RIAA after Tenenbaum’s Lawyer

The RIAA looks more determined than ever to profit over people’s mistakes, seizing every opportunity that comes along to drag them through courtrooms. RIAA’s case filed against Joel Tenenbaum stands out as most suggestive of this fact.

Faced with the prospects that Joel Tenenbaum, defendant in the copyright infringement case filed by the RIAA, may be off the hook regarding payment of the demanded $675,000 in damages, the music industry has now turned against a member of Tenenbaum’s legal team, hoping to speculate the lawyer’s legal conduct flaws and use these in its favor.

Because of RIAA’s efforts invested in revealing some of the errors committed by the defendant’s legal team, both Tenenbaum and Harvard Law's Charles Nesson are now liable for part of the fees incurred by the Recording Industry Association throughout the legal proceedings. The RIAA may not have won the big prize, but it definitely aims to walk away with something or at least recover some of the legal expenses.

However, the defending legal team’s maneuver left everyone puzzled out. They left the door open for RIAA to file claims after unexpectedly posting the songs at issue in the trial on the Web, and Nesson posted a public link on his blog, thus allowing anyone to download them. Because Nesson refused to give any reasons for his actions, the record labels filed a "motion to compel" the information.

Attorneys who win a "motion to compel" have the right to request cost reimbursement for that particular motion. The labels managed to convince judge Gertner that these fees should be covered entirely by the defense, which means Tenenbaum and his legal team will have to split the motion’s costs between them.

Nesson, who agreed to represent Tenenbaum in court free of charge, is now close to paying out of his own pocket due to his inexplicable course of action. I hope that the RIAA will stop here; otherwise, Nesson risks stepping in his client’s footsteps and be the next person placed against the wall under the claim of illegal file sharing.

(via ArsTechnica)