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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."
It probably won't stick, but Bravo! I'm tired of watching the RIAA offer to settle with people regardless of guilt. By agreeing to settle many people look guilty and add fuel to the RIAA's fires.
Stick it to the Man!
Have you hugged your penguin today?
Now if everyone who got sued by the RIAA counter-sued with similar charges, you'd see these lawsuits go away entirely, for two reasons:
1) The RIAA can't stand up to intense public scrutiny, without shooting themselves (and their industry) in the foot.
2) Being sued by over 1,000 people becomes cost prohibitive very quickly, particularly considering it will be in 100's of different courtrooms spread across America.
I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but I say good for her.
The RIAA does make a bit of a racket, finally some one telling them to quiet up.
I think it's worthy to note that, in the headline, CNET News called the lawsuit a "long-shot."
Say hello to my LITTLE FRIEND!
*mows down RIAA*
God I love you Pacino....
The Mafia doesn't offer you your day in court if you would rather not pay your protection money.
The RIAA is suing those whom they think are guilty of file sharing. If you are not guilty, you have the absolute right to demand your day in court.
I'm not trying to absolve the RIAA for their heinous practices, but there is nothing illegal about what they are doing.
I have been pwned because my
She'll never win, she won't have the cashflow. Even if she were, by some miricle to 'win', she'd probably be bankrupt. Its about as useless as me suing IBM or Microsoft 'just for fun'
How dare they compare the Scum of the RIAA to such upstanding citizens. Such as: Al Capone, Tony Montana, and Don Corleone
if it is cheaper on a monthly basis, I might just pay the protection money to RIAA, instead of signing up for itunes/audible ;) :)
It is a joke. Laff!!
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
How's that work.....??
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Let them get some huge judgements and watch how fast the laws are amended in the public's favor.
Nothing like a few citizens getting their ass reamed to foster change in government.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Section 1964 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act not only provides for civil remedies in cases like this, but also automatically triples the damages and covers court costs and lawyers' fees. Personally, I'd like to see a massive class-action lawsuit against these dirtbags. If it can be won, surely the damages would be enough to curb their malicious behavior.
Why is it that the police will arrest individuals, but corporations seem to need to be sued? If someone sent in a tip to the police that the RIAA were racketeering, nothing would happen, but if the same tip were applied to an individual or gang, there would be an investigation. These days, big businesses seem much more powerful because they can hide behind lawyers and deep pockets.
The RIAA companies probably make a small profit when someone settles with them for a few grand. Lawyers take their cut, but a settlement contract isn't all that expensive or time consuming for the RIAA.
But unless they win HUGE punitive damages (and the loser actually has the money to pay and doesn't declare bankruptcy) they probably lose money when it comes down to a lawsuit. And that takes a long time and involves a lot of up-front legal expenses, for questionable return.
If enough people start counter-suing the RIAA, or at least going to court instead of settling, then the lawsuits will soon become a huge financial burden on the RIAA, even when they win.
I liked this part of the article:
"Maalouf's attorneys noted that downloading through Kazaa was openly discussed at Maalouf's daughter's school by teachers, and they downloaded songs used in classes. That should be a protected fair use of the music, the attorneys said."
First, I really wonder if the teacher said "now, put thousands of songs in your Kazaa share directory." They got nailed for apparently sharing lots and lots of copyrighted material with Internet users at large without authorization, not for downloading a song or two at the behest of a teacher.
At any rate, helping yourself to a copy of Photoshop because you need it for a class project isn't "protected fair use" (although, sensibly, Adobe and many other software companies do often take steps for students to legally get software at less than retail cost), and neither is downloading a song. Did the teacher mislead them into thinking that massive music piracy was legal? Fine; sue the teacher. But it's no excuse to break the law.
There are plenty of legitimate ways to fight back against the recording industry (as the main subject of the article is doing), but this defense is just plain silly.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Doubltless under what you propose some people may get financially mowed down, but you are leaving out a few factors wich could be very good for the masses:
1) Children age 12, Grandmothers, and People without actual computers being sued in court. Wonderfully bad publicity RIAA
2) Sympathetic Jury Nullification. More wonderfully bad publicity for RIAA
3) A Hung Jury or a simple Not Guilty Verdict. Not only bad for RIAA but it sets a track record. This is one of the things they absolutely DO NOT want.
4) A wealthy defendent who hires an Attorney who can go the distance. This would also be very bad for the RIAA.
So yes, if convicted the RIAA may just take cases to court en masse, but they could also become a classic David vs. Goliath story as well.
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uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
One has to ask two questions. First, if they are willing to settle for such a small amount, why are the fines so high to begin with. Wouldn't it be more efficient to set fines at a appropriate level in the first place? It is very arguable that such high fines were created to allow extortion.
Second, why do they want to settle so badly? It seems like they would want some percentage of the cases to go to court to establish that these people actually violated copyright. As it stands, it would be very reasonable to assert that they are randomly choosing people, and then extorting money from them.
So, with the current tactics, extortion and fear seems to be their game. It is like those old shows where a gang would go into a business and demand protection money. There are legal ways to extort this kind of money, the MPAA and BSA does it. The RIAA does not seem to care about the law.
I really don't understand why the RIAA does not get an independent arbitrator to look at each case, assign a dollar value to the damages, and then send a letter to the alleged violators. Further legal proceedings might occur if the money is not paid, but at least then we would have some confidence that the RIAA is not just harassing innocent people.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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 *
IANAL, and am just thinking out loud, but couldn't those that have been singled out by the RIAA claim some sort of discrimination? More specifically, there are hundreds of thousands of people the RIAA could pursue for sharing music. What is the chance of convincing a court to force the RIAA to attempt to identify and prosecute every single user of Kazaa that distribute RIAA music?
