The RIAA is suing Boston University grad student Joel Tenenbaum for copyright infringement. The lawsuit started getting national press coverage when Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson began representing Tenenbaum. A longtime critic of the recording industry’s legal efforts to stop P2P infringement by suing individuals, Nesson originally requested that the court stream its proceedings.

The RIAA tried to block the proposed streaming, saying it would go against federal guidelines for cameras in the courtroom as well as make it difficult for a fair trial.

Although the judge originally dismissed the RIAA’s objections, the trade organization successfully pushed back the date the streaming was to take place by objecting to the way the proceedings would be streamed.

As originally proposed by Nesson, the proceedings would be transmitted to Harvard’s Berkman Center For Internet and Society, after which it would be streamed to the world.

U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner had originally green-lighted the stream, which was supposed to take place Jan. 22, but delayed it until Feb. 24 after the RIAA pointed out that Nesson ran the Berkman Center For Internet and Society, thus raising “basic issues of fairness.”

The judge eventually decided the RIAA is welcome to the same transmission the Berkman Center will receive, and it may stream the proceedings under the same conditions the Center agreed to, which is to run the complete proceedings unedited.

The news organizations filing the brief supporting the streaming are Associated Press, The New York Times, Courtroom Television Network, Dow Jones & Co., Gannett Co. Inc., The Hearst Corp., NPR, NBC Universal, Incisive Media, Radio-Television News Directors Association, The Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, E.W. Scripps Co., Tribune Co. and Washington Post Digital.

“It is hard to imagine a hearing more deserving of public scrutiny through the same technological medium that is at the heart of this litigation,” the news organizations said in their brief to the appeals court.