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RIAA Appeals Award of Attorneys' Fees
Fishing Expedition writes in with a story in Ars reporting that the RIAA has decided to appeal a judge's decision to award attorneys' fees to defendant Debbie Foster in Capitol Records v. Foster. If the award stands, the RIAA could find itself in trouble in numerous other cases, and they know it. Their real fear, more than the attorneys' fees, is the judge's finding that the RIAA's arguments for contributory and vicarious infringement claims in cases like this one are not viable.
In this case the victim's innocence has been proven beyond guilt.
Hence no upper court will overturn attorneys fees as RIAA has been proven wrong.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
What I want to know is why the blurb includes that line. Is there documented evidence of that being their "fear"? It seems more like an opinion that has no bases in fact.
What the RIAA *is* worried about is other people winning, for whatever reason, and there being prior judgments against them charging for attorney fees -- which means that people will be happy to go to court against them and possibly win meaning that the RIAA can't play the extortion game as well as they have been.
The mere fact that the RIAA is afraid to lose a case is proof in my mind that they are no less than extortionists.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
And that's how it should be. Always. If you lose, you pay, with the theory that you'll learn your lesson and not do it again. Conversely, if they win, they get more money. It's a risk they took from the getgo, and have been getting away with it because there have been few real challenges against them.
The problem is that no one would sue a large company paying $5000 an hour for attorneys, for fear of losing being more costly than any possible judgment from winning. The law should limit the loser to paying only as much as his or her own attorney fees to the winner. That way it only depends on how seriously each side takes its case, and realistically it will have the same effect where it matters, namely where individuals need to sue large corporations. If they lose, they're only out twice as much as they would have paid their own lawyer, not $millions. If they win, the corporation almost certainly spent more than they did on lawyers, so they'll pay the whole bill. It makes even more sense when you consider that the corporation can essentially throw as many lawyers on the case as they want just to frighten an opponent with huge attorney fees because the lawyers are employees and they'd be paying them no matter what they were working on.
What REALLY gets me is that if the RIAA had any chance of recovering the exorbitant $$ in "damages" they try to extort they would.
/. article. We have no fair-use, no format shifting, heck even recording a TV show to VHS is illegal (currently, yes it *may change shortly). The *IAA equivelants have only prosecuted (from memory) 2 people, both were mid-sized operations that copied dvd's/music to sell at town/city markets. The average Joe downloader gets a cease and desist letter and thats it; why you may ask, well as in sweden, you can only sue for real damages i.e. 100 illegal mp3 = US$99, this is the way it should be. /end my 2c
But lets face it what chance does Joe Blow on the street have of paying them....6/10 of FSCH-all. All it does is destory a persons life finantially and emotionally.
Its nice to see someone taking a stand and winning. I personally don't know how the judge could reverse his order.
They initiated litigation and lost, (not)sorry but thats why you don't bring frivolous lawsuits in front of the court. Personally i hope that people DO use this in their own *IAA lawsuits and teach these guys that the destroying the "little man" is not how you stop piracy.
Here in NZ we have even more draconian laws, as previewed in a previous
While it may be opinion, and perhaps pure speculation, the notion that it isn't grounded in fact is highly specious. The nature of the US legal system and how the RIAA is operating makes the conclusion rather obvious actually.
It's less "an opinion that has no bases in fact" and more like a declaration that the sky is blue.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.