Talk:Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum

Merge material from existing page
Material from Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum should be merged into this article and then the other article deleted. --Brianwc (talk) 04:16, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This article is just a month old. The other one's been around for over 2 years.  If anything, this article should be deleted. If you take issue with the name of the article article, the proper course is to go to the other article and propose a move.--Louiedog (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter which entry is merge into which. They are duplicates and need to be merged. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 01:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * After all, we should probably move this to Tenenbaum v. Sony BMG Music Entertainment, given the upcoming SCOTUS case. --bender235 (talk) 13:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like I jumped the gun. ;-) Still, both articles should be merged. --bender235 (talk) 13:36, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Is there some indication that SCOTUS granted cert? All I see is that it was scheduled for discussion at yesterday's conference.  I don't see any cert order at SCOTUS or any coverage in the media.


 * In any case, it's premature to move this to a SCOTUS-case article until there's a SCOTUS decision. TJRC (talk) 23:15, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * SCOTUS denied cert today; there should not be a SCOTUS-level article on this case. TJRC (talk) 17:28, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the proposed merge, just looking at how A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. was handled, it seems it's not unheard of to have separate articles for district and appellate court cases. I used to be in favor of merging, but now I think it'll be fine to keep both articles. We just need to get this one (the appellate case article) in better shape, and both articles need to make it clear what they're referring to. I removed the merge template (it's been 6 months) and worked on things a bit, in both articles. Basically, each needs to summarize the other, and provide extra detail about its own topic. Both probably should have identical mentions of the SCOTUS situation. So there's still work to do.

One sticking point is the way the articles are named. Both cases actually have the same parties, so the case names are identical: Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al., v. Tenenbaum.

But the articles and their lead text all have slight differences:
 * Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum - lower court case
 * bolded text in lead is Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Tenenbaum
 * Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum - appellate case
 * bolded text in lead is Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum (1st Circuit Court)

What's the convention on Wikipedia in this situation? What should the article names be, and what should the bolded text in the lead be? —mjb (talk) 10:48, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with the position that the two should be combined.  The material covered is a single case across two courts.   We do have some cases where the two have been treated separately, but that's often a product of the timeline of how the articles have been produced, and not an effective statement that each court proceeding has independent notability.  WP:WAX is particularly appropriate to bear in mind in these cases, where the chronology of article creation tends toward these kinds of results; such results should not be looked upon as good examples.


 * As far as I know, there is no guideline on point here, but to me it makes sense to have multiple articles in certain cases; e.g.., where the lower court articulates distinct principles of law that are not addressed in the higher court's decision; or perhaps where the activity itself (for instance, a high-profile murder) has distinct notability. I suspect that this is more likely to be the case in a court of appeals / Supreme Court dichotomy than a district court / court of appeals dichotomy, because the Supreme Court review is more focused on particular issues, often leaving intact other issues in the appellate court. TJRC (talk) 15:29, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmm, you're right. A glance at Category:United States copyright case law suggests maybe I just stumbled across an anomaly with the separate articles for the Napster case. I'm OK with it either way, really. It's just that in 6 months, none of us have had the energy to do the merge, and although I'm eager to do it, I don't want to make time for it if there's an effort underway to have separate articles for situations like this. So if that's really a non-issue, then I'll go ahead and do the merge. What should the canonical article title be? —mjb (talk) 23:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The merged article should be called "Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum" Legal citation principles call for dropping phrases like 'et al' in case names, and at both the District Court and Appellate levels the full name of the plaintiff was used in court documents (not just "Sony BMG"). See, for instance, fn 7 on the other article and fn 1 of this article. Brianwc (talk) 19:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

NPOV in title
I know it's fashonable in the internet to hate Sony, but I fail to see why either of these "articles" headline Sony's involvement. It seems Warner are a much bigger player in this, with more music stolen. Adding NPOV to both articles, as clearly it's childish American Sony hating fanboy nonsense. Both "articles" should be merged as "Music Industry Vs Tenenbaum". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snakeskincowboy (talk • contribs) 16:58, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Civil court cases have titles, assigned by the court, of the form plaintiff v. defendant, italicized if possible, underlined if italics aren't available. When there are multiple plaintiffs, as in this case, one of them usually listed, followed by et al. ("and others" or "and the rest"). In this case, Sony BMG Music Entertainment received the honor of being the one plaintiff named, rather than lumped into the et al., for reasons unknown; perhaps it was a just a clerical decision by the court. Wikipedia articles about such cases are titled exactly how the court titled the case, usually. There is no anti-Sony conspiracy here. —mjb (talk) 03:14, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of California, Berkeley supported by WikiProject Intellectual Property law 2011 Berkeley and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:43, 2 January 2023 (UTC)