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.'"

Comments

Re:I know you hate the RIAA

[Runefox]

Perhaps instead of trying to force an antiquated medium on the general public, you'd offer a service wherein you would provide, for a fee, a DRM'ed copy of the CD's contents for use in portable players/etc? It's a well-known fact that CD's both scratch and outright break easily, and digital backups are often much more useful in terms of longevity, especially since they're much, much smaller than a CD.

While DRM sucks, it's the "legal" way to do it, and therefore, you're covering your ass. And if it's anything like the games industry, there's no money in it for retailers, anyway, and any extra dollars you can make by providing an actual service might be a good idea.

That said, the War on Drugs was far from successful, and I'm not sure if that post is actually even serious.