Copyright Law

Prof. Nesson of Harvard Law School takes on the RIAA in court in SONY v. Tenenbaum

By Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman

Prof. Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, an outspoken critic of the RIAA's litigation campaign, who once assigned to his Evidence class the job of drafting a motion to quash an RIAA "John Doe" subpoena, has gone to bat for an RIAA defendant in Boston, entering a case in which he will be taking the RIAA on directly, squaring off against Timothy Reynolds, Eve Burton, and Laurie Rust, the same Denver, Colorado, lawyers trying to dismiss UMG Recordings v. Lindor in Brooklyn.

The Massachusetts case is SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, one of the hundreds of cases consolidated in Boston under the caption London-Sire v. Does 1-4.

On Mr. Tenenbaum's behalf, Prof. Nesson has filed an amended counterclaim, interposing counterclaims against the plaintiff record companies and against the RIAA itself, for both federal and state abuse of process.

Additionally, he has moved for a protective order with respect to the RIAA's request for a hard drive examination, and opposed the RIAA's motion to dismiss counterclaims.

According to court records, Prof. Nesson was assisted by law students Shubham Mukherjee and Nnamdi Okike in preparing his brief opposing the RIAA's motion.

Plaintiffs' Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss Counterclaims
Defendant's Protective Order Motion for Hard Drive Inspection
Defendant's Opposition to Plaintiffs' Motion to Dismiss Counterclaims
Defendant's Amended Counterclaims
Defendant's Motion to Add RIAA as Additional Defendant on Counterclaims

[Ed. note. Among other things, Prof. Nesson is the lawyer who argued the famous Daubert case which established the Daubert reliability factors. So it should be quite interesting to see what he does with Dr. Doug Jacobson, the RIAA's so-called 'expert', or with the MediaSentry characters, who deny that they are experts (when trying to evade expert witness disclosure), but claim to be experts (when trying to avoid jail time for engaging in investigation without an investigator's license). -R.B.]

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Full post as published by Recording Industry vs The People on October 28, 2008 (boomark / email).