As the RIAA winds down its nearly decade-long campaign of lawsuits against file-sharers (read: youth and students), it still has a few unresolved suits to clear up. One of these, a $1 million action against Joel Tenenbaum, will be broadcast live on the internet thanks to the efforts of the law students of Tenenbaum's lawyer. According to hypebot, Professor Charles Musser and his students at Harvard Law School filed a motion with Massachusetts District Court Judge Nancy Gernter to make a live internet feed of the trial available. Gertner approved the motion, opining that since the case primarily concerns "a generation that does not read newspapers or watch the evening news, but gets its information largely, if not almost exclusively, over the internet," it would be beneficial to those following the case to have it streamed live.
The RIAA, none too happy that the world will be able to watch it and its lawyers sue the shit out of Tenenbaum for downloading a mere seven songs, moved to appeal the motion over the weekend. In a PDF response linked on the JoelFightsBack Twitter, Musser and his team said, "If the RIAA's position is to educate people about the business and legal climate of the music industry, it is unclear to us why they are appealing this decision."
While it seems uncertain at the moment how the stream will be made available, we know that the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School will be undertaking the finances and logistics of the project under a Creative Commons license so that the feed will be free to whoever chooses to watch. Musser and company have said that they "are working hard to ensure that the Berkman Center is not the exclusive distributor of the content," so presumably there will be multiple sources for viewing the legal proceedings when they began with a hearing this Thursday. Check JoelFightsBack for updates.
