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.

Comments

seeing the light

[gEvil (beta)]

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...

Re:seeing the light

[garcia]

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.

Re:seeing the light

[H8X55]

These actions indicate RIAA doesn't want to take part in a fair fight.
Makes me want to keep not buying CDs.

Re:seeing the light

[jedidiah]

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.

Re:seeing the light

[elrous0]

Not only that, but if lawyer fee awards become commonplace, people will be able to hire much BETTER lawyers (who will work on contingency). This will make it very easy for people to fight back with lawyers who can consistently win, which will break the RIAA's little extortion scheme VERY quickly.

-Eric

Re:seeing the light

[Maxo-Texas]

However you spell it, all your bases are belong to us.. us.

Go Zig, For Justice!

Re:seeing the light

[PopeRatzo]

The RIAA uses the high cost of defending against one of their lawsuits as a tactic to get people to fold. This is a common approach by plaintiffs with deep pockets: Bring a lawsuit that will cost a fortune to defend, and cause the defendant to either fold or be financially ruined. It's a matter of intimidation by lawsuit.

It seems fair to me that the loser in a nuisance suit is forced to pay the winner's legal costs. A countersuit for damages would be even better.

Yashoor, yoobetcha!

[spun]

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!

Very difficult for RIAA to win

[freedom_india]

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.

Re:Very difficult for RIAA to win

[flosofl]

Well, the way I see it is that most people, regardless of their liability in these cases, would find the cost of defending themselves prohibitive. It is far less expensive for them to settle than to pursue the issue in court. The RIAA counts on this. If all of a sudden the option to recover legal costs becomes viable, I think we may begin to see less settlements and more fighting.

Re:Very difficult for RIAA to win

[UnknowingFool]

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.

IANAL but being wrong in a lawsuit does not mean attorney's fees. In most cases no fees are awarded. Why the judge is awarding fees in this case is that despite proof that the defendant's daughter and not the defendant was the infringer, the RIAA chose to pursue the case further against the defendant. Nearly a year later on did they dismiss the case. There is a difference between being wrong after filing a suit and knowingly pursuing a suit that you know is wrong. Also the American Association of Law Libraries (AAL), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Oklahoma, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Public Citizen joinly filed an amicus brief supporting the defendant's right to attorney fees. Their point was that attorney's fees are appropriate to remind the plaintiff that they cannot abuse the judicial system by suing people they know to be innocent.

Re:Very difficult for RIAA to win

[Artifakt]

Imagine yourself as about to be sued by the RIAA, and it should be clearer

1. The RIAA is suing you. You have a 30,000$ a year income. You don't want to settle, but it will cost a lot by your standards to fight it, and even if you win, you will still be out those costs. Do You Fight It?

                                              vrs.

2. The RIAA is suing you. You have a 30,000$ a year income. You don't want to settle, though it will still cost a lot by your standards to fight it, if you win now, it will all cost you nothing. Now Do You Fight It?

Now Imagine you are the RIAA and it should become even clearer.

1. You sue some chump making only 30,000$ a year. If that suit starts looking troublesome, you can drop it, and the chump can't force the case into court.

                                            vrs.

2. You sue some chump making only 30,000$ a year. If that suit starts looking troublesome, you can drop it, but the chump can probably still force the case into court as part of getting a declaration that makes him eligble to recover his legal costs in a countersuit, and he may well be able to countersue just based on you dropping the case even if he doesn't yet have a not- guilty verdict. In other words, depending on jurisdictional issues, either he can force the case to go on, or dropping it is still legal, but it doesn't help you (the RIAA) avoid costs anymore. You have no control over how quick that chump rushed out and found a lawyer, or how much he agreed to pay that lawyer on contingency. If he hired OJ's entire defense team (those still living) that's what you risk having to pay for. Any precedent he gets applies to all the other suits you have outstanding, so if he can get 450,000$ in legal fees, it's possible the other 1,329 cases you have outstanding can all get them too. Your downside is now over 600 million dollars. All those cases you settled earlier, out of court where no precident was established? They aren't really settled now, unless the duration for appeals has also lapsed. If some Boston Legal sized firm takes one client's case, they will call all the new and old litigants that look promising, put together a whopping big countersuit, and your worst nightmare downside is now, at the very least, several billion dollars.

