The RIAA’s prosecution of copyright law is unconstitutional, Mass High Tech, 11/28/08

By Charles Nesson, Esq., William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Via Mass High Tech: The RIAA’s prosecution of copyright law is unconstitutional:

"We believe, and are asserting legally by counterclaim, that the RIAA litigation campaign against Joel [Tenenbaum] and the millions of his generation like him is an unconstitutional abuse of law. Imagine a statute which, in the name of deterrence, provides for a $750 fine for each mile-per-hour that a driver exceeds the speed limit, with the fine escalating to $150,000 per mile over the limit if the driver knew he or she was speeding. Imagine that the fines are not publicized, and most drivers do not know they exist. Imagine that enforcement of the fines is put in the hands of a private, self-interested police force, that has no political accountability, that can pursue any defendant it chooses at its own whim, that can accept or reject payoffs on the order of $3,000 to $7,000 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 a federal court...

Tenenbaum is, in every way, representative of his born-digital generation. The tension remains that our antiquated legal system has not caught up to the social reality of digital natives, a term my colleague John Palfrey coined to describe the generation that grew up immersed in digital technologies and for whom a life fully integrated with digital devices that are, by design, free and open is the norm."

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/11/24/editorial2-The-RIAAs-prosecution-of-copyright-law-is-unconstitutional.html

All-Star Witness List In Lawsuit Over Constitutionality Of RIAA Lawsuits, TechDirt, 11/20/08

Via TechDirt: All-Star Witness List In Lawsuit Over Constitutionality Of RIAA Lawsuits:

"The list includes:

John Perry Barlow (former songwriter for The Grateful Dead, founder of the EFF, and well known digital thinker)
Prof. Johan Pouwelse (technical and scientific director of European research project P2P-Next)
Prof. Lawrence Lessig (needs no introduction, I imagine, for folks around here)
Matthew Oppenheim (who has a somewhat murky relationship with the RIAA, at times representing the RIAA, and at other times insisting he does not represent the RIAA)
Prof. Terry Fisher (a director of Harvard's Berkman Center and author of Promises to Keep, an early book looking at how the internet was changing the entertainment industry, and how it's business models need to change)
Prof. Wendy Seltzer (well known copyfighter, law professor, former staff attorney at the EFF and founder of the Chilling Effects site)
Prof. John Palfrey (Harvard law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of Born Digital)
Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard and Oxford law professor, co-director of the Berkman Center, author of The Future of the Internet)
Andrew Grant (former antipiracy specialist at DRM company Macrovision)"

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081120/1244282904.shtml