Let’s Depose / Fun with the RIAA

- May 9, 2005 @ 6:17 pm · Filed under Legalese

I had my first deposition today, and it’s left me mildly
depressed. 
No, I didn’t screw up.  But it made me think about my own
mortality. 
The plaintiff has a fatal disease, that will slowly and painfully kill
him during the course of the next year.  Despite this one year
death sentence, he’ll spend at least 10 days of his life stuck in
a conference room in Oakland with attorneys like me interrogating him
about every intimate detail of his life for hours on end.  Then,
if he survives to his trial date, he’ll spend another month or so
sitting in a courtroom.

So, how, I’m stuck thinking, if you had only one year left to live, why
the hell would you waste 10% of it dealing with the legal system? 
No wonder people hate lawyers.

**

The second part of this post goes completely against the tone of the
first half, but I cannot resist.  Hilary Rosen, former head of the
RIAA, has written not-quite a screed against Apple’s iPod where she advocates violating the DMCA:

So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek,
you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from
another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will
go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality.
How cruel.

Something tells me that she’s on Microsoft’s payroll (even though the big MS is pro-DRM too).

5 Comments

  1. Whup

    May 10, 2005 @ 12:23 am

    1

    and from the doctor’s POV… the patient would be in the hospital for almost 100% of the time, being stuck for blood daily, and woken up in the middle of the night to have blood pressure, temperature checked… and don’t even get to sleep in their own bed… these days… I don’t have the mental energy to take any movie that’s not just pure brainless comedy.

  2. ToastyKen

    May 10, 2005 @ 12:57 am

    2

    Well, she also says there’s no way to play music you buy from other sources on your iPod. Um, hello? Has she heard of Compact Discs? You can rip them and copy onto your iPod….

  3. echan

    May 10, 2005 @ 10:19 am

    3

    TK, I’m not sure if you read her full post, but yes, she does acknowledge at one can play ripped CDs on an iPod.

  4. gpapilion

    May 10, 2005 @ 7:31 pm

    4

    The issue that is arising is apple’s lack of openess. Apple’s DRM is only available on iPods and Apple software. The industry fear is that Apple will create a defacto standard around their DRM, and can effectively shutout any company interested in making digital music software.

    Microsofts DRM standard is much more open.

  5. badxmaru

    May 10, 2005 @ 8:52 pm

    5

    HACK THE PLANET! HACK THE PLANET!

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