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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.
I'm glad to see that the RIAA/MPAA's War on Customers is failing, and IANAL, but that article summary is terrible. Can you possibly make it any more confusing?
rm -rf
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.
Well, when you put it like that I really hope the judge sees the light and overturns the previous ruling...
This guy's the limit!
I'm glad to see that the RIAA/MPAA's War on Customers is failing, and IANAL, but that article summary is terrible. Can you possibly make it any more confusing?
Feeshing Ixpedeeshun vreetes in veet a stury in Ers repurteeng thet zee RIEA hes deceeded tu eppeel a joodge's deceesiun tu everd etturneys' fees tu deffendunt Debbeee-a Fuster in Cepeetul Recurds f. Fuster. Iff zee everd stunds, zee RIEA cuoold feend itselff in truooble-a in noomeruoos oozeer ceses, und zeey knoo it. Zeeur reel feer, mure-a thun zee etturneys' fees, is zee joodge's feending thet zee RIEE's ergooments fur cuntreebootury und feeceriuoos inffreengement cleeems in ceses leeke-a thees oone-a ere-a nut feeeble-a. Bork Bork Bork!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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
From TFA: "The RIAA also argues that should the attorneys' fees award stand, it would deter other copyright owners from pursuing infringement claims."
So let's get this straight, if the Judge sticks to his initial decision it will deter other copyright owners from filling more frivolous lawsuits? Heck, that sounds like a good reason to NOT change his mind!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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.
If they lose this one, it sets a precedent.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
In it, the plaintiffs lay out their disagreement with the judge's reasoning while taking time to point out that the fees awarded far exceed any damages they could have recovered should their suit have been successful.
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.
Now that their business model is starting to show cracks, they now want the risk removed yet keep the reward.
Hopefully the judge would realize that removing paying attorney's fees would give even more insentive to lawsuits since they wouldn't worry about consequences if they lost.
This is the RIAA pitifully grasping at straws...
FTA
.02 cents worth. Feel free to flame or mod me down.
"The record labels say that Foster failed to take advantage of the plaintiffs' offers to "end this litigation without paying anything." Instead, she chose to fight the lawsuit vigorously in hopes of clearing her name completely."
Yep, she could have settled for $0.00 and have a tarnished reputation. What a bargain; if you ask me. I think this falls under the category of "Duhhh".
Just my
The RIAA also argues that should the attorneys' fees award stand, it would deter other copyright owners from pursuing infringement claims.
Maybe it's time to end the "let's sue innocent people" business model, and find a new one which has less risk of paying out instead of cashing in.
The RIAA also bemoans what it calls the premature end of the discovery process
Newspeak-to-English Translation: The mean old judge didn't let us drag out the case until the defendant had to cave in because the legal bills ruined her.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
all they want to do is ruin people's lives! is that so wrong?
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
When you consider all the frivolous lawsuits coming from the RIAA, hitting them for the defendant's attorney fees seems more than reasonable, IMHO. Perhaps if they knew paying the attorney fees was a possible outcome, they wouldn't be suing everything with two legs half as much.
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
So, basically, the RIAA picks a fight with someone, they lose, the person says you lost, pay my fees, and the RIAA calls "foul!"?!?! I reaaaally hope the judgement sticks, forget about the RIAA for a moment and think of all the other cases that could use an overturned decision to their advantage citing "precedence" from this case. If I ever get sued, fight it, win it, I would most definitely countersue for legal fees. We already saw that legal fees will typically outweigh the payout of a lawsuit which is cause for so many companies to settle... If you bring a fight, you had better be prepared to lose and pay up, end of story.
June 1: Judge rules against RIAA in legal fee case June 2: Judge sued for illegal filesharing by RIAA
No, it would deter copyright owners from bringing baseless lawsuits against innocent people.
As I RTFA it seems to me although IANAL there is little precedent here except if you are a RIAA codefendant and your daughter has (by defaulting) in effect admitted to downloading the files without your knowledge.
The judge said the RIAA can't go after an innocent (the plaintiff) as well as the known guilty, whose name she turned over to the RIAA early on.
I doubt most of us would qualify for this precedent, but I'd like to hear what a real lawyer thinks.
RTFAs
"Foster said that she owned the account, but that she was completely ignorant of the existence and use of file-sharing software. Foster did say that her adult daughter and estranged husband had access to the account, and may have been responsible for the infringement."
