RIAA Suit Rejected With Prejudice

yfarren writes "According to cdfreaks.com the RIAA has lost the case against the mother of a 13 year old girl accused of file-sharing violations." From the article: "The case was dismissed with prejudice, which prevents the case from being advanced against the defendant. Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgment in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied [the] RIAA's request."

Comments

Oh joy!

[Brandon K]

13 year old girls - 1
The **AA - 3247923874932749782365926323

We're catching up!

Seriously though, I hope these rulings keep coming. Although it is wrong to pirate music and other media, you shouldn't have to pay thousands of dollars in fines.

Re:First intelligent thing a court has done to RIA

[MrMista_B]

Not sure about intelligence, but sanity, certainly.

Everybody, cross your fingers and hope this sparks a trend - it should at least set some sort of precidence that other's can use to their advantage.

Re:Lose, lose situation for RIAA

[flanksteak]

Agreed. The RIAA lost mainly because they tried to sue a parent over the actions of the child. The court said, nice try, but if your beef is with the child, then sue the child. Either the RIAA was suing the parent to get the extortion money to keep paying for the lawsuits, or suing the parent to avoid the unpleasant reaction that would probably ensue for going after a thirteen year old. Both seem plausible. Haven't other parents paid up in other suits that weren't contested like this?

Since this was Federal court, does anyone know if this makes precedent that will force the RIAA to change tactics (i.e., start going after the kids directly)?

This doesn't change....

[mpapet]

the RIAA's strategy.

1. Entertainment mega-corps still win big because they strike fear into the hearts of consumers. The message is simple, "don't steal our music." The underlying assumptions that many /.'ers dislike are strongly reinforced. What's worse is a dissenting view can easily be positioned as at least disreputable behavior if not outright criminal activity.

2. It looks to me like they lost on procedure, not so much on the theft issue. The woman's got to pay anyway and that works out great for the RIAA.

3. No one cares that they are going after minors. The US has a criminal courts system for them too. Again, the underlying assumptions about the control of the music are not even on the table.

I really don't see how anything positive comes out of this story.

Re:Nice try. But no.

[Shakrai]

I don't think that you can get yourself out of court-imposed debts through bankruptcy. Otherwise you'd have deadbeat dads, drunk drivers, and other scum doing it all the time to avoid paying up. I'm not sure exactly what kind of legal language prevents you from being able to do it, but my recollection is that even if you declare bankruptcy, that satisfies only PRIVATE debts -- as soon as you start making money again, the courts will garnish your wages to pay off the PUBLIC ones.

There are specific debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Drunk driving fines, child support, fines for criminal activity, etc, are virtually impossible to discharge.

IANABL (bankruptcy lawyer) but I am in the middle of a Chapter 7 myself and everything I have read on the subject would lead me to think that you _could_ discharge a judgment owed to RIAA. Typically judgments are dischargeable unless they stem from criminal activity/fraud/child support.

I don't know if it works this way for government-backed standard school loans or not

Student loans are pretty hard to discharge in bankruptcy. The only way to do it is to prove that paying them back would be an undue burden. Pretty much the only way you can pull that off is if something really bad happened to you and you have little or no prospect of working again/having income.

As for your thoughts about the military you are probably right. I have a friend who was forced out of USAFA after she testified in the ongoing sex abuse scandal. She had the choice of paying them back for the education she had received or doing two years enlisted to make up for it.