal fees. If they’re so sure of themselves, they’ll have no problem agreeing to that. If they’re NOT SURE of themselves, which they clearly aren’t, you still would have made a point to them. The catch would be to release this challenge not only on this website but also through television or something.
Also Joel…is this about downloading files or uploading files?
Quote:
Jesse on January 17th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
In response to Alex, these lawsuits aren’t for downloading content illegally, they are about SHARING copyrighted content. So the RIAA argues it doesn’t matter if Tenenbaum owns the cd’s for the content or not.
“If you receive a notice from the RIAA, you are guilty until proven innocent, and the vast majority of people do not have the resources to fight the charges. ”
There is no guilt or innocence in the civil litigation system. You are liable or not liable, and there is no presumption toward one or the other. Please don’t try to use misinformation to try to make this something that it’s not. Your atrocious legal team tried that plenty of times, and look how well that worked out for you.
“Joel Tenenbaum is an infringer” is an idiot.
The industries can’t stop file sharing. Adapt or die. They are wasting our tax money, which they acquired from the government illegally, on legal fees. They are promoting file sharing by doing this.
File sharing is basically the same as lending or taping off radio/TV.
Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish but bitter and alone. - Paulo Coelho, who increased book sales from 3,000 to 1,000,000 in 3 years thanks to file sharing.
Think of it this way…does lending books promote sales? Yes, it promotes the next book(s). But also, why buy when you can borrow? Clearly, lending/borrowing has both positive and negative effects.
File sharing is a massive form of lending/borrowing. Therefore, both the positive and negative effects increase.
However, for music, the negative effects (less album sales due to borrowing) would add to the positive effects (more sales for next album + more concert attendance).
The industries trying to stop file sharing sounds like 26 years ago when they tried to stop taping. The RIAA and MPAA still can’t accept cassette tapes and VCRs, respectively.
Actually, I remember watching some video regarding YouTube vs. Rsomething with a background on file sharing explaining that VCRs were infringing but could be used for non-infringing purposes and that Sony did not induce copyright infringement.
Apparently, ThePirateBay induces copyright infringement, which it doesn’t. It only links to the content, which is different from hosting it on the server.
And even if it does host it, the users are the ones who upload/download.
They can’t get all of us. Therefore, they have to adapt. Majority wins.
Even if they’re richer, as Charles Darwin said, “It is NOT THE STRONGEST of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”
I’m not arguing that it’s legal, I’m saying it’s not theft. The distinction is important. Reimbursement is not property. He does not lose his property, therefore it’s not theft. End of story. I don’t see how you can’t understand that.
Also, you can scream about how it’s illegal all you want, it’s still gonna happen. People are saying loud and clear that they do not want CDs. The record labels have failed to provide an alternative method of distribution and until they do, piracy will continue.
The legality or morality is irrelevant. It’s gonna happen, it’s inevitable. CDs are obsolete, people don’t want to buy them. Record labels have resisted internet distribution and have insulted customers with DRM. They are trying to suppress technological solutions rather than embrace them. They’re trying to milk every last dollar from a system that is no longer necessary and they’re failing. They’re sticking with a distribution method that no longer works. — Freecell82
I followed your weblog for a reasonable time and should tell that the articles always prove to be of a substantial value and quality for viewers.
There is another thing you ought to understand.
I feel sorry for Joel and all the other thousands of people that have been sued by the RIAA. I think the RIAA and the FBI are both unfair in the way they are enforcing the law considering the following conversation. My question to the RIAA and the FBI considering all the lawsuits and you calling this a crime why was this conversation overlooked.
A high-ranking NC police officer (detective devision I believe) was recored discussing downloading music on the Internet. He named the name Kazaa which has appeared in numerous news articles. He said it was the thing to do EVERYBODY was doing it. He bet his daughters had downloaded a thousand songs on his computer. He said he had to buy a new computer his old one ‘FILLED UP WITH MEMORY’. He laughed and said he hoped the federal government did not come in and investigate him.
RIAA and FBI I think you are very unfair suing all these people taking their money and ignoring this conversation. I think this is an injustice to all the people that have been sued. If this is the way the law is enforced the RIAA and the FBI should give these people back their money.
hi buddy… i just wanted to say that my firefox is freezing when I click on the text… are you using some java or something?
FBI good RIAA evil. The RIAA are using our government (Obama, Biden) and our FBI for their purposes. Blame the RIAA because the FBI were practically coerced into this.