Contributions to the Fund are tax deductible and may be made at the following URL:

https://www.fsf.org/associate/riaa.

1. The sole use of the funds will be to pay fees and/or expenses of technical expert witnesses, forensic examiners, and other technical consultants assisting individuals named as defendants in non-commercial, peer-to-peer file sharing cases brought by the RIAA, EMI, SONY BMG, Vivendi Universal, and Warner Bros. Records, and their affiliated companies, such as Interscope, Arista, UMG, Fonovisa, Motown, Atlantic, Priority, and others.

2. The Fund will be advised by Ray Beckerman, the author of Recording Industry vs. The People, along with a group of selected attorneys acting as advisors. These attorneys will submit payment requests to the Fund, based upon their views as to which cases are most deserving of assistance, and in what at amounts, and at what time.

3. Among the criteria to be considered in making recommendations to the Fund will be the following:

A. The importance of the case to critical legal issues.
B. The demonstrated commitment of the defendant, and/or of the defendant's attorney if the defendant has an attorney, to seeing his or her case through to conclusion, and to fighting for important legal issues.
C. The facts and circumstances of the particular case.
D. The level of investment made by the defendant, and/or by the defendant's attorney if the defendant has an attorney, in time, money, and labor, in defending the case.
E. The legal posture of the case.
F. The need for assistance.
G. The need for technical expertise in the case.
H. The quality and commitment of technical expertise which may have been contributed to the case.
I. The competing needs of other cases.
J. And other similar factors.

4. Defendants, or attorneys representing defendants, who request funding for experts or technical consultants, should send requests by email to Ray Beckerman; the subject field of the email should read "Technical Expert Funding Request".

In a Thanksgiving fund-raising appeal for the expert witness defense fund, Beckerman wrote the following:

As many of you know, a remarkable event took place the other day, when the technical community reached out its hand to the victims of the RIAA reign of terror, and the Free Software Foundation established a special fund to assist the victims of the RIAA's onslaught.

I think this is a cataclysmic event in the history of the RIAA's litigation campaign. It represents a coming together of the tech community, which is the community most aware of the faked nature of the RIAA's cases, and the RIAA's victims.

I think this wonderful initiative by the Free Software Foundation will have a very broad appeal for a number of reasons.

One, it will help to get the truth out to the Courts, who until now have been hearing almost exclusively from the RIAA's dubious experts-for-hire. Some judges have admitted their lack of technological savvy. Witness the string of cases, Interscope v. Duty in Arizona, Arista v. Greubel, Fonovisa v. Alvarez, and Warner v. Payne in Texas, and Maverick v. Goldshteyn in Brooklyn, New York, where all five (5) judges declined to decide a simple question of law because they said they didn't understand the technology of Kazaa well enough to make a decision.

Secondly, it will be an enormous equalizer, enabling the RIAA victims to have technical experts who are not only as good as the RIAA's, but who will be much better, and who will not have a financial interest in the outcome of the case, as the RIAA's experts -- Doug Jacobson and Tom Mizzone -- have.

Thirdly, I think it will have an enormous appeal to the computer and internet industries and to the tech community, because (a) it will help to oppose the sloppy junk science the RIAA has been trying to foist upon the courts, (b) it will help stop the RIAA's attempts to rewrite copyright law and destroy the internet, by establishing precedents in cases against defenseless victims who do not have the resources with which to fight back, and (c) it will enable tech people who take their time to assist RIAA victims to receive compensation for their services.

This Thanksgiving would be a great time to make a contribution to the fund, so that next year, and in years to come, the Thanksgivings of so many decent, law-abiding American families, will not be ruined as they have been during the past four years by the RIAA's lawless, irresponsible, unscientific, and unAmerican campaign of terror against the working people of this country.

Please:

1. Go this link and contribute:
https://www.fsf.org/associate/riaa
and
2. Pass this along to your friends, neighbors, and everyone on your email list.

Thank you, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Best regards.
-Ray