At a Dec. 15 hearing in Rhode Island federal court, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson and his team of students will defend (as per post on Harvard’s CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion blog) Rhode Island residents Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum from the full might of the U.S. recording industry’s combined lobbying and litigating power. The Tenenbaums face legal pressure from the industry’s lawsuit against their son, Joel, a graduate student at Boston University accused of sharing music files online.

Nesson and his team allege that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a coalition of record companies are abusing the federal court system with their litigation tactics, which attempt to make an example out of Joel and his family in the name of “deterrence.” Joel faces possible damages of more than $1 million for allegedly sharing seven songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network.

The Dec. 15 hearing will address the recording industry’s motion to force Arthur and Judie to produce their home computer so that it can be inspected for evidence of copyright infringement. The computer is not the device on which the alleged downloading took place, and Arthur and Judie did not own the computer when Joel lived with them.

“The basic rules of evidence suggest that this invasion of privacy is both unnecessary and absurd,” said Matt Sanchez, one of Nesson’s students working on the case. “This hearing isn’t only about Joel’s parents. It’s also about finally putting up a fight against the recording industry’s intimidation practices.”

The item below is excerpted from their defense of their counterclaim against the RIAA and the music companies that back it, giving a pretty good idea of the stakes involved, and what Joel is up against, it says, continuing

We are in the process of building out the docket from the case for public scrutiny. View the motion to add the RIAA as a defendant in our counterclaim here, and the amendment to the counterclaim itself here.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is in the process of bringing to bear upon the defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, the full might of its lobbying influence and litigating power. Joel Tenenbaum was a teenager at the time of the alleged copyright infringements, in every way representative of his born-digital generation.

The plaintiffs and the RIAA are seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused.

They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.

The plaintiffs in the suit and the RIAA are abusing law and this court’s civil process. Because Joel Tenenbaum allegedly downloaded seven songs from a file-sharing network comprised of millions of his peers doing likewise, the plaintiffs have already imposed upon him process filling a docket sheet running back over years.

Representing himself pro se with help from his mother he has responded with constitutional defenses and a counterclaim against the plaintiffs and against the RIAA for their abuse of law and this court’s civil process.

Joel challenges the constitutionality of the process and statute being wielded against him. The “Digital Theft Deterrence Act of 1999″ is essentially a criminal statute, punitively deterrent in its every substantive aspect.

Joel seeks damages to compensate for the actual damage RIAA has done to him and his family.

He claims the right to trial by jury including the right to offer proof and argument to the jury about what is right and what is wrong on both sides of this case.

In the face of the onslaught the plaintiffs have imposed and are continuing to impose upon him he seeks justice from both judge and jury.

At core his defenses and counterclaim raise a profoundly conceptual question: Is the law just the grind of a statutory machine to be carried out by judge and jury as cogs in the machine, or do judge and jury claim the right and duty and power of constitution and conscience to do justice.

The hearing is scheduled for December 15 at 10:00 AM at the Federal Building and Courthouse, One Exchange Terrace, Providence, RI 02903 in Courtroom A, before Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond.