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RIAA Victim Wins Attorney's Fees
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?"
However...
The bit that caught my eye, though, was the quote
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!
Could this, in conjunction with cases such as Santangelo, show a turning of the tide against the RIAA?
/. stop ending summaries with "Could this be the end of <something most /. readers think is bad>?"?
Could
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 ----
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!
Me like. If that can be said to be a precedent, it means ...
Some explaining is in order.
I know y'all aren't lawyers, so I shouldn't expect you to get the lawyer-speak right, but I have noticed lots and lots of misuse of this term.
"Precedent" in the context of a court's decision doesn't mean much at the trial court level.
That's because a court is only bound by the decisions of the courts ABOVE it. Since a trial court is basically the lowest court, you don't have trial courts setting "precedents" that anyone has to follow.
Appeals courts set precedent that the trial courts (aka district courts) must follow within their circuits. The Supreme Court also sets precedent that the Courts of Appeal and district courts must follow. But district courts do not set precedent that anyone else must follow.
I suppose any time someone decides something it can be called a "precedent". But usually, when we say that about courts, we are talking about something that has to be followed.
A court does not have to follow its own precedents, though they tend to do so, absent a good reason to change course. This tendency is called stare decisis, and it is not a requirement. The Supreme Court reverses itself fairly regularly, and that's why some people worry that Roe v. Wade (or another decision) might get overturned.
While a district court sets precedent in the sense that decisions in that same court will probably follow it, they do not set precedent that anyone outside of that court's jurisdiction needs to follow. Someone else may or may not find that judge's reasoning persuasive.
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.
Do you honestly think the RIAA gives a damn? They would rather win, yes, but this isn't about the relatively trivial (to them) judgements and legal costs. This was a P.R. campaign. They wanted parents to stop their kids from downloading gig upon gig from Kazaa. They wanted colleges to monitor what their students were up to on the networks. They wanted the average user to always have a nagging fear every time they went to Limewire.
I think it's pretty despicable*, but it was (unfortunately) very effective, much more so (and probably cheaper than) a typical ad campaign. Yes, there are other ways they could have done it, I am not saying it was right; but to think any legal setback (other than something extremely catastrophic, such as ordering them to pay ALL legal fees for all past cases plus emotional distress or something like that) will make them consider the campaign a failure is just foolish. If they lose a case there is nothing to stop them from filing more; it's the front-page news alerts that another thousand have been served that they are after, not the judgements themselves.
And anyway, even if they were to stop tomorrow, they could do so comfortably knowing that they already won-- "piracy" has been stygmatized, and casual users are afraid.
* I would go so far as to say no corporation should be able to sue an individual under any circumstances, but that is a different discussion.
And if you're planning on killing somebody, just leave a loaded gun on your front porch. Then anybody could have done it! An airtight defense if I ever saw one.
If it was even suspected that you were hosting an open WiFi point to engage in, or encourage others to engage in an illegal activity I think they could find many ways to make your life miserable. I'm fairly certain that giving others the tools to commit a crime and then standing idly by while they commit it is, in itself, illegal. Maybe harder to prove, seeing as how they would have to prove intent, but still enough to get you in trouble. Especially if they could show that you were knowledgable enough to know what an unsecured network could be used for.
A couple points of note. First, we're talking civil cases, so everything I say will be in that venue.
Second, parents are often responsible for their children's actions; if you're the kid of the RIAA gun owner, then yes, the family of the person you killed could sue your parents. This is not an absolute; parents are not always held liable for their kids' actions, but they often are.
Third, even with no relation, it's quite possible and reasonable that if the person you took the gun from didn't secure it properly (for instance, say you found it outside on their lawn), they could be held partially liable.
The RIAA is mostly full of crap on this issue, but your analogy is at least equally flawed.
Stop thinking about the children. Think of the actual facts. If you apply more feelings than logic, you know you're on the way to do someone wrong.
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