Professor Charles Nesson, Founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has come to the defense of Joel Tenenbaum, who was among dozens of people who appeared in court in RIAA cases without legal help.

The 24-year-old Tenenbaum is a graduate student accused by the RIAA of downloading at least seven songs and making 816 music files available for distribution on the Kazaa file-sharing network in 2004. He offered to settle the case for $500, but music companies rejected that, demanding $12,000. (See RODRIQUE NGOWI’s story on myway.com–exerpt below.)

“Professor Nesson is argueing that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group - the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA - carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. He also says the music industry group abused the legal process by brandishing the prospects of lengthy and costly lawsuits in an effort to intimidate people into settling cases out of court.”

According to Professor Nesson’s blog, this case is about more than standing up to a Mafia-like RIAA that is out to teach kids like Joel Tenenbaum, “that there is a real world out here. It’s a world of pain imposed on you by power. [It's] time for the recording industry to see that reality has changed, and all their lobbying power in the congress, and all their litigating power in the courts, and all their manipulation of the public mind to equate sharing music with theft, cannot stop the growth of a digital environment in which peers have ability to gather and share.”

Godspeed. 

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What if you could organize your social network around your media consumption habits?  How about using your network to filter video and music content?  uPlayme thinks it may have found the content sweet spot with its new application that sits on your desktop, sees the content you play on applications like iTunes and websites like Pandora and YouTube, and creates a social network that lets you chat, connect and share with new friends online.

 
uPlayMe from uPlayMe on Vimeo.

The catch is that uPlayMe will depend on you to find and share content from non-pirated sources (YouTube is a bit suspect) and from sources that have already paid the hefty licensing fees to broadcast music (Internet Radio is hanging by a thread).  If it manages not to increase the flow of pirated content, uPlayMe should be able to legitimately make moneywithout paying licensing fees or getting permission from rights holders.  It’s an interesting model that mixes clearly non-infringing content (iTunes) with content that almost certainly infringes (YouTube).  We’ll have to see how this plays out.

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In remarks published on Friday, the Swedish government said that Sweden should require Internet service providers to hand over information identifying people involved in illegal file sharing. The government plans to present a proposal on implementing this policy within the next few month.

Sweden has previously been seen as haven for file sharers, with several members of parliament going so far as to call for decriminalizing file sharing. That all changed when Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four people suspected of running Sweden-based Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most popular websites for illegal downloading of films, music and computer games.

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The United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8) instructs Congress that it is “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”

But the founding fathers never thought about whether file sharing is theft or where the line should be drawn between inspiration and plagiarism in the fashion industry. In some U.S. industries (most notably motion pictures and music), congress has enacted extraordinary penalties for both people who share, copy or illegally view the copyrighted materials, and the people who pirate the content. However, in the fashion industry, Congress (unlike its counterparts in the EU) has resisted providing designers with any protection for their designs.

However, that could change if H.R. 2033 is enacted into law. Something that looks more likely this year then ever before.

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Buried in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (H.R. 4137), which passed 354 - 58 in the house last week, are some chilling and expensive provisions requiring Universities to monitor the file sharing conducted by students on campus networks, or risk loosing accreditation.

Section 488 of the bill requires institutions that receive Federal student aid funds to adopt policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement, including:

• an annual statement warning students that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material (file sharing) may subject the students to civil and criminal liabilities;
• a summary of the penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws;
• a description of the institution’s policies for punishing student file sharing; and
• a description of the institution’s efforts to prevent and detect file sharing.

Section 494 of the bill entitled “CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION” requires each Federal student aid receiving institution to–

• make available to their students information related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials and
• develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.

The White House released a critical statement of the bill on February 6, 2008, mainly opposing racial quotas. The new level of (expensive) oversight that universities would need to conduct in order to continue receiving Federal student aid funds received no mention.

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