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RIAA Countersued Under Racketeering Laws
Negadin writes "According to CNET News, a New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act." The woman's attornies are arguing that "...by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime."
I think it's worthy to note that, in the headline, CNET News called the lawsuit a "long-shot."
Also known as taking unfair advantage of being an officer of the court. From the Scots term for being a corrupt judge, extended to include persistantly filing false suits.
davecb@spamcop.net
She might not have the cashflow, but if what an earlier poster said about the Racketeering Act covering legal fees is true, that mightn't matter.
I quote the earlier poster:
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
I just read that a fedral judge told the RIAA to stop calling file sharing 'piracy'.
He said, it is something new and not yet defined, but it is not 'piracy'
I do not think I should have to pay some organazation every time i hear a tune.
I think making counterfit CD's or CHARGING for some one elses work IS piracy, but I really am not sure file sharing for free is...
And neither is the fedral judiciary
cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
But if they do that and you can show that they're doing so in order to unnecessarily prolong the proceedings or cause undue hardships (and we're not talking a high standard of proof here) they get their case thrown out and they will probably have to pay for your lawyer. See Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11.
Well, this has been tried before against directv (they were suing people who had purchased smart card readers). The judge (in Texas IIRC) ruled that speech related to litigation was protected, and not racketeering.
I doubt this suit will fare much better.
Because the whole point of a corporation is to limit personal liability?
Like if you open a store which is in your name, and someone falls down in the isle, they can sue and win not only the store, but your own home and personal assets as well.
If you open a store under a corporate name, and someone sues you, they can win, at most, the business. Your person and personal effects are separate from the business.
You may not like it, but the whole purpose of the concept of corporation is to limit liability, as above.
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>>I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that
>>it's pretty likely that the p2p users the RIAA
>>chose to sue were actually violating the law.
I wouldn't jump very hard on that limb...
Do you remember the grandmother who thought Kazaa was the name of a clown, or Ross Plank who was accused of downloading Spanish language songs but doesn't speak spanish?.
Actually, this is a pretty close metaphor. Real pirates killed people. They tortured them to get that treasure. They kidnaped people for ransom and often they defaulted on the promise to return them and killed them anyway. They raped. In many cases, they bore arms against the militarys of their former nations in time of war, which fits the general definition of Treason. Calling copyright violators pirates IN COURT is simply an attempt to emotionally influence the jury. Further, a lawyer has taken oaths and claims to abide by ethical standards, some of which require them to attempt to speak accurately in using legal terms in court, and, as anybody should know, Piracy is first a legal term in a court, and only secondarily at best a metaphor.
Who is John Cabal?
What somethinghallow is referring to is this response to a local newspapers editorial staff.
Here is a little sampling of my favorites for the lazy slashdot reader:
"...what is shocking is that the entertainment industries are now being completely lambasted by the editorial board for what is essentially their home town paper."
The editoral board of a home town paper is supposed to completely support any stance of local industries?
Its actually very difficult to tell what side he is on, because he keeps bringing up opposing views :
The nature of the problem is easy to describe to any consumer who has tried to jump into the digital content fray. A well-meaning consumer buys songs through the Apple iTunes store rather than downloading illegal files from Kazaa. But then, he finds those songs don?t play on his Creative Nomad MuVo digital music player, which he bought for a substantial sum only last year. Another well-meaning consumer finds he cannot sign up for Movielink because he refuses to use Internet Explorer as his browser. Another finds that, in signing up for different digital media services, each attempts to establish a different media player as his default, the result being substantial annoyance and inconvenience when trying to use a service.
But the best quote by far: ... few paragraphs later ... The editorial also characterizes the D.C. Circuit decision as ?a victory for consumer privacy rights.? I think it?s the opposite.
The editorial uses as a jumping off point the recent decision of the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case that pitted Verizon against the Recording Industry Association of America.
I always forget that not providing your customer's names away for what has been illegal finding of your customer's ISP is not a "victory for comsumer privacy".../sarcasm
I think this just serves as a reminder to go out and vote this fall.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
In a way, you're right. If the laws are corrupt, then the only hope is that juries will refuse to enforce them.
And despite what judges and lawyers will tell you, this is a legal right, which pre-dates the constitution, and was not overrulled by it.
Because of this the govt. is trying to remove the requirement for unanimity on the part of the jury to achieve a conviction. Some people, for some reason, don't think that the government is treating people fairly.
Now that mainly has to do with criminal prosecutions, and this is probably a civil matter, but the same basic principles apply. Juries should attend to the facts, and attend to the laws, and then decide as their ethics requires. Judges are to instruct you in matters of law, and to see that the evidence is presented in a proper manner. Juries are to decide what the verdict should be.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, its not. Altogether now kiddies - its "copyright infringement"
It is not theft. Theft is a criminal act. What is described is a civil act, a violation of copyright. Any recent law to the contrary will eventually be overthrown by the court.
It is NOT theft.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Listening to the above mp3 is great to (1) listen to what a real appellate argument sounds like, and (2) hear real lawyers debate stuff that's important to many /. readers, including file sharing and the meaning of the Sony Betamax decision.
