ACLU, EFF, & Others Fight RIAA for Debbie Foster

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a landmark legal document, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, and the American Association of Law Libraries have submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the motion for attorneys fees that has been made by Deborah Foster in Capitol Records v. Debbie Foster, in federal court in Oklahoma. This brief is mandatory reading for every person who is interested in the RIAA litigation campaign against consumers."

Comments

Brief Summary

[billstewart]

• RIAA sues lots of people for copyright infringement, often for allegedly using P2P to share copyrighted music.
• Sometimes their evidence is dubious, e.g. only an IP address, which might be dynamic, or used by multiple people, such as your kid or the neighbor piggybacking on your wireless.
• Defending yourself against them is really expensive, so some people settle.
• ... PROFIT!! (For RIAA.)
• Debbie Foster claims to be innocent, defends herself in court (I can't tell if she paid for her attorney herself, or got pro bono help), RIAA keeps up lawsuits.
• Eventually her kid owns up to file sharing, but RIAA doesn't drop their suit against her, keeps it going for another year, cranking up Debbie's legal costs, before dropping it.
• If somebody sues you and loses, in the US, sometimes you can get awarded your attorney's costs, especially if their suit was bogus, but you can't always win that. (It's easier to get awarded costs if you're the plaintiff and win.)
• EFF, ACLU, other good guys filed amicus brief encouraging the court to side with Debbie Foster and pay her legal costs, asserting bogusness and nastiness of RIAA's suit.

Re:Brief Summary

[Dun Malg]

"Eventually her kid owns up to file sharing"
when did the parent become not responsible for what their kids do?

In general, children are responsible for their own actions, but parents are liable for the result of those actions.
[Obligatory Car Analogy]
If (say) an 11 year old child steals a car wrecks it, the child is the only one who can be charged with car theft, but the parents are the ones sued for damage to the car. The problem with the RIAA case here is that they claimed the parent "stole the car", as it were.

Re:ACLU and attorney's fees

[packeteer]

You forgot to mention that your not a lawyer. Doing pro bono work does not mean your doing it for free. It means your doing the work for free if you lose and for money if you win your client money. Of course they will try and sue for lawyers fees, its the right thing to do. Lets say the ACLU wins a lawsuit of a case they did pro bono. This means the winning party now has to penny up the money but thankfully the ACLU goes after the wrongful party for money and does not panalize someone they defended just becuase they won.

Basically what im saying is that by sueing for lawyer fees after winning pro bono work to protect people's civil liberties they are also protecting your pocket book.

Re:ACLU and attorney's fees

[Secrity]

From what I understand contingency fees are for when the layer is represnting a plaintiff who is suing somebody else for money -- and the lawyer gets a portion of the award (if any). The lawyer getting paid is contingent upon winning.

Pro bono (pro bono publico) means that the lawyer is not charging the client. Pro bono does not mean that the laywers can't get attorney's fees awarded to them by the judge.

Re:Oh, RIAA, what won't you do...

[1u3hr]

RIAA probably smacked around for selective defense of their copyright.

One does not lose copyright by failing to defend it (unlike trademarks); or "selectively" defending it. They might have a problem establishing damages if they were inconsistent, but again there are statutory damages for sopyright infringement.

Secondary liability

[Anonymous Coward]

When the RIAA learned that the person they sued was probably innocent, they switched their claim. They now claimed that she was liable because she owned the internet connection over which the infringement occured.

So, I have a wife and two adult university students living at home. The RIAA asserts that I am responsible for their online activities. That means that I have to read all their posts and emails. I don't think so.

The RIAA has already lost their case. What we are arguing about here is that they should pay the defendant's legal fees. What we need is for the court to decide that the RIAA's theory about secondary liability never had a basis in law and that their case is essentially frivolous.

On Groklaw there has been some discussion of frivolous cases. There are punishments for lawyers who bring frivolous cases. If the RIAA's lawyers were sanctioned for cases like this, that would really make them think twice before going after the obviously innocent.

RIAA Profits

[Digital_Quartz]

Wow. 18,000 people sued, settlements between $3K and $11K. That's over $100 million!

Re:Of Course

[trewornan]

It's true but bear in mind that this room and board is deducted from compensation payments and is part of the logic of how these awards are calculated, they don't get sent a bill. Not that I think it's right even so, but perhaps it's not quite as unreasonable as you make it sound.

Further, in the UK it's normal practice for costs to be awarded against the losing party in a lawsuit. That's not all positive since even if you're careful about your costs an opponent with plentiful resources may spend hundreds of thousands on legal costs and if you lose (and you can never be sure in a lawsuit) you can end up liable. So this also acts as a deterrent to "the small guy", but perhaps less so than in the US?

I suspect that the differences between the UK and US systems are the reason we haven't seem similar activity from the Recording Rights Association. Plus the UK legal system can turn quite nasty if they think you're playing games with them like the RIAA do in America. Try the same sort of thing here and a UK judge is quite likely to stamp on you.

Re:AMICUS and attorney's fees

[frankie]

You (and all the moderators, and most of the repliers) either missed the line saying "amicus curiae brief" or more likely didn't understand what it means. The ACLU, EFF, et al, are *not* Ms Foster's lawyers. They are outside parties with no direct financial stake in the outcome.

However, they do want a particular outcome: sticking it hard to the RIAA. Therefore they have filed their own legal statement trying to aid Ms Foster (and her lawyers, whoever they are). Whether they succeed or not, they don't get any money from anyone in the case.