Not only would it cost the RIAA a fortune (as well as create logistical impossibilities), but as soon as the children of a few politicians, celebrities, executives, etc, are fingered by the RIAA we would see some fireworks fly.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Artists have known for years that they were racketeers.
Proving that in court? That's somewhat more difficult.
>> Since when do judges in the U.S. define the
>> meaning of words in a language?
Judges anywhere can tell lawyers to stop using one term to describe another. If I call a person who was shoplifting a murderer, that can influence the audience, media, and jury, any anyone else involved in a case. I imagine most people see a huge difference between shoplifting and killing, but I'm not alone in seeing a huge difference between piracy and file sharing.
As for open and shut cases, do you really trust an organization that's suing a list of IP addresses because they can't actually go to the trouble of finding actual defendants? Given that a significant percentage of the last batch of addresses aren't even in the United States (the jurisdiction of the court in which the suits were filed), do we trust their investigative prowess so much as to call the cases open and shut? If you're truly concerned about harm to your business, you do the research. If you can't even be bothered to before you trot your ass down to the courtroom, you look a little less than honest in your plaintive wails of "stop the evil file sharers from starving our artists!"
If you happen to know the plaintiff in the RICO countersuit, and you know she is guilty, then my apologies for my tone. Otherwise, I'll keep an open mind as to who the real extortionist is.
Leave it to someone here in Jersey to strike back at them using laws made with the intent of reducing organized crime.
And I am sick of people who think that the objection to actions like this by the RIAA are based on legality alone.
People who focus solely on what is and is not legal (like the RIAA and yourself) are missing the point. Sure what the RIAA is doing is legal. But it is also ludicrous.
By (ab)using the legal system in this fashion, the law must be made ever more stringent, new exceptions and modifications must be introduced and so it grows more complex and (from observation) less flexible.
All that this sort of legalism encourages is
a) pressure by special interest groups to change laws to be more favourable or to leave in place laws that have long past their intended purpose to the detriment of the community at large;
b) business models based more on litigation than real value;
c) an increasingly complex legal structure that becomes less and less a codification of the will of the people and more an artifact to protect those who can best manipulate it.
The law is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. It should be (and again I own to idealism) a means of defining the desires of those who elected the people making those laws.
Take a step back. The law under a democratic system should be a tool for everyone and usable by everyone, and examples like this are making it increasingly apparent it is not.
So what is it when someone listens to a song on the radio? Does having a copy of the song so you can listen to it when you want make it theft? What if you record it off the radio?
I'm not saying I think file sharing is not theft, I'm just playing "what if".
I was thinking about "piracy" the other day. If I break into your house and take your TV, it is obviously theft because I have obtained the TV without paying for it and you have suffer the loss of your TV. If, however I make a copy of your copyrighted song, I have still gotten something without paying, but you are not out anything except the money you theoretically would have received for my copy.
When I was a kid, I used to make "unauthorized copies" of lots of programs for my Commodore 64 (I don't do that anymore... I mostly use Free Software or buy the few things I can't get as Open Source). Anyway, the software industry was not really deprived of the money they would have gotten from me purchasing all those games because I never could have afforded them anyway.
To put it another way, if you work minimum wage at Burger King and you download $200,000 worth of music, have you really deprived the music industry of $200,000? No. That's why I find the numbers they spread around about the cost of "piracy" to be misleading.
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"
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.
Yeah just mentioning jury nullification though is a sure way to get kicked off a jury.
Works every time. Little unnerving though when the judge asks me if in all cases I can follow the law as he describes it to me: my answer is "No. I am a strong proponent of jury nullification."
Dismissed immediately, three times in a row... and it happens to be the truth!
If the jury was always expected to follow the law as the judge describes it we wouldn't need juries. Jury nullification is why we're there, IMHO.
The prinicple is called "jury nullification." Judges are so scared of the idea of juries deciding for themselves what the law should be that lawyers are forbidden to mention the possibility in their arguments to the jury.
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In principle, I agree with you. But there were some pretty famous cases in the US, prior to the civil rights movement, where white defendants who were clearly guilty of murdering black victims were acquitted of murder by all-white juries. This abuse of the right to acquit is part of what has led to an effort at cracking down on that right.
Still, it is true that a jury can always acquit, even if it believes the defendant factually guilty. There are no legaly sanctioned repercussions for the jurors.
MM
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We need a judge to stand up and say that the term cyber-terrorist hereafter only applies to robots with bombs.
..or, in other words, to the governor of California.
Well, yeah I am proud of telling the truth even though the judge gives me a hard time about it.
In fact, you're right, I don't want to be there... in the end most people with important stuff to do get excused and the juries end up being made solely of little old ladies and public servants.
And I feel guilty/lucky in some way that I have a legitimate way out.
But if I didn't have the out I wouldn't lie or make up some lame excuse like some do.
It's the judge that gets rid of me every time, and the reason is that they don't like jury nullification, even though it's probably the only reason we're there. I say that since the judge could make a better determination of law than a group of little old ladies and bureaucrats. All I do is answer the lawyers' and judge's questions to the best of my knowledge.
Here in Fulton County (Georgia, U.S.), the jurors waiting room has brochures everywhere from some legal foundation or another, describing jury nullification. It would be nice if somebody read the damned things.
This is not my sandwich.