tennenbaum deposition - grind and intrusiveness of copyright process

Charlie Nesson

September 24, 2008

i am sitting twitting at the legal deposition of a digital native who is having his digital universe bared to exploration by the RIAA

“did you download pornography on kazaa”

matt oppenheim, present as RIAA client, the man who took napster down, passes notes to his subordinate who asks the questions, nailing down elements of asserted copyright violation.

joel tennenbaum is a digital native now 24 years of age
in many ways he is a stand-in for his born digital generation
his alleged copyright violations occurred years ago
perhaps like yours

RIAA is using of the full force of federal law against him
a case study in the grinding operation of the federal rules of civil procedure
and of federal statutory law behind it

joel is now an adult of an age that empowers him to vote and sit on juries
likewise other digital natives of his coming cohort

will his peers in the peer to peer world of sharing he grew up in be challenged from his jury “for cause”? will juries in the future be likewise cleansed?

i ended the day begun at 9am at 6pm. here my twitters for the day. read from the bottom up:

so you used napster, kazaa and limewire

when did you stop using limewire

do you have an understanding of what copyright infringement is

so you understood that with kazaa running in the background people could download from you

nine inch nails, did you put it in a share folder after you ripped it

40 pages of screenshots of sublimeguy@KaZaA

just handed a printout showing porn all over sublimeguy14@KaZaA

joel in red sox shirt and sun glasses

they mark a section of the transcript in which joel spars with philosophy

audiogalaxy, aimster, direct connect

what is your myspace page

did you ever blog about your car
did you upload photographs

what did you use anglefire for

lady tiger pregnant with twins examining joel

but then turned to settlement and opposition, $12000 and going up with expenses

at lunch all is jovial talk

joel wearing a red sox shirt

this is the interface

did the computer have speakers

did you ever use sublimeguy14 on your e machine

did it have kazaa on it

where is that computer

once the computer fried what was the next computer you had

in a deposition watching riaa capture a defendant’s total digital history based on their power to depose a defendant they are suing