Related links are here and here.
IAAM (I am a musician) and let me tell you how right you are. A mere 45 cents per CD? Shit, I can barely pay the bills, even if it goes gold...especially if I am part of a band.
Maybe an Indie label can follow this price scheme:
10 dollars (US) retail for a CD. Wholesales at $7.50. Label takes a dollar, duplication takes 1.50. Producers and artists get to divide up that 5 dollars! A gold CD yields half a million? Divided amongst 5 people? That is a VERY decent wage for a years work on an album.
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"It is the first I've heard of anyone attempting that," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn. "I guess that is a silver lining of the fact that the RIAA is suing so many people, that there are a lot of lawyers trying to figure out ways to protect folks." ... the above quote is from the article--right at the end. Unfortunately this racketeering counter-suit doesn't work when the people being sued are doing the illegal/infringing activities.
How do I know? DirecTV has been doing the same thing for far, far longer, someone counter-sued them for racketeering, and the suit was dismissed. If I'm not mistaken, it was even discussed here on Slashdot.
Anyway, the alleged activities these people are engaged in are illegal in the U.S. (but not in Canada!) so if it's proven they did them, then it's proven.
Think of the consequences of a racketeering conviction! A company would no longer be able to sue large masses of people who were infringing their intellectual property! Ack, the chaos that would ensue there!
IANAL, but since you are using legal terminology (e.g. "copyright"), "theft" must be the unauthorized misappropriation of another's property with a view to permanently deprive them of it.
Think of your basic Supply & Demand curve. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to sell more, you charge less.
(________________i__________________)
(big but[t])
That was just the 'Why you already knew for sure they were full of it, empirically.'
Adding the a skosh more complexity, the model gets a lot closer to what intuition says it is:
I recently came across a few papers, etc., dealing with what is being called 'Willingness to Pay.' What has been found is very much in line with what we all know: most people 'stealing' music/software don't get enough utility from the 'product' to buy it.
Gee, you mean that maybe the fundamental paradigm of market economics is whats happening? It doesn't require a whole new paradigm based on everyone wanting to rob poor rich oligopolists?
But wait! There's More!
The 'age old' examples are things like the Bandwagon and Snob effects. [You want more the more other people have something, or the reverse]. But think about what you already know.
If people who wouldn't have paid for your product have it and use it, well you didn't loose any potential revenue [no matter what you think honey].
Oohh Oooohh! What do you call it when more people know about your work? Oh yeah marketing .
The stuff I've read was dealing specifically with software, so I'll limit the scope to just that. When the unwilling end up willing [need app at work, change in income, etc.] the effectiveness of this form of marketing can be profound.
Oh, and what about the community effect? What about the 'buzz' effect?
Nah they don't exist, RedHat was really worth that much...
Turns out that the addition of unwilling 'pirates' in fact boosts the damned demand curve. The only people who are in danger, are those who have crap product.
[Unless there is something I've not thought of that experiences a strong Snob effect...]
So am I saying it's not 'stealing.'? Well, IANAL, and I'm not even going there.
Ok, I lied.
It is in fact possible[probable] that there is a negligible or negative loss in such activities.
Intelligent firms would actually manage and caughnotcaughoverlycaughdiscouragecaugh such behavior
But no, I don't know if I but that for the recording industry. Two reasons:
- They have behaved so stupidly that the potential positive marketing opportunity has been mung'd into a massively negative one
andAnd ya know, $1/song when the marginal cost of production is near 0, is STILL agregious.
Still don't believe me? If you charge $0.10/song, how many people wouldn't purchase damn-near-every-song-they-even-might-know-someone who-likes; but would instead deal with free P2P shares to download them 'illegally'?
Gee make alcohol illegal, nobody will drink...
PS There is a utility crew right across the street doing some highly important something involving a backhoe and jackhammer... So have pity if this entire comment falls into the 'infinite monkeys with typewriters' category...
PPS And FWIW I'm in GMT-5land...
PPPS In Soviet Russia.... ahh screw it
But in the east piracy still happens exactly as it happened in the time of sailing ships. Sure the movies may have shown pirate ships with three decks of cannons taking on the british navy but that is fiction. Most pirates used small fast ships wich could out manouver their prey (don't forget that canons of those days were more or less fixed and you needed to move the entire ship to aim) and then board and overwhelm the largely civilian crew.
This is still the way it goes. Pirate ships have gotten smaller but then most civilian ships these days are totally unarmed anyway and their crews have gotten smaller.
Piracy of a different sorts exists in areas where drug running takes place where pleasure yachts(?) are captured and the owners forced to smuggle drugs or simply killed.
For the facts on piracy today search google with "piracy lloyds" (lloyds is a famous insurance company) you will find countless links talking about the costs, the risks and people offering protection. The lloyds bits helps keeping the filesharing "piracy" links down.
So I agree with the judge who might have said that calling filesharing piracy is wrong. Piracy is a current and far different crime.
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