The RIAA thought that having all those cases where the accused just settled without a trial made them very strong. They are now at risk of finding out that all those cases are worth precisely zero against just one precedent. This is how the American legal system is supposed to work - let's hope it actually does.

Poor arguements!

[RingDev]

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

Re:Poor arguements!

[sulfur_lad]

Translated: "Please help us to maintain our litigation business model."

I can feel what I hope is the collective "oh crap" eminating from the RIAA's 'new revenue' dept.

Re:Poor arguements!

[gstoddart]

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!

Nope, they're going to claim that their "justified, in-good-faith suits, against people who they have evidence of infringement" (not a real quote) could see some impediment if they have to pay the legal bills of people for whom they have been unable to prove wrong-doing.

They want their cake, and to be able to eat it too. To date, their (and I agree with you) frivolous suits could be brought without proof, and without consequences if they are wrong. If they were wrong, they could just say "ooops, we tried", or, if someone hadn't the resources to even attempt to fight it, I bet they forced more than a few innocent people into settling and accepting blame -- because it would be cheaper than defending yourself.

If anything, this might finally give them some burden for evidentiary responsibility, and they can no longer use their tactics unless they are in posession of real evidence. To date, they can claim anything, put together sketchy evidence ("I have a screen shot"), and bully ISPs into handing over information. I think we all agree they need to be reigned in and given some better ground rules.

Lord only knows how the judge will view this, but let's hope you're right. :-P

Cheers

Afraid of losing

[Hrodvitnir]

The mere fact that the RIAA is afraid to lose a case is proof in my mind that they are no less than extortionists.

Re:Afraid of losing

[bill_kress]

If you blast out thousands of anything, you expect to lose a few--epically when you've been as careless as the RIAA has in bringing these cases.

The issue here is that they need to win 100% or the cases will all start to unravel.

The grandparent was implying, correctly, that this means they are living off fear to appeal rather than the law. If the law was absolutely on their side, they might allow for the fact that they are not going to get every sing case right and let things like this drop.

The fact that they are not willing to let go of a single case implies they know their house of cards isn't all that steady.

Risky, too

[Weaselmancer]

If they lose this one, it sets a precedent.

Courts = state sponsored corporate gambling

[Volante3192]

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...

Re:Courts = state sponsored corporate gambling

[DamnStupidElf]

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.

Why fight

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA
"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 .02 cents worth. Feel free to flame or mod me down.

time for business model change?

[amigabill]

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.

"Premature End Of The Discovery Process"

[Steve B]

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.

won't someone think of the industry?

[teh_chrizzle]

all they want to do is ruin people's lives! is that so wrong?

The way it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

What REALLY gets me is that if the RIAA had any chance of recovering the exorbitant $$ in "damages" they try to extort they would.
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 /. 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

So let me get this straight...

[s31523]

The record labels say that Foster failed to take advantage of the plaintiffs' offers to "end this litigation without paying anything."
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.

Deters Lawsuits

[s31523]

The RIAA also argues that should the attorneys' fees award stand, it would deter other copyright owners from pursuing infringement claims.
No, it would deter copyright owners from bringing baseless lawsuits against innocent people.

Re:Why do we have to put up with this crap?

[anagama]

In the US, the basic standard is both sides pay their own costs and attorney fees. There are exceptions to the general rule in certain circumstances, for example, a statute might allow fee shifting in certain kinds of cases, suits deemed frivolous under the court rules may also result in fee shifting. So anyway, you should rewrite the code so that the default is not fee shifting, with exceptions that provide for fee shifting.

Re:Frivolous?

[SydShamino]

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.

Re:Frivolous?

[Arker]

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.

You got one part wrong, I think

[silicon not in the v]

Generally good, but part of that is just bogus. You said:

All those cases you settled earlier, out of court where no precident was established? They aren't really settled now, unless the duration for appeals has also lapsed. If some Boston Legal sized firm takes one client's case, they will call all the new and old litigants that look promising, put together a whopping big countersuit, and your worst nightmare downside is now, at the very least, several billion dollars.

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.

"Reasonable attorney fees"...

[fudgefactor7]

...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?