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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."
RIAA beaten by 13 year old girl.
Mwaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha heeee heeeeeee wheeeeeee. *SNORT* Bah ha ha ha ha *wheeeeeze!* *snicker*
In principal I agree that music theft is bad and in all honesty, none of my music is pirated, but you gotta realize that stuff like this just makes you guys look bad. Bad as in $#!theads, not bad as in cool.
Karma goes around and it comes around, so i'd say this is due.
Oh and Edgar Bronfman Jr: You say you want to hold the cheapest songs on iTunes to
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
...I for one welcome our new bullshit-lawsuit-quashing overlords.
They shouldn't have let it go to the court.
But good news for everyone else.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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.
...that such a strong dismissal would also include this part:
"While the case was dismissed, the mother had to pay legal fees as the Judge refused to award her attorneys fees. The reason is that the plaintiffs' lawyers had taken the appropriate steps in trying to prosecute the mother and that the mother used tactics to obstruct the Plaintiff to efficiently prosecute her."
So it's dismissed, but she still owes somewhere between a couple thousand and a hundred thousand dollars? She's fucked regardless.
RIAA's still making it's message heard: Either roll over early, or we'll fuck you for life.
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.
When a case is dismissed with prejudice, it is a lot easier for the defendant to countersue for attorney fees, which I suspect they will in this case. The award is not automatic, but likely.
I think I speak for us all when I say "What The Fuck".
What company wants to sue children? We were all kids once, we probably commited minor crimes (stole a chocolate bar or whatever). But you never hear a shop keeper going "lets sue the little kid! He's a right fucker him!", they slap them on the wrist, tell their parents and keep a closer eye on them.
I didn't like the RIAA before, but when they start to sue children.. you've crossed a line no adult should even think of crossing.
I like muppets.
... with a rendition of "I fought the RIAA and the law won."
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)?
She still had to pay her defence costs in this case - hardly unusual, but very much a threat against those who don't want to settle. Yes, they can use this case as precident, but the costs of any court case just won't be acceptable to most of the people here in the U.S., who are living in a constant state of debt. This leaves the threat of bankruptcy as a legitimate tool of terror in the hands of the content distribution organizations, and any other corporations that decide that preying on the weak to settle is a legitimate financial strategy.
We need some corporate anti-terror legislation to stop corporations from acting to terrorize citizens. We already have too much historic and current legislation running the other way around. Of course, we used to just call it organized crime when applied to corporations, but terror as a political label is in fashion these days.
Ryan Fenton
The parents' of this kid aren't fit because they won't let the RIAA sue her? They want a new legal guardian (again, only for legal matters pertaining to this case) appointed purely for the purpose of suing a child the parents' prevented you from suing?
These people are INSANE.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
...they tried asking the Judge to amend the judgment in order to allow them to roll over the child's cute,fuzzy puppy with a hella gnarly steamroller, which the judge granted.
No it is not ok.
You've just made the common mistake of replacing "copyright infringement" with "theft". In this case they become quite different. A theft from a store takes a tangible good from the store, something that might be sold to someone else. Downloading a song online does not prevent the sale to someone else.
the RIAA's strategy.
/.'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.
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
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.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I own multiple retail businesses, and when a child steals from me, I guess I "extort" the parent by saying "pay up or I'm calling the cops."
One critical difference -- do you demand the parents pay for the goods stolen, or do you demand the kid's entire college fund?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Going after 13 year olds... it's like some sort of electronic pedophilia.
Not so much pedophilia... It incredibly commonplace for any hunting animal to target the young or the weak, those who cannot fight back or run. In this case it seems most unfair. As others have pointed out, minors do not have credit cards and thus cannot buy music online, and the parents are often quite clueless. Anyhow, this doesn't help the prejudice that lawyers == sharks.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Last time I checked, music pirates primarily used Windows only tools like Kazaa, most probably running on pirated copies of Windows. People who earn their livings using Linux, every single copy legitimately licensed I might add, are much MUCH less likely to participate in music and software piracy. Besides, if you're looking for anti-intellectual property types, look in the BSD camp. Last time I checked, my GPLd software did not grant me ownership of any of the itellectual property within the codebase.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Downloading Kelly Clarkson is the surest sign of stupidity.
You can sue a minor, you just have to follow special procedure. Part of which is the appointment of someone of age to represent the minor (in addition to the lawyer). The interesting thing about the case is that after the RIAA lost on the technicality they asked for permission to represent so they could follow the rules. The judge said no, which strikes me as a recognition and rejection of the overall end-around tactic.
It would be interesting to review the cases where the RIAA has acted this way and see if they pick cases where the parents may not be of means or legal savvy to fight the way this woman did.
No, the RIAA did not lose. The RIAA sued the parent because that's who "owned" the IP address. When they finally got the parent to 'fess up and admit which child had done the deed, they asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed, with prejudice, against the mother and amended to name the child. The mother objected to that, so the judge had to make the decision. The real score? The RIAA won one (the case was dismissed with prejudice), lost one (they didn't get amend their original lawsuit) and the mother lost two (she gets to pay for her attorney and her daughter is still open to a new lawsuit).
/. story that links to a blog linking to a blog is probably a pretty inaccurate way to get the straight story. The real news is in the actual court documents.
Dunno if the RIAA is right or wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a
-h-
That's ok. Through lobbying, both media lobbies have effectively stolen fifty years of the public domain.
How about we call it even?
It's been a long time.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I am not a bankruptcy lawyer either, but I did ask one where I could find the list of "non-dischargable" debts:
You'll find it here: TITLE 11 > CHAPTER 5 > SUBCHAPTER II > 523. A more verbose discussion is available here, which you might find interesting, if not exactly light reading.
I'll summarize (skipping the irrelevant subsections):
A discharge under section 727, 1141, 1228 (a), 1228 (b), or 1328 (b) of this title does not discharge an individual debtor from any debt-- (19) that-- (B) results from-- (i) any judgment, order, consent order, or decree entered in any Federal or State judicial or administrative proceeding; (ii) any settlement agreement entered into by the debtor; or (iii) any court or administrative order for any damages, fine, penalty, citation, restitutionary payment, disgorgement payment, attorney fee, cost, or other payment owed by the debtor.
So pretty much, if any court orders you to pay something, or you agree to a settlement, you're SOL as far as declaring bankruptcy to discharge it goes. And unlike some of the other subsections, which have "outs" for things like inability to pay, or the benefit to the debtor outweighing the benefit to the creditor by discharging it, that section has no outs.
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