New Dismissal Motion in File Sharing Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A new motion to dismiss an RIAA peer-to-peer file sharing case has been made, this time in Brooklyn federal court, in Atlantic v. Huggins, reports Recording Industry vs. The People. As in Elektra v. Santangelo, the RIAA had served a boilerplate complaint alleging generally 'downloading' ,uploading', and 'distributing', but without naming any specific acts. Defendants' lawyers argue that "the Complaint alleges in conclusory fashion and upon information and belief that defendant used "an online media distribution system" to download and distribute certain alleged copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make such recordings "available for distribution to others." but "makes no attempt to describe the specific acts of infringement or the dates and times on which they allegedly occurred.""

Comments

IF the motion is not denied....

[GenKreton]

If this motion is not denied, regardless if he wins or not, at least this may make the extortion process a bit more expensiver per a person for RIAA, assuming this instills enough fear that they attempt to properly develop a case on a per-person basis. It maybe just whishful thinking on the other hand.

This is a very bad precedent.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this continues, we might start to see a rash of people defending themselves against lawsuits, rather than sticking to the time-tested system of out-of-court-settlements our nation is founded on. Who knows what effect that might have on our national justice system?

Re:This is a very bad precedent.

[SavvyPlayer]

The trouble is there is little risk in these types of lawsuits. The big players sue the little guy all day every day knowing full well their suits will be settled for a net profit, while the little guy with a pro-bono attorney in other cases also have a good shot at settlement. Personally I see no morality in either situation.

If judges were required on the other hand to impose upon a losing plaintiff the defendant's legal fees, the number of frivolous suits on both sides would fall dramatically -- perhaps to 5% of today's levels.

Re:Exactly. I'm waiting for a case.

[saucercrab]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't death a pre-req for becoming a martyr?

What does not kill me only makes me stronger

[ReformedExCon]

Here's what happens now. RIAA makes the request to Congress that ISPs open up, on request, records indicating upload (the main problem) transfers citing the obvious rampant criminal sharing going on on the network. Congress, in response, seeing both an opportunity to pad the coffers of its reelection campaigns as well as a chance to strengthen the rights of IP holders, decides to strike a blow to the 4th Amendment and force upload data to be opened upon subpoena.

Both sides in this equation (file uploaders and the RIAA) are in the wrong. You simply can't decide that you don't have to follow the law because you 1) don't like the law and 2) that technology allows you to violate the law easily. Moreover, the RIAA is continuing to alienate its customer base by using heavy-handed tactics on fairly low-level criminals. In addition, by continuing to violate the law and thumbing their noses at the industry, the file sharers themselves are forcing the lawmakers into strengthening IP laws.

I do not blame this guy for fighting the lawsuit. It takes a lot more guts to stare down the RIAA than to give in and pay them their due. But by forcing the RIAA to be more thorough in the future means that future lawsuits won't get away so easily.

And since this is just a motion for dismissal and not an actual dismissal (who knows what judges will do?), the judge may decide that the RIAA has enough evidence to prove that this guy was a file sharer and toss out the dismissal.

Re:What does not kill me only makes me stronger

[phauxfinnish]

You simply can't decide that you don't have to follow the law because you 1) don't like the law and 2) that technology allows you to violate the law easily.

I hate this line of reasoning. You absolute can violate a law because you don't like it and/or have an easy time doing it. The fact that you can do something doesn't make it morally or legally right, but you can still do it. When a large number of people loose respect for a law, the will of these people being what gives the law validity in the first place, it is time for the law to be reconsidered. When the people want to repel a law, or decide how that law be applied, it is the government's job to accommodate to the extent that the Constitution allows. If the Constitution does not adequately fulfill the needs of its people then it is up to the people to work within their government to modify it.

Laws can be broken. Perhaps laws should be broken. I think everyone should intentionally break a law once and a while, just to remind yourself how thin the line is between order and chaos. And how thin a line order is within the surrounding chaos. Society lacking structure opens itself to rule of the strongest, but the government that too firmly restricts its citizens will fall at their hands.

A balance must be struck. The people must be secure in their ability to control their government, and a government must depend on her citizens to behave in a civilized fashion. For either to overstep their place would be disastrous.

Re:What does not kill me only makes me stronger

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post.

I'd like to add, when the populace, in large numbers, chooses to willfully break a law, or thinks they would not be acting *unjustly* if they were to do so, this is often an indication that the law itself does not reflect the actual will of the people. In today's climate, where it is often the wealthy and powerful minority that make or influence the laws, rather than the "will of the people" (in representative form), it's important to note this point.

Of course, the public also sometimes seeks to resist laws that they don't like simply because the laws are designed to benefit society at their individual expense (Social Security, Medicare, smoking bans, taxes in general).

