What? No. The lawyers have a ethical and moral duty as lawyers and human beings to do the right thing. I'm not a lawyer, so I'll make an analogy relevant to my profession. If some guy hires me to make a picture site and then insists on a section for sex pics of children I have an ethical duty to back out of the contract.
I understand your sentiment, but you're wrong. We need lawyers who will work even for despicable clients. The reason for this rule is that everyone is entitled to legal representation they can trust.
I'd say the law (not lawyers) was at fault as well, or even mostly. A legal system can't rely on the honesty or ethics of claimants and defendants to function correctly almost by definition.
I am afraid you are making a false analogy. IN your comparison you are being hired to blatantly violate both the law and normal morality. In your analogy, you had a duty to not only back out of the contract but to call law enforcement.
The lawyers in this case where asked to act within legal and ethical boundaries and within those boundaries they had a duty to act in their clients interest. The final results where unjust, but their actions where fully in upholding their duty.
The results where wrong, but the fault lies elsewhere. In looking for the fault, I would start by looking at the clients (namely the RIAA) that insisted on pursuing this and at the law itself which permits statutory damages so grossly out of proportion to real damages.
In fact, there has been some contention that such high statutory damages may be unconstitutional and I would not at all be surprised if Mr. Camara pursued that avenue.
The lawyers have a ethical and moral duty as lawyers and human beings to do the right thing.
That's not exactly how a lawyer's professional responsibility is defined. But anyway, as a producer of original writings that have been infringed more than once, I'm glad there are lawyers who work to uphold the copyright laws.
