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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.'"
JeffreysTube wrote" "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."
Somehow, I don't think Mrs. Santangelo is in this to be declared guilty. But hey, I'm just a dazed onlooker - what would I know about the law.
Somehow I think the judge is upset that the defendant may not have the chance to be declared innocent - that is, that the RIAA appear to be trying to walk away from making a baseless claim without the defendant having the opportunity to have his name cleared officially.
Were that to happen, I wonder if there would be any scope in pursuing a claim for defamation? (No, I don't think I would in that position, but it would almost certainly cross my mind...)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Problem is that the RIAA doesn't have any incentive to stop the lawsuits, as long as they are able to intimidate the majority of their targets into settling. They just happened to pick a determined person (with resources) in this case.
They don't realize that the enemy is not file sharing or people getting their content for free. The real enemy is people buying only the tracks they want, and so lowering the average value of a purchase. The great thing about an LP/CD from a company point of view is that it was a bundle at a high price. This is a key difference between movie downloads and music downloads.
It is very hard to see how they get around this one. Prosecuting people will not take care of the move to singles. They probably cannot raise the price of the singles. It is hard to see how they ever reinstate the album purchase to where it was.
Yes, its tough. And they are not helping themselves by focussing on a completely different problem from the real one.
I dont think Christians can really Rock.
Thats like saying Catholics have good sex.
Well, Madonna was raised Catholic, and baptised her children in a catholic church. I don't know if she's been offical excommunicated from the church like Sinéad O'Connor, but if she has not she's likely still a Catholic. I can't say for a fact that she has good sex, but she does have alot of it and has published a couple of books on the subject of her sex life. I am not a fan of Madonna... and in fact use her as an example of how unhealthy attitudes imposed by the Cathlic church really are. It would seem that people, men and women alike, who were raised full blown Catholics from my observation tend to end up either prudish or hyper-sexual. While I would have serious reservations having a serious relationship with someone raised Catholic, I can say I have had great sex with Catholics.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Damn I already moded this discussion, but I feel I need to post....
... Google if you dont know what I mean). Almost always the album is similar in quality to the single and often I hear songs I love that just would get airplay EVER.
I prefer to download whole albums, either legally or through dubious means (*cough* allofmp3 *cough*). I think it gives a better indication of the artist and the art they perform.
I hear a song I like via a friend or the radio (I'm on Oz so we have tripleJ/classicFm/Digg
I would happily pay for all my music album downloads if I could choose my bit rate, the files were DRM free and the price was reasonable lower than the cost of a CD (*cough* allofmp3 *cough*).
How about the fact that the President of Clear Channel radio said yesterday that pretty much the music (radio) industry is on it's way out? How about the fact that the "Hip Hop" rap era is finally over with? How about that 90% of the music released commercially today is CRAP? Really, in ten years are there still going to be cd's sold in shops? Will optical storage in 10 years look as funny as reel to reel? The music industry is scared because their reign of terror is finally over. The movie industry won't be affected as much, even though digital distribution of films is going to finally release that stranglehold that the studios currently have. The movie studios will survive because of their ability to make the big budget films nobody else can. Also 3-D movies will become more of the norm. CD's came out in 1981, 1981!! CD's came out a year before MS. PAC-MAN. The music studios are long overdue for a technology shift.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
INAL but really I regard this as a ruling against RIAA's bullying tactics.
It appears to me they are trying to draw out the costs of the case through two years of pre-trial discovery. The idea appears to be simply to bankrupt the defense and/or intimidate potential future defendants (i.e. the public) by showing that they don't have to go to trial in order to financially ruin their victim. Seems to occur commonly enough whenever one party in a case has especially deep pockets and the other doesn't.
What the judge is saying is, the RIAA can't just run up a huge legal bill and walk away. Score one for the little guy.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I do not know of a single case having gone to trial.
(I'm not saying it's never happened; only the RIAA knows for sure. But of all the cases mentioned on my blog, which are all the contested cases I know about, there is not a single fully contested case.)
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful