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RIAA Victim Wins Attorney's Fees

Posted by samzenpus on from the fight-the-power dept.

VE3OGG writes "Debbie Foster, one of the many caught-up in the RIAA's drift-net attacks who was sued back in 2004 has recently seen yet another victory. After having the suit dropped against her "with prejudice" several months back, Foster filed a counter-claim, and has just been awarded "reasonable" attorney's fees. Could this, in conjunction with cases such as Santangelo, show a turning of the tide against the RIAA?"

14 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Open up your networks! by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Sadly, from the article, it looks as though this will not set a precedent that will discourage the RIAA from doing this sort of thing - the judge indicated that the fact the RIAA kept her on as a co-defendent (after they went after her daughter instead) was important in the decision to award costs to Debbie. The strong-arm tactics backfired badly for this particular case - good for her, but not something to discourage the RIAA in general, they'll just have to be a bit less aggressive to defendants.

    However...

    The bit that caught my eye, though, was the quote

     

    Judge Lee could find no case "holding the mere owner of an Internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons."


    Me like. If that can be said to be a precedent, it means anyone with an unsecured WiFi network has a strong argument for not being held liable for anything done on that network - it's open, after all. Anyone could drive by, park, download [insert bad stuff here], and drive off. Unless the prosecution has video surveillance of your house/apartment, it'll be very hard to *prove* who did what.

    It seems the best protection may be none at all. How very Zen.

    Simon
    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:Open up your networks! by Rodyland · · Score: 4, Interesting
      It seems the best protection may be none at all. How very Zen.

      War is peace

      Freedom is slavery

      Ignorance is strength

      And now

      Insecurity is protection

      A few years late, but not unexpected..

    2. Re:Open up your networks! by Harin_Teb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not sure if the author intended parent to be funny or not, but its definately more of a serious concern than a joke. We all know congress has a propensity for knee-jerk legislation with poorly thought out long term consequences... I'd say more scary than funny.

    3. Re:Open up your networks! by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I live in an apartment.
      My open WAP could (and has) been used like a cheap whore by many people.
      Alas, the transparent proxy has thwarted many attempts at pure stupidity (using my WAP to do your banking is asking for it), thus https is blocked by default (as is port 21, and 25, and bittorrent).

      -nB

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    4. Re:Open up your networks! by interstellar_donkey · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Neat. I just have to drive by the headquarters of some large company, poke around for an unsecured or poorly secured WAP, send massive amounts of spam with, oh, say pictures of kiddy porn with the subject "I know you'll like this!", and the company will be held liable for the criminal activities.

      Let's see them modify the law to state "...will be held accountable unless you're a big company".

      I guess that's ultimately what will happen, only with wording that will make it less obvious. Sadly, the United States always seems to legislate in ways that screw the citizen while protecting the corporate entity. But who knows; we all might get a free-be here.

      --
      The Internet is generally stupid
    5. Re:Open up your networks! by iwan-nl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While it may be true that the computer illiterate probably won't be held liable for their unsecured network, if the **AA can prove you DO know what you are doing, you won't be able to get away with it. Particularly, if you found out how to secure your system and didn't act on it within a reasonable amount of time.

      Why is that? Is it illegal to have an open access point?

      I definitely know how to secure my wireless network, but I choose not to. I want people visiting my place to be able to easily connect to my network and the internet. Exchanging lengthy WPA keys every time is too much of a hassle.

      --
      I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
  2. unsecured WiFi by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even if its secure, its not that hard to break into it anyway.. or just directly compromise your pc with a trojan.. So really in ANY situation you can claim it wasnt you, quite reasonably.

    Now, that said, if they get a search warrant and strip your house bare and find that 'backup' cd hidden away with one of the files in question, your quite logical defense melts away like an ice cube in hell.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:unsecured WiFi by Sj0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Bill Gates and Steve Balmer can lie in court without getting charged, why not the rest of us?

      --
      It's been a long time.
  3. About time. by WiiVault · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Great news, I just wish she had gone for pain and suffering, harassment, and libel (or something like it). Get those greedy bastards to set her up for life and we'll see how many more suits they file. Fuck you RIAA!

  4. We all know what "reasonable" means to the RIAA by erroneus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They love big and overly-inflated numbers when they cite losses. They might as well hand over a big and overly-inflated number to this lady in damages.

  5. Re:RIAA already won by NewYorkCountryLawyer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You are exactly right, Todd. This is a major precedent. In fact, I cited it in court papers today -- the day after the ruling came down.

    --
    Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
  6. Re:I wonder... by NewYorkCountryLawyer · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The decision just came down yesterday afternoon, so definitely it's too early to say. But I guarantee you it will chasten them a bit. Every morning they have a telephone conference call about the nationwide cases. I have a hunch this morning's call wasn't too cheery.

    I had an email exchange today with their head lawyer, and he seemed a bit confused.

    Yes they're going to do things differently. For one thing, they are never going to try that stupid secondary liability argument again. For another thing, in most cases they're going to drop the case sooner. Thirdly, they're going to act real, real polite to Marilyn Barringer-Thomson, the superb Oklahoma City lawyer who made this happen.

    --
    Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
  7. Re:RIAA already won by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well, piracy SHOULD be stigmatised as it is illegal.

    However, the real perpetrators are a bit of a mixed bag which is why they prefer to sue their own potential customers. It's easier to sue a 12 year old who barely knows how a system works, or a dead granny, than it is to go after the people that reproduce CDs and DVDs for a living. It's just that the fear factor doesn't work when your economic model is so unrealistic that you still just get ignored.

    Having said that, if they wouldn't charge so much it would kill piracy overnight - if I recall correctly that was proven in one country where they did just that. Literally overnight the market for pirated works collapsed.

    Oh, and the MPAA should shut up that one participant that still wants region limiting. I've heard of quite a few execs themselves that region limiting is stupid. Typically, people that travel (i.e. with money to spend) buy a lot of movies on the fly, but only the ones they buy legitimately won't play when they get home from another region. How stupid is that?

  8. Re:ummm... no. by CmdrGravy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    +5 Insightful ?

    A gun is not a Wifi connection, the sole purpose of a gun is to shoot and kill things ( which in some cases may be legal but in the majority of cases is not ) whereas a Wifi connection is a perfectly reasonable thing for anyone to run perfectly legal.

    I would imagine that leaving your guns lying around on your porch is already illegal in most places whereas there is nothing illegal about running Wifi hubs. You are basically suggesting that accidentally leaving your car unlocked and it then being used in a robbery or hit and run child slaying would leave you open prosecution as well as the actual perpetrators of the crime.

    If there was overwhelming evidence that you had set up your wifi for the sole purpose of encouraging illegal activity then you may well find yourself in trouble but no one but the most slack jawed, dribbling, shambling idiot would ever be so stupid as allow that to be the case.