Student Cleared to Defend Tenenbaum at Appeals Argument Over Filesharing (Press Release)
Last week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals approved a motion that will allow a student member of Joel Tenenbaum’s defense team to make oral argument on his behalf. Tenenbaum is a graduate student at Boston University who was sued in 2007 for sharing [...]
By Jason Harrow & Phil Hill (JFB legal team, generation 3)
It has been nearly six months since the trial court judge in our case reduced the $675,000 jury verdict against Joel down to $67,500. After many years of wrangling and a week-long trial in the summer of 2009, that decision finally ended the proceedings before [...]
As we blogged about last month, Whitney Harper, a minor who has been pursued by the music industry for downloading songs, was allowed to and then denied from using an ”innocent infringement” defense, which would decrease the potential statutory minimum down from $750 to $200. The appeals court overturned the ruling, and said that Whitney should have known that [...]
There’s a lot of music content out there and a lot of ways to get it. Free music bombards us in all directions: from the radio, YouTube, Pandora, and Grooveshark — to what plays in a restaurant while you eat. But since P2P programs are so widespread and downloading music is just a simple click [...]
Posted by Debbie Rosenbaum
Almost five months after we last sat in Judge Gertner’s courtroom requesting that she either reduce the damages or award a new trial, Judge Gertner finally made a long-awaited ruling today.
In our motion to the court, we argued that that the jury’s award of $675,000 in statutory damages was grossly excessive and [...]
“Joel, we haven’t heard from you in a while! Is it over?”
Hi everyone! Thanks so much for checking in with us. The case is definitely not over; rather, we’re in a holding pattern waiting for Judge Gertner’s decision regarding our remittitur motion. (See the details in our blog post)
We asked the court to adjust the [...]
Posted for Professor Nesson
harper-petition-for-cert
Whitney Harper’s case is important, though its importance has yet to be noticed. It provides a key step in the legal logic that the RIAA will use down the road to justify ISPs terminating user’s net connections for violating copyrights. Innocence is no defense.
Earlier today, we filed this Motion for a New Trial and Remittitur to Judge Gertner, the same judge who presided over the original trial. (BTW, remittitur is fancy legal talk meaning a ruling by a judge lowering the amount of damages granted by a jury — usually, because the amount awarded exceedes the amount demanded.) [...]
So you may have noticed recent news stories about Joel’s case. Judge Gertner made a ruling. Although the jury had already decided back in July, nothing was official until Judge Gertner submitted her ruling.
Confused? Here’s the gist:
1) The judgment from July 31st was formally entered. This had to occur before we could move on to [...]
—————–RIAA, Downloading and Copyrights—————-
By Professor Thomas J. Impelluso, Ph.D.
Department of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering
San Diego State University
In just under three years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing. Recently, they commenced an aggressive new litigation campaign to protect their interests further. But this begs the question: What, [...]