Judge to RIAA: 'It's Terribly Critical That You Stop It' by George Ziemann -- October 29, 2008 ZDNet reports that Prof. Charles Neeson of Harvard Law School "is charging that the RIAA's tactics are an abuse of federal process and that the law on which the litgation rests is unconstitutional." These arguments were in defense of Joel Tenenbaum, who is being sued for the outragously aggregious and anarchistic behavior of downloading seven entire songs when he was a teenager. That's right. The RIAA, who consistently tells us that they only go after the most aggregious offenders, is messing with this guy in a federal court over an alleged "theft" of $6.93, for which they expect to receive $5250 (a little over $1 million if he did it intentionally). In the opposition to plantiff's motion to dismiss counterclaim (PDF), Neeson leads with this: "The plaintiffs and the RIAA are seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused. They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel's individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future." This is why the RIAA never sues Harvard students. Harvard has been waiting for them, suggesting to all universities that they tell the RIAA to "take a hike." As far as I know, this is the first time they've gotten involved in a case. Tennenbaum was defending himself. This will be better. Neeson's primary argument has to do with having a $750 fine for something with a 99-cent retail value, but he wraps it up by pointing out that enforcement is in the hands of an organization "that has no political accountability, that can pursue any defendant it chooses at its own whim, that can accept or reject payoffs in exchange for not prosecuting the tickets, and that pockets for itself all payoffs and fines. Imagine that a significant percentage of these fines were never contested, regardless of whether they had merit, because the individuals being fined have limited financial resources and little idea of whether they can prevail in front of an objective judicial body." But the real promise that perhaps we are getting closer to the end of this nonsense comes from Judge Nancy Gertner: "Counsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers, to understand that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it." Of course, I don't expect the RIAA to listen. Not when there's $6.93 up for grabs.

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