Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Jennifer Pariser, SONY BMG witness who "misspoke" during Capitol Records v. Thomas trial, goes to work directly for RIAA

Jennifer Pariser, the SONY BMG Music lawyer who -- according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman -- "misspoke" in her testimony at the first Capitol Records v. Thomas trial, has joined the RIAA, according to this report in Variety.

In actuality it is not clear that the statement that was attributed to her is in fact what she said at the trial. It appears that the media reports were wrong. See this explanation in Ars Technica.

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net





Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

7 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

The RIAA wrote (+):
“We are thrilled to have Jenny join our team,” said Steven M. Marks, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, RIAA.

-- well, I would be thrilled too if the new person in my team is a walking time-bomb whose head might explode just like hers according to her confession on the stand in Thomas ;-)

In her new position, Pariser will oversee all RIAA litigation matters and provide counsel on a variety of other issues. Pariser reports to Marks and replaces Ken Doroshow, who recently left the RIAA[...]

-- "litigation matters"? Now wait a minute: Why again are RIAA lawyers fighting the counterclaims in Tenenbaum that name them as party to be sued too when they publicly admit in their press releases that they are the litigious guys?!

(+) http://riaa.com/newsitem.php?id=F9841517-4526-AF70-CC4A-1E35BF424EC8

Scott said...

Didn't the word "misspoke" enter the Washington political argot with the Nixon administration?

Jadeic said...

No surprise here... of course they have brought her on board. Having successfully established the 'misspoke' defence then the RIAA can have Jennifer spout all the more unpalatable lies and if they are contested simply shrug and claim that she 'misspoke': she does that sometimes Your honour, it's no big deal. The sobriquet Jennifer 'Patsy' Pariser springs to mind.

Dave

raybeckerman said...

In actuality it is not clear that the statement that was attributed to her is in fact what she said at the trial. It appears that the media reports were wrong. See this explanation in Ars Technica.

I relied on the in-person accounts of the reporters for Wired and Ars Technica, but it appears that they were both wrong.

Anonymous said...

Ray, reading the transcript of the Thomas trial, the words

"but when an individual person makes a copy for themself, which is a nice way of saying steals one copy and just uses it for their personal consumption, I suppose we've been harmed to the tune of one CD"

can be interpreted either way (my interpretation is the same as the initial media reports). But if interpreted in the favor of the RIAA, why would Cary Sherman make the statements he did about "mishearing" a question, and that Ms. Pariser's comments were "not the position of the industry"?

Or maybe it has just gotten to the point where, based on previous behavior, that I cannot trust anything that comes out of their mouths?

Jadeic said...

Apologies - I misspoke.

See how easy it rolls of the tongue.

All is forgiven.

Dave

Anonymous said...

Another thought - if the Thomas trial had been broadcast/narrowcast/somehowcast, the record companies and the RIAA would have been able to quickly challenge any (supposedly) erroneous interpretations of testimony by the media.

Oh, the irony.