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RIAA Sues Stroke Victim in Michigan
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has now brought suit against a stroke victim in Michigan in Warner v. Paladuk. The defendant John Paladuk was living in Florida at the time of the alleged copyright infringement, and had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement. Despite the fact that Mr. Paladuk suffered a stroke last year (pdf), rendering him disabled, the RIAA commenced suit against him on February 27, 2007. Suing the disabled is not new to the RIAA. Both Atlantic v. Andersen in Oregon and Elektra v. Schwartz in New York were suits brought against disabled people who have never engaged in file sharing, and whose sole income is Social Security Disability. Both of these cases are still pending. The local Michigan lawyer being used by the RIAA in the Paladuk case is the same lawyer who was accused by a 15 year old girl of telling her what to say at her deposition in Motown v. Nelson. In the Warner v. Scantlebury case, after the defendant died during the lawsuit, the same lawyer indicated to the court that he was going to give the family '60 days to grieve' before he would start deposing the late Mr. Scantlebury's children."
It is times like this that I wish America would switch over to a system where blank media is taxed and they don't prosecute piracy. Sure it might stretch the bottom line for the Mafiaa, but wouldn't it be beneficial to society at large? Hopefully in a decade or so it will be a big enough hot-button topic to spur actual political change. Until then keep it up RIAA... if you stop being the stereotypical evil corporation all we will have left to overthrow when the revolution comes is Microsoft :-)
I've read articles where the RIAA have sued a person who had no computer. Even then, they don't get as much sympathy as someone who has a disability.
What I really want to see is the RIAA sue someone that is deaf (and MPAA sue someone that is blind). If reported properly, then maybe the general public will finally realize how stupid all these lawsuits are. Instead of being outraged by a nipple on TV, we (the collective we, as a nation) can rise against something that is worth it.
I know it's a slimeball move to exploit someone with a disability, but if they were to be sued, I'm sure they'd love to go after the MAFIAA as well. You have to fight slimeball moves with slimeball moves.
hackers of the world unite!
I'm no fan of the RIAA, but those of you who aren't in the legal field fail to understand that RIAA has to continue this suit or risk being found to have abandoned its copyright infringement cases and being found to have used what is known in the legal business as "selective prosecution" or "de facto" prosecution.
Selective prosecution would render virtually all of RIAA's future cases moot because they would fall under the legal status of "unequal prosecution" and essentially be considered extortion.
Much like defending trademarks (or risk abandonment and loss of trademark), these types of lawsuits have to forge ahead. Otherwise it gives the appearance to the courts of favoritism and targetted vengeance.
I know this because this is slashdot, people rarely actually RTFA, but come on and RTF post at least.
"...suits brought against disabled people who have never engaged in file sharing..."
and then RTFA, the guy in this case is half paralyzed, do you think he is spending a lot of time sitting at his computer downloading Christina Aguilera or something? There needs to be a preponderance of evidence in order to proceed with a case. So far you have a guy who probably can't use the bathroom himself who didn't live in the state in which he is accused of committing infringement. Where's that preponderance of incriminating evidence?
"Evidence of innocence" is pure idiocy, and contrary to the tenets of the judicial system. It is NOT this man's burden to prove his innocence, it is the RIAA's burden to prove him guilty.
Heh, and the captcha for this is "falsify."
At this point, I doubt it would matter. If we stopped buying the cds they would claim it as proof of pirating.
Then let them. Claims don't keep their business afloat, money does. They can't make you buy CDs, they can only stop illegal copying. If all this anti-piracy crap doesn't increase their sales numbers they'll run out of options sooner or later.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why not? Their tactics are intended to scare people into changing their behaviour without regard to the victims involvement in the process. Isn't that the definition of terrorism.
Of course, this guy's main crime is being poor. If OTOH he was a highly paid CEO, his disability would have automatically disqualify him from legal problems just like this lady.
No, you can't give them to your friends. That would infringe the distribution right due to an extremely careful bit of rewording of the bill that RIAA got through without anyone really thinking about the effect. You see, the big exception to the distribution right is the first sale exception, which applies to any copy lawfully made under the Copyright Act. But AHRA compliant copies are not lawfully made, technically, they're just not actionably made. That is, they're infringing but no lawsuit can be brought on the basis of their making.
So it'd be better to lend people the original, lawfully made CDs and let people make their own copies. Except of course that the RIAA also got a law passed to prohibit the lending and rental of music (otherwise it'd be just as legal as video rental, which anyone can do for free, so long as they use lawfully made copies) with broad language that probably applies to individuals. This means that when you lend a friend a CD, you probably have to rely on fair use, which is fine for ordinary lending, I'm sure, but probably no good if you're doing so for the purpose of having them make copies as a substitute for having to buy their own.
So let's not thank them too much.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, if you made a stand-alone device that could connect to Bit Torrent and which could comply with SCMS, and you paid the royalty on it, and which wrote to some sort of conveniently removable media (e.g. a thumb drive), then you'd be fine. It's just a bit of an engineering challenge and not really all that likely to sell since people will probably just ignore the protection it confers, what with the price of the thing. But certainly the statute doesn't seem to prohibit networked devices from qualifying. It's just that it's tough to build anything interesting that complies with SCMS, it seems.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.