Judge Who Said Lumping Together Unrelated Copyright Cases Is Fine... Is A Former RIAA Lobbyist
from the aren't-you-supposed-to-recuse-yourself? dept
Last week, we noted that judge Beryl Howell seemed to go against numerous other rulings by mass copyright lawsuit filers in saying that it was just fine to lump all the defendants together, despite the fact that each one was totally unrelated to the others. She even went so far as to claim that this benefited the defendants. She also pointed out that this made it easier for the plaintiffs, and seemed particularly concerned that things be as easy as possible for those plaintiffs. As we noted, our legal system isn't supposed to work that way. The point was making sure that actual due process was allowed, and joining together totally unrelated cases went against that principle.Of course, perhaps there's a reason why Howell wanted to make things easier for plaintiffs in mass copyright lawsuits. You see, as TorrentFreak points out, Judge Beryl Howell is a recent appointment to the bench, and prior to that worked as a lawyer for a law firm that did plenty of work for the RIAA, and Howell herself was a lobbyist for the RIAA. It also notes that she helped write the DMCA among other copyright expansion laws from the last decade and a half.
As TorrentFreak notes, this certainly seems like a conflict of interest.
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Filed Under: beryl howell, copyright, judge, lobbying
Companies: riaa
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You suggest an AC will actually read when no one else has posted?
;)
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How is it...
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Justice
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The Judgin' biz....
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So why didn't she recuse herself?
I'm not sure how this benefits everyone. Color me skeptical to think routers can make it to court on their own.
This practice should be barred, but it's unlikely going to happen.
When our own vice president uses a term like "unadulterated theft" when discussing infringement, I'm not confident these appointments were based on the best candidate for the job, but one who clearly can circumvent the very rights they were allowed until they're in power to take them away.
This story is all over the internet and it's difficult to believe the EFF won't have a say in this.
Which reminds me. Time for a renewal on my subscription.
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Re: So why didn't she recuse herself?
The Supreme Court called it no different than "garden variety theft". Want to complain about them too?
This story is all over the internet
You mean whiny tech and freetard blogs like this one? What a surprise.
Newsflash: nobody really cares about crybaby lawbreakers.
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I think you mean "Freedomtards."
Damn leeches.
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A "Holy Unmercenary"
and a "fool for Christ's Sake"
If you read the links you will find they are really very appropriate - and the term is actually a great honour
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Re: Re: So why didn't she recuse herself?
Any time you want to go away and find a blog for arrogant, rude, pointless people who whinge about how hard-done-by they are because the goverment doesn't just automatically tax everyone and give them the money instead of them having to work for a living would be just fine. Send a postcard.
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Is that better or worse than a garden-monotony theft?
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Re: Re: So why didn't she recuse herself?
Which is funny, because they've ruled over and over that it is, in fact, NOT THEFT!
get your facts straight troll.
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Article forwarded to Judge Howell's office.
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From my very unscientific count, none thus far. Only statements of fact and opinion.
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Article forwarded to Judge Howell's office."
Facts and opinion are not subject to libel. Section 230 as well.
TrollFail.
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Honestly, how rare is this?
It almost seems like our justice system would be better if there were always 3 judges on a case rather than one....
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Re: Honestly, how rare is this?
As for your second point, a federal appellate lawyer friend of mine recently said the same thing about 3 judge panels. Apparently, even without a conflict of interest, some judges make bad decisions. Shocking, I know.
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then recuse
else continue
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Ooo geek humour... love it. Yep a divide-by-zero error will do it every time :-)
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err - no ..... technically a geek is actually a performer who bites the heads of live animals (Ozzy Osbourne?)
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However in integer division by zero there is usually a failure, small explosion, fire, and then engineers running around like chickens with there heads cut off.
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by a geek? - see above...
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Conflict of interest?
If the RIAA or a company they represent were actually a party in this case, it's likely that this could represent at least the perception of a conflict of interest, but the RIAA is not involved. This is a law suit brought by movie studios over movie file sharing.
I'm not saying that this isn't an incredibly stupid ruling or that ill-conceived and twisted patterns of deceptive thought she acquired as a RIAA lobbyist had no effect on Judge Howell's ruling, but it's just bad law. It's not a conflict of interest.
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Yes, this is an absurd ruling which goes against how other judges has ruled (though I don't think it specifically violates any appellate precedents in that circuit), but there's no evidence that she made this absurd ruling for the sake of personal gain rather than due to the same bizarre copy-right-wing ideology that likely got her her lobbying job in the first place (or that she developed during her time there).
Now, if she still owned a bunch of stock or stock options in RIAA companies, the argument you're making about the benefit the precedent might have on the RIAA could certainly hold some weight, but I've heard of nothing like that here.
(I'm also not saying that this isn't corruption--it's certainly conceivable that her original appointment was in some sense Obama paying the MPAA/RIAA/etc. back for campaign contributions. I'm just saying that there hasn't been any evidence that there was a conflict of interest of the sort that would be expected to lead to an ethical judge recusing herself from the case.)
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Quote
"Unquestionably, there are online crooks who are getting away with impunity. Victims are fending for themselves."
Not really sure what context this was in or what it referring to, but it is interesting for sure.
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I'd certainly agree. Your task-masters (the labels) are getting away with impunity and the victims (artists and consumers) are stuck fending for themselves. When the whole label astroturfing thing doesn't work out for you, I am sure Mr. Hope from JAWA might be able to use your services.
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As for the "Victims are fending for themselves." part, I am really OK with that myself.
Copyright is a government granted monopoly where only the rights holder is allowed to profit from the works, so it makes sense to me that if the rights holder wants to enforce that copyright then the rights holder should shoulder all the responsibility to do so, financially or otherwise.
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I can understand having worked with legislation towards a particular goal such as being involved with the creation of the DMCA, that's not necessarily going to be a smoking gun, it just happened to be something you were involved with.
But, when you receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from a private corporation to promote a particular viewpoint to the government, and then become a judge and just happen to immediately start ruling in favor of those particular viewpoints(regardless of whether it's for the same company), I can see it being rather understandable that a few eyebrows are going to be raised.
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I'm shocked, the justice is just failing apart in the U.S. there is no bar if the ex-employee's from the recording industry can anybody can be a judge now.
Maybe Osama Bin Laden can be a judge to.
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Corrupt Legal System
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1) the judge is on the riaa`s payroll
2) that riaa lawyer wanted on this judge
3) no other judge has ever lumped so many unrelated cases together
4) reminder: their is a law in place for prevent this, but yet we are here
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well
Well that and the wailing of the damned whenever she banged her Gavel of Soul-Eating.
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Facebook Group Calls To Impeach Judge Howell for Conflict of Interest
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Re: Facebook Group Calls To Impeach Judge Howell for Conflict of Interest
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Judge Howell didn't check the copyright owner
Maverick doesn't even own the rights to the movie, its owned by © 2008 Warner Home Entertainment. All rights reserved.
The way most bit torrents work they are configurable for various settings on duplicate named files. Last in first out is common so in this case if multiple downloads happened simultaneously in the "swarm" chances are NONE of the data from the Maverick Entertainment movie of the same name was even downloaded, and even more likely the "swarm" side of the upload would have been confused.
Anyway, five minutes and an understanding of bittorrent configurations could have saved thousands of lawsuits. The way it goes now however is that Maverick Entertainment is going to be collecting settlements enabled by a DC Judge Howell that is on the edge of conflict of interest, for copyright infringement of a movie they don't even own.
CRAZY...I wonder if Warner Home Entertainment can sue Maverick Entertainment for gains $$$ that were knowingly obtained under a false and clearly confusible bit torrent file.
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