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> Five lawyers billed the "vast majority" of the hours, charging rates that varied between $395 per hour and $820 per hour. The most work was done by Randall Ne

> Five lawyers billed the "vast majority" of the hours, charging rates that varied between $395 per hour and $820 per hour. The most work was done by Randall Newman, who billed 2,193 hours at $640 per hour. King found the rates were all reasonable given "the cases cited, the National Law Journal survey, and our own experience." Surely the contribution of these people to civilization is well correlated with the economic benefits reaped. Which is encouraging because we want to inspire future generations to such awesome achievements!

MWil 10y ago
Except guess what ain't free yet? All the filings and work these lawyers performed in the public domain for the case. That'll cost you from PACER despite evidence that court filings don't cost as much as the government says they do and then the surplus goes to other efforts. Hopefully some lawyer get PAID to change that.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  Funny, even for my own case, I had to use Pacer and pay for access. A fucking racket is what it is.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Is it a racket for the DMV to charge you fees for title and registration?
    - MWil 10y ago
      If a law said they were only legally allowed to charge for the cost of supplying the paper/ink and labor involved yet they charged a flat fee that in the aggregate that was magnitudes larger than what it cost...yes. That's the analogous scenario here. edit: and now I'm confused b/c you're an appellate lawyer... edit2: btw, there's a reasonable scenario where free is the most they could legally charge, in case you were focusing on the fact that a fee is charged at all
    - riskable 10y ago
      Is it a "racket"? No. Are the fees "just"? Well, I honestly don't know. It probably varies on a state-by-state basis but here in Florida the title fee is likely outdated and unnecessary considering that it is all handled electronically and the cost to transfer and store such information is likely fractions of a percentage of a penny. The original cost of the title fee stems from what I can only assume is the cost of paying people to file and retrieve such paperwork. I view the registration fee as just another tax. In fact, the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think) and it takes that tax as part of the vehicle registration fee. Is the copyright system "just"? No. Hell no. We're so far removed from that point that some people view copyright violation as a form of justice. A lot of that likely stems from the length of terms for copyright and the fact that everything is copyrighted by default. Go back to mandatory registration (with a registration fee =) and somewhere between 5-25 year terms depending on the work and that'd be a good start towards copyright justice.
      - harryh 10y ago
        The taxes you are paying for out of state purchases in Florida are just basic sales taxes like you pay on almost anything else.
      - pc86 10y ago
        > the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think) I believe most states require this (if you purchased the vehicle less than one prior to the date you are registering it in the new state).
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Please make sure to use RECAP when you use Pacer: the docs you access are dumped into the Internet Archive, and if the docs already exist in the Internet Archive, they can be retrieved from there instead (to reduce PACER costs). We'll get every doc out of PACER one day and reform their stance on charges for access, until then RECAP will have to do. https://free.law/recap/ https://free.law/recap/ EDIT: If you work in the PACER IT department and want to send me a hard drive, that'd be fine too ;)
ekidd 10y ago
> Surely the contribution of these people to civilization is well correlated with the economic benefits reaped. I'm not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not. But I actually do agree that the lawyers in this case have provided significant economic benefit to the public. "Happy Birthday to You" is almost universally known in the English speaking world, even by children, and it's frequently performed in public. Up until now, restaurants and youth organizations have have often discouraged their staff from singing this song, and of course, people who did sing it publicly were at risk of getting letters from lawyers. Now several hundred million people can just sing the song without worrying about copyright issues. I have no problem with the lawyers getting paid well.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  It was a rather tongue in cheek comment. The assessment of value changes depending on where you begin your inquiry; if you look only at the immediate situation than effectively yes, these lawyers have provided a tangible public service. On the other-hand the entire branch of law in this case is providing no-benefit to civilization and it's only acts as a funnel for the transfer of wealth between entities (lawyers facilitate this transfer and benefit from it's continued practice which is definitionally parasitic since nothing of value is being created in the process).
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Copyright creates enormous wealth. You can't have markets if you can't have transactions, and you can't have transactions in software if you don't have copyright protection. You're limited to this impoverished world where the software creator has to lock it behind a services API in order to monetize it. The world benefits enormously from just being able to sell software, movies, etc. as you would a physical product. A world without copyright is not one in which studios still make the AAA movies people want and just distribute them into the public domain. It's one where you can only watch movies in theaters, or stream them onto locked down devices like Apple TVs instead of general purpose computers.
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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cft 10y ago
Here in the US we wage battles of virtues and get paid for it, not manufacture some stupid cheap memory modules or phone system boards that power everything.
joshuaheard 10y ago
Warner Music thought so, which is why they paid it.
pc86 10y ago
Only on HN can folks getting paid $200k/yr to build iPhone apps and websites decry lawyers getting paid too much.
- sidlls 10y ago
  Agreed. We should be paid much more for building these apps that transfer so much wealth to investors. As far as I can tell the folks who do the actual work of making software companies money receive far too small a share of the proceeds.
  - coupdetaco 10y ago
    Make it happen, captain.
  - pc86 10y ago
    If it's that easy why aren't you already doing it? Unless it turns out it's not that easy...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

