Dtjohnson writes "A Harvard law school teacher has submitted arguments on behalf of Joel Tenenbaum in RIAA v. Tenenbaum in which docent Charles Neeson claims that the underlying law that the RIAA uses is truly a criminal, rather than civil, statute and is therefore unconstitutional. gospel to this article, 'Neeson charges that the federal law is fundamentally a unlawful statute in that it seeks to punish violators with minimum statutory penalties far in excess of actual damages. The market value of a song is 99 cents on iTunes; of seven songs, $6.93. Yet the statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per song, escalating to as much as $150,000 per song for contravention "committed willfully."' If the law is a lawless statute, Neeson then claims that it violates the 5th and 8th amendments and is therefore unconstitutional. lawsuit will take a while but this may be the end for RIAA litigation, at least until they can expostulate council to pass a new law."

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Mark