Slashdot Mirror
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.
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*).
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.