MWil 10y ago

Except guess what ain't free yet? All the filings and work these lawyers performed in the public domain for the case. That'll cost you from PACER despite evidence that court filings don't cost as much as the government says they do and then the surplus goes to other efforts. Hopefully some lawyer get PAID to change that.

goldenkey 10y ago
Funny, even for my own case, I had to use Pacer and pay for access. A fucking racket is what it is.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Is it a racket for the DMV to charge you fees for title and registration?
  - MWil 10y ago
    If a law said they were only legally allowed to charge for the cost of supplying the paper/ink and labor involved yet they charged a flat fee that in the aggregate that was magnitudes larger than what it cost...yes. That's the analogous scenario here. edit: and now I'm confused b/c you're an appellate lawyer... edit2: btw, there's a reasonable scenario where free is the most they could legally charge, in case you were focusing on the fact that a fee is charged at all
  - riskable 10y ago
    Is it a "racket"? No. Are the fees "just"? Well, I honestly don't know. It probably varies on a state-by-state basis but here in Florida the title fee is likely outdated and unnecessary considering that it is all handled electronically and the cost to transfer and store such information is likely fractions of a percentage of a penny. The original cost of the title fee stems from what I can only assume is the cost of paying people to file and retrieve such paperwork. I view the registration fee as just another tax. In fact, the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think) and it takes that tax as part of the vehicle registration fee. Is the copyright system "just"? No. Hell no. We're so far removed from that point that some people view copyright violation as a form of justice. A lot of that likely stems from the length of terms for copyright and the fact that everything is copyrighted by default. Go back to mandatory registration (with a registration fee =) and somewhere between 5-25 year terms depending on the work and that'd be a good start towards copyright justice.
    - harryh 10y ago
      The taxes you are paying for out of state purchases in Florida are just basic sales taxes like you pay on almost anything else.
    - pc86 10y ago
      > the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think) I believe most states require this (if you purchased the vehicle less than one prior to the date you are registering it in the new state).
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Please make sure to use RECAP when you use Pacer: the docs you access are dumped into the Internet Archive, and if the docs already exist in the Internet Archive, they can be retrieved from there instead (to reduce PACER costs). We'll get every doc out of PACER one day and reform their stance on charges for access, until then RECAP will have to do. https://free.law/recap/ https://free.law/recap/ EDIT: If you work in the PACER IT department and want to send me a hard drive, that'd be fine too ;)

ekidd 10y ago

> Surely the contribution of these people to civilization is well correlated with the economic benefits reaped. I'm not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not. But I actually do agree that the lawyers in this case have provided significant economic benefit to the public. "Happy Birthday to You" is almost universally known in the English speaking world, even by children, and it's frequently performed in public. Up until now, restaurants and youth organizations have have often discouraged their staff from singing this song, and of course, people who did sing it publicly were at risk of getting letters from lawyers. Now several hundred million people can just sing the song without worrying about copyright issues. I have no problem with the lawyers getting paid well.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
It was a rather tongue in cheek comment. The assessment of value changes depending on where you begin your inquiry; if you look only at the immediate situation than effectively yes, these lawyers have provided a tangible public service. On the other-hand the entire branch of law in this case is providing no-benefit to civilization and it's only acts as a funnel for the transfer of wealth between entities (lawyers facilitate this transfer and benefit from it's continued practice which is definitionally parasitic since nothing of value is being created in the process).
- rayiner 10y ago
  Copyright creates enormous wealth. You can't have markets if you can't have transactions, and you can't have transactions in software if you don't have copyright protection. You're limited to this impoverished world where the software creator has to lock it behind a services API in order to monetize it. The world benefits enormously from just being able to sell software, movies, etc. as you would a physical product. A world without copyright is not one in which studios still make the AAA movies people want and just distribute them into the public domain. It's one where you can only watch movies in theaters, or stream them onto locked down devices like Apple TVs instead of general purpose computers.
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cft 10y ago

Here in the US we wage battles of virtues and get paid for it, not manufacture some stupid cheap memory modules or phone system boards that power everything.

joshuaheard 10y ago

Warner Music thought so, which is why they paid it.

pc86 10y ago

Only on HN can folks getting paid $200k/yr to build iPhone apps and websites decry lawyers getting paid too much.

sidlls 10y ago
Agreed. We should be paid much more for building these apps that transfer so much wealth to investors. As far as I can tell the folks who do the actual work of making software companies money receive far too small a share of the proceeds.
- coupdetaco 10y ago
  Make it happen, captain.
- pc86 10y ago
  If it's that easy why aren't you already doing it? Unless it turns out it's not that easy...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]