Harvard professor getting on Yale judge's nerves in piracy case

By Eriq Gardner

A famous Harvard Crimson headline, and the subject of a recent documentary, put the outcome of a 1968 football game this way: "“Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.

The Ivy League rivalry continues in the realm of entertainment law.

Massachusetts District Court Judge Nancy Gertner is a 1971 graduate of Yale Law School. Recently, she's had the pleasure of facing down Harvard law professor Charles Nesson as he leads a class project defending grad student Joel Tenenbaum, accused of downloading and making songs available over the peer-to-peer file sharing system Kazaa.

The case has been subject to all sorts of crazy motions and activity, from Nesson's attempts to broadcast the case live over the Internet to the professor's experimentation with crowd-sourcing his legal briefs. Just yesterday, Nesson filed a motion to dismiss on grounds that such damages "represent an unconstitutional abrogation of due process when enforced against a noncommercial defendant" and "bear no reasonable relation to actual harms resulting from Joel Tenenbaum’s individual alleged infringement."

The behavior has drawn the ire of the RIAA, who despite public indications it would step back from its aggressive anti-filesharing litigation strategy, has nevertheless pursued this one, perhaps to counter Nesson's zealous and possibly counterproductive defense of his client.

Now, Judge Gertner has evidently grown sick of Professor Nesson's behavior. In a court order, she writes, "The Court will not hesitate to impose appropriate sanctions, including potentially substantial costs, should the Defendant waste either the Plaintiffs' time and money or scarce judicial resources by filing frivolous motions in the future."

This case has not been won or lost yet, obviously, but let's say that Yale is beating Harvard 0-0.