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RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation
JeffreysTube writes "The RIAA's legal fight against a divorced mother has run into trouble, with the judge now telling the RIAA that its only two options are to proceed with a jury trial against Patty Santangelo or dismiss the case with prejudice. If the latter happens, Santangelo officially "wins" and could collect attorneys' fees. The judge is less than pleased with the RIAA, which is now trying to drop the case without giving Santangelo a chance to be declared guilty. 'This case is two years old,' wrote Judge McMahon. 'There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not.'"
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I understand your grief, but "it's that simple" is a dead give away that your solution is kinda too easy to work.
And if you read what you wrote couple of times, you may realize the irony of the situation. You refused to sell a CD to a buying customer. Sure, he was going to put the CD on the Internet, and that sucks. But he was there to buy that CD.
In the end, before your intervention you had 1 CD sold, after your intervention you had 0 CD sold. Where do you believe this "punk" will get this album from now? Either another store, or the Internet. You lose, either way.
It takes *one* to copy his CD to the Internet for the entire world to have. You have to simply accept that blacklisting people that talk about copying CD-s *in the store* is a wildly inaccurate way to blacklist all pirates.
Even if you "decide to play safe" and blacklist every single person in US (assuming you're in US), someone will buy this CD in another country and upload it, and adapt your business to this, and you'll be out of customers since you blacklisted them all. It's a lose-lose situation.
Violence against the customers just causes lost customers and bad word spreading about your shop. You can be sure this guy told all his friends about this event, and they told their friends. You'll likely not see then buying from you any more.
One (two actually; she's the second) that set a precedent that the RIAA should at least have some damned evidence before they get all sue-happy - otherwise, they're likely to be out more money than they could have sued the victim for.
Seriously, don't underestimate how risk-averse a large and established organization can be.
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Not unless RIAA gives her some huge sum of money (> her attorney fees + $100000), and that's a whole different kind of precedent.
You could add a coupla' zeroes to that figure, and the RIAA might still settle outside court, if it precludes case-law being made. This case will make the law that the mere possession or proviioning of an ip-address does not mkae one guilty of copyright violations over that ip-address. Many IT firms and ISPs will breathe easy once the case-law is made.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The RIAA makes money on the settlements, loses money on the default judgments, and loses a lot of money on any contested cases.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Even moreso, the RIAA seems to be trying to walk away from the case and leaving the defendant poorer due to legal costs.
Imagine the effect if future victims of the RIAA know that if they try to defend themselves in court, they'll lose money no matter what.
If that isn't a chilling effect, then I don't know what is.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
*waits for the 'haha' tag to get applied*
[+] mafiaa, haha (tagging beta)
You didn't have to wait long. Am I the only one who finds these damn tags redundant and asinine?
Let me be the one to start a beowulf cluster of them:
[+] haha, fud, defectivebydesign, mafiaaaa, microsoftsucks, itsatrap...
Hmmm, better stop there, otherwise that lameness filter might start earning its keep for once.
I get the impression that they are actually not too interested in attourney's fees. I believe they are more concerned about people getting declared innocent. Right now I believe their tactic is to sue people and get them to settle, (basically declaring themselves guilty) 100% of the time. They don't want any "not guilty" verdicts to mar their reputation. So if the victim really puts up a fight, the legal system will most likely work the way it's supposed to, and the court will have to find them not guilty. The riaa wil do whatever it can to avoid this, and wants to have the case dropped since it has become clear now that (A) they cannot really win the case (they already actually knew this from the start) and (B) this victim is willing and able to see this case to the bitter end. They are going to pull anything they can to avoid chalking up a "not guilty" verdict on their record. I believe the judge is pissed off that the riaa has wasted the court's time with a case that they knew they could not win in the first place, trying to use the courts to extort money and PR from the victim, and in this case both the victim and the judge are all for a full drag out see-it-to-the-end case.
The riaa uses money to stuff their mattress pad. They could care less about paying one person's attourney's fees. The problem here is if they end up paying THIS woman's attourney, this will send a very loud message to all the other future victims that yes you really can win against the riaa and engaging in a court battle is not going to make you lose your house and your job, as the riaa is trying to scare everyone into believing. Once we get a couple Not Guilty chalked up, the riaa will find there are a lot fewer victims willing to just roll over when the lawyers come calling. Then it will not be a matter of paying one woman's attourney - if they sue 100 ppl a year then they will be paying 95 of them attourney fees, and THIS is going to bust their groove. This is the scenario the riaa is desperately trying to avoid by having this case dropped without prejudice.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Exactly. I take this statement from the judge to mean, "You just can't drag this poor woman through 2 years of hell and expect to just walk away from it." I applaude the judge for his stand.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
That should be the case as a matter of law. That it's not is a travesty of justice, and makes it obvious that the U.S. legal system is not designed to serve the people, but to serve the lawyers and moneyed interests.
There should be no option of dropping a case without prejudice unless the defense agrees. If you were stupid enough to bring a case against someone else before the court without significant evidence, you should by law be forced to suffer the consequences, either by losing the case entirely or by being forced to pay for their defense, if your case is weak and the defendant is willing to fight to the finish.
And yes, I realize the consequences regarding suing a well-financed opponent. That's why I think any civil judgment rendered, whether it's against the plaintiff or the defendant, should be limited by law to a maximum of some large percentage of that entity's total assets. That way, if an individual sues a corporation and loses, it'll hurt a lot but it won't completely bankrupt the individual.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
In each case they were asking for more time because they had too many briefs to write in other cases.
I've been practicing litigation law for more than 28 years, and have never in my career requested additional time for such an asinine reason. They have hundreds of lawyers working for them. These people are losing it.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful