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RIAA Can't Have Defendant's Son's Desktop
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's attempt to get Ms. Lindor's son's desktop computer in UMG v. Lindor has been rejected by the Magistrate Judge. The judge said that the RIAA 'offered little more than speculation to support their request for an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer, based on ... his family relationship to the defendant, the proximity of his house to the defendant's house, and his determined defense of his mother in this case. That is not enough. On the record before me, plaintiffs have provided scant basis to authorize an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer.' Decision by Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy. (pdf)"
Yeah!!!
Now back to our normal post. The RIAA is like a bacteria that has multiplied to infect many hosts. However, like a simple bacteria that replicates perfect copies of itself, the RIAA lawsuits are all exact clones. What this means is that, if you can kill one of them, you can kill all of them. Reading the postings just this week on Ray's blog will tell you that the many enemies (a.k.a. innocent defendants who are fighting back) of the RIAA are coordinating and refining their tactics in search of the magic bullet that will kill this plague once and for all. And from the looks of things, they're getting mighty close.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not really, because the RIAA tactic has been to call everyone a murderer and then ask to search their premises for knives. We have laws against that sort of thing when the police want to do it, and we should have laws against that sort of thing when corporations want to do it.
Not allowing baseless evidence gathering is the same as not allowing baseless search. But casting a very wide net and calling everyone a thief, and then when asked to produce evidence, claiming that you'd have it if you could go searching for it - this is just simply not the way the American justice system works, for better or worse.
IANAL, but just because an armed robber lives in the same town as a relative, and they both have cars, and are close, doesn't mean there is need, or cause to search the relatives car for evidence of the crimes committed by the armed robber. Yes, I know that might not be the best analogy, but where is the judge to stop? Can the RIAA look at her neighbor's pc? Can the RIAA request that all her friends computers be searched? If there is no evidence of infringement, well, then there is no evidence. Going fishing in the computers that she might have had access to is just that, fishing.
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I'm not supporting the RIAA but this seems wrong to me. If the person they are sueing has access and may have used the PC for copyright infringement should the PC not be investigated?
She "may have" had access to your computer. That doesn't mean that she did. Even if she did, that doesn't mean that she used it to commit the alleged offense.
It sounds to me like you just don't get it.
If your mother is accused of a crime, why in the hell should they be able to search your property, at a different house, without probable cause?
If the police can't do it for a murder case, why should the RIAA be able to do it for a civil suit?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You completely missed the point. If a crime has been committed by the son, then a new case with evidence must be brought against him. Since when do we, as Americans, allow witch hunts in order to save failing court cases? The only reason the RIAA is going after the son is because he is vigorously defending his mother and they want to put him back on his heels.
You're not making sense here. First off, you have to mean if the person they're suing has access and may have used his PC for copyright infringement, should his PC not be investigated? That's the first correction. They've already checked the PC in the house itself, and come up dry. It does not contain the hard drive with any of the infringing files or programs on it.
Secondly, they're not suing the son. So he is not the person they're suing, and they should have no right to anything on his PC just because he's a son who lives 4 miles away and, like any good son should, visits his mother.
Thirdly, if you have your own computer at home, it doesn't make much sense that you'd pack up your computer, drive miles to your Mother's house, and commit copyright infringement there, before packing up your computer once more and driving back home again to use your computer for everything else you normally use it for. Even if you have a notebook computer, do you drive somewhere else to do all your filesharing? That's too much of a reach for even this judge to accept, hence they're not allowed to just look at a non-party's computer hard drive because of a casual relationship between a mother and her son. There is no evidence that the son's computer has ever been in his Mother's house.
It would be like the RIAA saying that, we tracked filesharing to the IP address of your best friend who lives a few miles from you. But because we couldn't find the evidence on his computer, and we know you're friends who often got together at his house, and because you have a computer too, we want to give your computer a digital anal examination as well, hoping we'll find something to incriminate you with. And it's not even like said best friend told the RIAA to get his own butt out of the sling that, "Hey, my best friend always came over with his computer and we downloaded music on it." He would have told them nothing of the sort.
Now do you get it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Forgive my ignorance, but... can someone who's actually from the USA explain why the RIAA would get *anyone's* computer at all? Even if there is a reason why it should be inspected at all, shouldn't that be done by a (hopefully) neutral third party, like the police? It seems like a bad idea to me to give someone who's got a vested interest in finding evidence against you an opportunity to plant it.
butter the donkey
That's the whole point of April Fool's day. To remind you to be skeptical.
Posting anonymously....
In discussions with a real lawyer about all this, my lawyer friend and I came upon the solution...
Should you get The Letter, which has no legal value whatsoever, put a bullet through the drive, do a Jeff Merkey and bash it against a rock, melt it in a Sentry heat treating oven at 2250F (FUN!!). "We're sorry, but the drive no longer exists"
Should you get The Subpoena, it's too late and you're hosed. Bend over and take it or mount a real defense, because if you destroy the drive, it's spoilation of evidence and the court really frowns on that. That's what hosed Jeff Merkey when Novell subpoenaed him.
Timing is everything.
Every time you buy an album or a movie through these big companies, your money will be used to sue you or your friends.
If you stop paying them they will fold with less collateral damage, and music will be free sooner.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org