[FC-discuss] Joel Faces the Bogus RIAA Music Today

[Seth Johnson]

(Please do all you can to support Joel Tennenbaum.  Even if you fear
the arguments being presented, or you presume that he's going down. 
Whatever the result, his legal team is raising some serious stakes,
and Joel has chosen to trust them.  What he's confronting affects us
all, and the outcome will affect us all as well.  -- Seth)


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/27/filesharing-music-industry


How it Feels to be Sued for $4.5 Million


Joel Tenebaum and his legal team


When I contemplate the above sum, I have to remind myself what I'm
being charged with. Investment fraud? An attack against the
government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave


To a certain extent, I'm afraid to write this. Though they've already
seized my computer and copied my hard drive, I have no guarantee they
won't do it again. For the past four years, they've been threatening
me, making demands for trial, deposing my parents, sisters, friends,
and myself twice – the first time for nine hours, the second for
seven. I face up to $4.5m in fines and the last case like mine that
went to trial had a jury verdict of $1.92m
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/19/illegal-filesharing-fine).

When I contemplate this, I have to remind myself what I'm being
charged with. Investment fraud? Robbing a casino? A cyber-attack
against the federal government? No. I shared music. And refused to
cave.

No matter how many people I explain this to, the reaction is always
the same: dumbfounded surprise and visceral indignance, both of which
are a result of the amazing secrecy the Recording Industry Association
of America (RIAA) has operated under. "How did they get you?" I'm
asked. I explain that there are 40,000 people like me, being sued for
the same thing, and we were picked from a pool of millions who shared
music. And that's when a look appears on the face of whoever I'm
talking to, the horrified "it could have been me!" look.

The reason this has remained so silent despite passionate opposition
is that nearly all people settle. My story of becoming an exception
started four years ago.

In 2005, my parents received a letter from Sony BMG, Warner, Atlantic
Records, Arista Records, and UMG Records claiming "copyright
infringement". They were given a number to call, which was their
"settlement information line", a call centre staffed by operators who,
we are emphatically told, are "not attorneys". The process of
collecting money from these threats was so huge, they had set up a
1-800-DONT-SUE-ME-style call centre.

The operators did little more than ask how you would pay (they wanted
$3,000, I believe) and repeated intimidating lawsuit statistics. I
sent them a money order for $500, which they returned. I told them I
couldn't pay any more. We discussed whether I might qualify for
"financial hardship", and then I stopped hearing from them, which I
didn't question. I graduated from college and began studying for my
physics doctorate.

And then in August 2007, I came home from work to find a stack of
papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment.
That's when I found out what it was like to have possibly the most
talented copyright lawyers in the business, bankrolled by
multibillion-dollar corporations, throwing everything they had at
someone who wanted to share Come As You Are with other Nirvana fans.

I had assumed that as an equal in a court of law in the United States,
my story would be told and a just outcome would result. I discovered
the sheer magnitude of obstacles in your way to get your say in court.
And even if you get to trial, (which only one other person, Jammie
Thomas Rasset, has done) you're still far from equal with the machine
controlling 85% of commercial music in the US.

But to even start fighting assumes you (a) know what you're even being
sued for and (b) have a concept of what grounds to fight it on. Most
of the time you know nothing except for the huge stack of paper
written in legalese that says you owe several thousand dollars and it
will probably cost you more than that just to hire a lawyer. If you
can find one.

I had frequent contact with one of their Colorado counsel. While she
was impudent to the point of vicious ("Come on Joel, I think you did
it"), I continued to use phrases like "I respect your position" and
"we have a respectful difference of opinion". I have no record of this
intimidation because the person in question made sure to keep contact
restricted to phonecalls.

Every conversation consisted of her trying to get information out of
me about my defense, telling me how much bigger the settlement would
be if I didn't settle now. Shaken, I would call my mother, who was a
state-paid lawyer in child custody cases, and ask her what to do. We
blindly fired all kinds of motions at them. Eventually my mother
became afraid to answer my calls, worried it would be about the case.
For the court "settlement" I offered $5,250, which the RIAA declined,
asking $10,500. I saw myself on a conveyor belt, being pulled
inexorably toward the meshing of razor-sharp gears.

Then in summer 2008, I arrived home to find a letter addressed to me.
The return address said "Harvard Law School". Curiously, I opened and
read it. "My name is Charles Nesson, professor of Law at Harvard. I
caught wind of your case," it said. "I can be of any assistance, don't
hesitate to call." I called. Nesson picked up. I said, "Yes, you can
be of assistance!" My mom drafted a letter to him, summarising where
we were. The opening line read, "Dear Professor Godsend".

Since then I've learned that you don't have to accept phone contact
from the RIAA lawyers, but could demand correspondence by mail. I've
been deposed twice – for nine hours one day and for another seven a
few weeks ago – where I was asked every irrelevant question about my
life, cars that I owned, websites I've operated. The RIAA will try to
denigrate this, saying I was only talking for seven hours and then
five and a half, but I was stuck in their office the entire time. You
think it makes any difference to me when I can't work?

My sisters, dad and mother have all been deposed. My high-school
friends, friends of the family too. My computer's been seized and hard
drive copied, and my parents and sister narrowly escaped the same fate
for their computers. And the professor who supervises my teaching is
continually frustrated with my need to have people cover for me, while
my research in grad school is put on hold to deal with people whose
full-time job is to keep an anvil over my head. I have to consider
every unrelated thing I do in my private life in the event that I'm
interrogated under oath about it. I wonder how I'll stand up in a
courtroom for hours having litigators try to convince a jury of my
guilt and the reprehensibility of my character.

But the support helps. I've had a great team of Nesson's students
helping and the professor himself has been magnificent. Most of all,
I'm touched by the warm messages of support from the people who've
written in, Twittered, and Facebooked me (though I've been too
paranoid to friend strangers lately). Best hopes to others dealing
with the same: Brittany Kruger, Jammie Thomas, and the other 39,997 of
us.

The trial starts today, 27 Monday July. Regrettably, it won't be
webcast as we requested due to the RIAA's successful opposition, but
we will tweet [http://twitter.com/joelfightsback] (with the hashtag
#jfb) and blog as much as possible, and there is a website where you
can follow us and learn more (http://www.joelfightsback.com/).