Charlie Nesson isn’t one for small gestures—the Harvard law professor is known as “Billion Dollar Charlie,” after all, and he was one of the lead lawyers in the famous industrial dumping case that became the book (and then the movie) A Civil Action. So when he took on the defense of a 25-year old Boston University physics grad student who was accused of sharing copyrighted music online, the case suddenly promised to be more than usually interesting. It has not disappointed so far.
But it has also seemed like a bit of a circus, what with attempts to depose lawyers from the other side, the filing of official apologies, motions on webcasting the trial, threats of judicial sanctions, and Nesson’s desire to record everything—including typically-private lawyer-to-lawyer conference calls. Things grew strange enough that even noted RIAA scourge Ray Beckerman wrote, “To you law students and young lawyers out there; please don’t think you can learn anything from this case. Just ignore everything you are seeing from both sides. I have seen more bizarre filings from both sides’ lawyers than I would imagine possible.”
Click here to read the rest of this article
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
