With materials provided by MediaSentry, the RIAA accused former Harvard University student Joel Tenenbaum of sharing seven songs over the KaZaA network in 2003. In 2007, after Tenenbaum had tried but failed to "settle" the case to Sony BMG's satisfaction, they sued him. On 23 December 2008 Tenenbaum's lawyer, Harvard professor Charles Nesson, filed a motion requesting that the court allow the trial to be streamed live on the internet.
The court acquiesced and, on 14 January 2009, agreed to "narrowcast" coverage by the Courtroom View Network (the closed system of recording audio-visual elements of trials) "to the website of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which will make the recording publicly available for all non-commercial uses via its website."
Sony BMG, as might be expected, was not in favor of such a move and entered a motion to stay the court's decision. They fear that webcasts from the trial will go viral and that the more public such trials are made, the more likely their cases will suffer (not to mention their reputations with their customers).
Although it is unlikely that the decision to make a webcast of the trial available to the public will be changed, the hearing which had originally been scheduled for 22 January 2009 has been postponed to 24 February 2009.
The case itself has generated a lot of interest from a variety of civil liberties groups. Digital Music News reports that the Associated press, the New York Times, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and NBC Universal are among those news agencies calling for this trial to be webcast in its entirety.
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