And finally, the public is often so misinformed, easily manipulated, and easily swayed by persuasive (but fallacious) arguments by friends, colleagues, and celebrities, that they form unreasonable beliefs about whether certain laws are just, similar to how the public is so easily manipulated into voting for politicians who promise to serve the public interest if elected/re-elected, despite having prior *public* voting records that demonstrate the emptiness of those promises. My point being, society is often wrong about what's good for itself, so it should always be with a large grain of salt that any particular credence is given to demonstrations by "the will of the people."

However, if the people are in strong opposition against a particular law, that *should* motivate the smarter people to take a hard look at the law and examine whether the law is in fact not in the populace's best interest.

Re:IANAL, but...

[Larmal]

no, they're handing a printout with what files were available to be shared - there's no proof, however, that anything was actually shared - which is the point of the grandparent. If memory serves me correct, this is exactly why the judge in Canada threw out the case (i think - can i get a confirmation on this?)

This is going nowhere...

[WebHostingGuy]

As a former federal practice attorney this motion is going nowhere.

Federal rules allow a plaintiff in a lawsuit to just give enough notice to the defendant so they have a clue; a small clue. Further procedures such as discovery, document requests and depositions are meant to bring out the specifics of how and why. Federal Judges allow alot of leeway in these because that's what the case law lets them do. And, even if the defendants were to show that the plaintiff didn't provide them with enough notice 99 times out of 100 the Judge just rules that the plaintiff has to file a restated complaint with more information. (I have rarely heard of any case which was thrown out because of failure to plead.) Further, the cases these attorneys rely upon are mainly just district court opinions which are presuasive but not necessarily binding. The two appeals court cases they do rely on don't really help--one is out of the appellate circuit which does not make it binding and the other in circuit is just a general clarfication. This is nothing but a drive by the defendants attorneys to rack up billing hours or gain media attention.

Re:Exactly. I'm waiting for a case.

[Pantero Blanco]

Technically, to be a martyr, he'd have to lose. Otherwise he's a hero, which is just about as good. :)

At Last....

[zappepcs]

At last, finally, it comes down to "show me when and where and how they broke the law" instead of OMG, they have P2P software, they must have broken the law. Maybe the wildfires in CA are because of their exploitation of the world in general? Well, maybe not, but its about time someone made them prove illegal file sharing actually took place.

My opinion? The Internet is so big, so anonymous, so unstoppable... to try to stop it is just ignorant. Litigation in these cases is so much like trying to stop the tide from coming in with buckets. Get over it, your business model is gone... nobody likes you... start selling your product with at least 20th century means. Joining the 21st century would be better.

When will the world learn that TCP/IP and the Internet are far more than they know how to deal with?

It gives me more glee to see the *AA in a bit of trouble than it does to see MS losing ground in their marketplace...... I don't even care how much trouble, the fact that they have to prove something is just a very good thing. and it is about time.

Re:IANAL, but...

[chphilli]

It looks like what the RIAA provided was just a list of file names that the defendant had available for downloading. However, this does not show that any files ever were actually transfered.

According to TFA, prior cases have shown that for a copyright to be infringed, a specific instance (or instances) of infringement must be shown. For example: "On the [day] of [month] at [time], the file [filename] was transfered from [defendant] to [recipient] by means of [transport medium]. The file in question is [of some relation] to our copyrighted work: [copyrighted work with copyright information]. At least, that's my take on it. (IANAL)

Re:So basically

[cpt kangarooski]

This just brings us back to your needing to get more familiar with the law. All this stuff is covered in 17 USC 501 et seq.

For copyright infringement, there are a couple of different remedies: injunctive relief, damages, seizure and destruction, and costs and fees.

Injunctive relief (i.e. a court order whereby the infringer is told to stop infringing) has no connection with whether there was one infringement or a thousand. A plaintiff is satisfied with a single injunction.

Damages are calculated one of two ways, at the copyright holder's option. First, either the actual damage caused to the copyright holder, plus the net profits of the infringer. In your typical downloading case, these are too negligable to care about. So the second option is statutory damages. There, the infringer has to pay an amount set by the court, within a range set by the statute, and which goes up or down depending on whether the plaintiff can prove that the infringement was willful or the defendant can prove that the infringement was in good faith. But this amount is determined, not per infringement, but per work infringed! If you upload one copy of an mp3 or a thousand copies of the same mp3, it's all the same. The statutory damages can only increase in you're infringing multiple works.

Seizure and destruction are usually more aimed towards professional infringers. The copies they've made, and the tools they've made them with can be confiscated and destroyed. This is unlikely to be applied to John Filesharer, however.

And finally court costs and reasonable attorney fees can be imposed on the loser, if the court wants.

So there's no way for the RIAA to increase the amount of damages just by downloading more than once. Now, if there are multiple works being shared, then that can increase the damages spectacularly, but it's difficult to see why that's an inherently bad thing. After all, RIAA would _not_ be the party responsible; it's the defendant that put up all those different files for download.