Hi.  It seems that there is much to discuss regarding the intersection of  copyright, the internet and peer to peer.  I see that there are a bunch of questions for me.  I will turn to them shortly, but first, let me respond to a few of the things that Joel Tenenbaum has said in his remarks.

First off, Joel makes the curious statement that he “just wants a fair day in court for the allegations against me.”  This statement seems to forget the history of what has happened.   Joel had a full-blown trial in front of a Boston jury and a federal district court judge.  While on the stand, Joel testified, for the first time after several years of litigation, that he was responsible for the p2p use that he was accused of engaging in.  Based on that admission, the District Court Judge held that Joel was an infringer.  And, a jury found that his conduct was willful and worthy of a significant damage award.   The suggestion underlying Joel’s comments that he “wants a fair day in court” is akin to a giraffe claiming that it wants to be tall.  It makes no sense.  Joel had his fair day in court and was found to be a willful infringer.

Second, Joel makes the unfounded claim that the RIAA gets “to buy more justice by having the deep pockets necessary to pay dozens of lawyers to fabricate an interpretation out of a statute we believe wasn’t intended.”     This kind of accusation not only lacks any merit, but avoids any worthwhile discussion of the issues.  Joel Tenenbaum can hardly claim that he lacked for legal counsel; he had a preeminent Harvard Law School professor, a team of Harvard Law School students,  a Boston litigation law firm and his mother (an attorney), all representing him.    There also is no merit to the suggestion that the copyright law was not intended for the purpose of addressing p2p copyright infringement.   Dozens of federal courts have found that the unauthorized uploading or downloading of copyrighted music on a P2P network is copyright infringement.  Moreover, the Congressional Record is replete of support for this conclusion.  It may sound good for Tenenbaum to claim that the copyright law was not intended to deal with the likes of his infringement, but it simply is not true.

Third, Joel suggests that he used P2P networks to sample music to decide whether to buy it or not.  I have heard this defense for years.  Apart from the fact that it lacks any legal merit, it isn’t accurate factually.  If you were only sampling to buy, you would download a file, listen to it, decide whether to buy an authorized copy, and then delete the infringing copy.  When individuals, like Joel, maintain large libraries of infringing copies in a share directory, they cannot fairly claim that they are just sampling.

Stay tuned, I will respond to some of the questions that have been posed to me shortly.