Copyright Law

The RIAA's damages theory, which seeks from $750 to $150,000 per MP3 song file -- or from 2,200 to 450,000 the actual damages -- is flagrantly unconstitutional.

As many of you know, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's outlandish statutory damages theory is being contested by a sole practitioner battling several of the RIAA's law firms, the United States Department of Justice has filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case on the side of the RIAA:

United States Motion for Extension of Time in Which to Determine if Intervention is Appropriate

I urge all of my readers to:

1. write to Pres. Obama and urge him NOT to intervene; and

2. rebroadcast this message by any means available to you, including emails, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or any network or social network of any kind of which you are a member.

This is an important test of whether President Obama will allow his Department of Justice to be controlled by the dictates of the large record companies.

This moment will also provide an early test of whether President Obama was sincere in promising that he would be standing up for the working people, rather than for the big corporations who are making war against them.

We must be especially vigilant now, since partners from Jenner and Block. one of whom was the architect of the RIAA's mass litigation campaign, another of whom traveled to Duluth, Minnesota, to try to defend the $220,000 verdict the RIAA had obtained against Jammie Thomas, now occupy the second and third highest positions in the new administration's Department of Justice. We also do well to remember that Matthew Oppenheim, who has identified himself to the Courts as "the client" and as "the principal" of the record companies and as the "sole person who has settlement authority" in these cases, and who is the puppetmaster of these cases, was also a partner at Jenner & Block.

It is time for this madness -- this war against kids and other helpless people -- to end.

Please pass this post along to your friends.

Thank you.