RSSJammie Thomas jury empaneled, RIAA testimony begins
By Angela Gunn | Published June 16, 2009, 8:58 AM
Twitter is currently doing landmark work in providing a voice for the events in Tehran, but on a much smaller scale, it and larger blogging services served well on Monday as Jammie Thomas-Rasset's second trial kicked off in Minnesota. Several bloggers were present in the audience, and readers following the #riaa tag on Twitter were likewise treated to multiple sources of information.
Some of the observers present are "blawgers" -- lawyers who blog. Marc Bourgeois, blogging for Recording Industry vs. The People this week, was in the house, as was Copyrights and Campaign's Ben Sheffner. In all, Bourgeois estimated in a tweet that 15-20 media folk were present. Not tweeting, however, was the seven-woman, five-man jury -- Judge Michael Davis specifically warned them not to tweet, post, email, text, IM, ping, pong, bing, bada or do anything else about the case that could cause a third trial.
Mr. Sheffner noted that the new jury for the most part knew nothing previously about the case. Many are iPod users, and one of the two college students undergoing voir dire said s/he had previously used Limewire but stopped "because I didn't want to get caught and end up here." He noted that MediaSentry's representative, who spoke about what that service allegedly detected, was a solid witness, and flagged that the certified copies of copyright registerations that were admitted into evidence -- there were eight -- got there despite defense attorney Kiwi Camara's objections. Blogging after hours, Mr. Sheffner elucidated two rather complex points about which both parties were instructed to file briefs overnight. Oral arguments will begin on those briefs at 8:00 am CDT today.
Mr. Bourgeois likewise backed up his tweets with an extensive post, walking readers through the day step by step. He noted that Mr. Camara appears to be pursuing a "prove she did it" line with the jury -- if all else fails, goes the theory, there's no technology that can prove those were her hands on the keyboard. (That's a more likely strategy in a criminal trial than in a civil trial such as this one.)
But it was a journalist who caught certain moments of the trial's human spark on Monday. Writing for Ars Technica, Nate Anderson noted that Kiwi Camara has a way of getting under a witness' skin -- most particularly Sony Entertainment representative Gary Leak's snappish assertion that a $150,000 fine per song seemed fair to him. Anderson notes that Ms. Thomas-Rasset is expected to take the day today; all three of our intrepid social-blog-journal-twitterists are likewise expected to be on the scene and reporting.
Supposing 150K per song were fair, How much of it would go to the artist? What is their "protection" of the artist? is this it?
RIAA is not good for the artist.
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|My understanding, dan-o, is that no artists have been compensated directly; that's not what the system is set up to do. (The RIAA was on record during the Internet radio royalty wars as saying that those "royalties" were actually not due the artists -- they were all due the RIAA.)
The RIAA -- which is a trade group representing the music labels, not the artists, remember -- is in fact kind of peculiar when it comes to facilitating artist compensations. In 2004, the state of New York had to crack down on them and AFTRA for failing to keep good contact records and to thus avoid disbursing royalties to artists they "couldn't locate." There were some very big stars there, including many still active and touring -- Dolly Parton, David Bowie, Dave Matthews, P.Diddy and such. And artists in California had to get a Royalty Audit Bill passed into law a few years back to force the labels to conduct more aboveboard accounting; the RIAA lobbied *hard* against that.
No, I wouldn't look to the RIAA for any sort of artist protection, unless you mean the Don Corleone kind of protection.
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|These media moguls are simply social parasites, living off the products of the artists. RIAA are the embodiment of the evil juggernaut of big business running over the rights of people in the effort to make more and more money at the expense of the little people like Ms. Thomas. RIAA has no reason to exist except to make a bloated and diseased company even more bloated and diseased. The entertainment companies (Sony was mentioned) are not even based on our soil, but are foreigners raping our system and our people for their own profits. The judge, jurors and lawyers are all tools of the corporate vampire, sucking the life blood of the American people.
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|So they are evil, bloated diseased vampiric parasites - well no one's perfect!
I'm sure that apart from that they are they are splendid people...
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|Not shocked at all that the Sony jackass would say $150,000/song seemed fair.
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|I have no issue with paying a fair price for music or any other artwork... I take issue with the way these ambulance chasers decide what a fair price is and use the civil court system to scare extra money out of anyone they so choose.
Choose http://magnatune.com ... you can be sure that the artist gets a fair cut of the revenue and support a label that supports its artists... not like these aging dinosaurs.
As for $150,000/song these folks should be charged for being sub-human and deliberately extorting money from people that cannot afford it. (Doing this proves nothing and teaches nothing to others than contempt)
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