Most legal scholars (and judges, and juries) would agree that no reasonable person would consider a gun safe to give to minors, but for now it's not so clear that an unsupervised internet account is equally unsafe. Regardless, in this case it was an adult daughter.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
You bring someone to court, you lose, you paid for the legal fees on both sides.
If such a system were in place, we'd see less "I'm gonna sue his ass" crap, a lot less "if I threaten to sue they'll do as we want" crap, and a whole lot less of "we'll sue them into bankruptcy" crap.
The daughter in this case was *not* a minor child, and has already lost her case. The problem was the Mafiaa insisted on pursuing the case against her mother, knowing she was innocent, as well. And now they don't want to have to pay the mothers attorneys fees.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well maybe not exactly. In fact, not at all.
IMHO this is one of the few times the legal system HAS lived up to my expectations. If there is a civil lawsuit, the loser should pay court/atty fees. Yes, that puts some risk/reward into your decision to sue. GOOD. FUCKING AMAZING GOOD!
I mean seriously, why do we allow a system to exist where you can sue someone into financial submission? It allows Big Company (tm) to threaten to sue Little Guy (tm) and then offer to settle for $1/4 of expected atty fees. Well lets see. Spend $20k on lawyers and *hopefully* or pay them $5k outright and be done. Tactics like this - regardless of what the suit is - should be illegal. Thank god *ONE* judge managed to step up to the plate on a visible case.
Oh, and their complaints are insane. First off - they lost the case. If you want to appeal THAT - ALONE. Go for it, it's your right. Past that, their argument against the defendant's award... *YOU* sued someone and then *THEY* declined to settle on your terms. Again: *Y O U* initiated the lawsuit. One deemed by a judge to be without merrit. Cry me a river. The problem here is the RIAA has an unreasonable expectation. They expect to settle (or, at worst, win - including atty fees i'm sure) every case. You can't sue someone with the EXPECTATION that they will settle. File a motion of intent, then go for (binding?) arbitration.
Once you stick your nose into a courtroom, there isn't a 'just kidding' button.
So does anyone know or remember if the RIAA also asked for atty fees in their suit? Because if they did someone should get up on a big podium with a mega phone and give them a big HA HAA . Heck, they deserve it regardless.
Really, every civil lawsuit SHOULD automatically include atty fees for the defendant if they're found for. They didn't ask to go to court. They (by the judge's ruling) didn't do anything wrong. They don't deserve to suffer the financial penalty of hiring a lawyer just because they were accused of something. Punative lawsuits are illegal already but you STILL need (to pay) a lawyer to argue that point!
More accurately, The the premature end to the fishing expedition attempting to locate the actual person who did the infringement because there's no evidence at all that the already sued Internet account holder ever even touched a computer keyboard themselves, let alone actually committed the infringement, if any!
Remember: Providing files to hired Media Sentry investigators is not copyright infringement under the law!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First of all, there was no court judgement, so there is nothing to appeal. Second, remember what settlement of a lawsuit generally means. I just about guarantee that the RIAA settlement offers included the stipulation that the defendant could not pursue any legal action against them. So those who have settled have already sold off that right.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
...as determined by whom? Previously, the RIAA did things like sue for $150K per song. Now assuming each song is 10 minutes long (and we know that won't be true, but it works for the math), there would be 6 such songs in one hour; or $150K x 6 = $900K per hour. So, if her defending team worked, say, 100 hours on the suit (not unheard of), then the RIAA would be forced to pay legal fees of $900K x 100 = $90,000,000.00
What's reasonable for the goose must be reasonable for the gander, right?
No court would award fees of $5,000 per hour in a copyright case, even if the winning party actually paid that much. The law provides for a "reasonable" attorney fee, and that isn't reasonable.
Exorbitant fees are usual in cases where a fund of money is recovered for distribution to a class. The lawyers for the class can get a percentage of the fund (maybe 20%, but it depends on the judge) even if the resulting hourly fee is very high. But this can't happen when defending against a copyright infringement action.
"Don't forget that they have a monopoly on music and have a profit margin on the order of 50%."
What record companies manage to clear 50%? EMI's about to be bought. Virgin is no more; it's being folded into Capitol and lots of people are being laid off. Doesn't sound like an industry that's doing that great.
More to the point, Warner had a profit margin of 0.27% and an operating margin of 6.3% last year, and their year over year earnings declined 73%.
I'm aware that many Slashdotters point out that the record industry is very profitable, but I haven't seen any data that supports this. Do you know something that I don't?
If you meant the smaller labels... my hunch is that CDBaby and Magnatune have better profitability than the old dinosaurs of the music industry... but they're not the ones suing people.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.