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RIAA Wants Student Deposed On School Day
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a Houston, Texas, case, UMG v. Hightower, the RIAA has served a subpoena on the defendant's son, a high school student, on one day's notice, telling him to be at a lawyer's office at 9:00 a.m. the next day, a school day, for a deposition. The defendant's lawyer objected (PDF)."
RIAA is basically becoming an automated bot nowadays, anyway. I'd be surprised if they don't show up in court as robots with brief cases as well.
Someone needs to start doing something about RIAA's boundaries and arrogance, considering they're getting so careless with who they're attacking nowadays. How long will it be, before Judges and courtrooms are sick of these petty charges, and start only allowing the larger criminals who actually sell and distribute?
Right now, you're paying less when distributing marijuana or posessing cocaine, than you are to host MP3's.. EVEN if you're a child!
There HAS to be a line drawn somewhere.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
and forcing them to either work on a weekend or wait until he's on vacation is stretching things.
THEY want his deposition. Not the other way around.
Why should he suffer an inconvenience to suit their schedule?
In the same situation, if I had to lose a day's pay to humor the RIAA, I'd feel mightily pissed off. OTOH, I have very little doubt that some hungry young lawyer would work OT on the RIAA's dollar to take the deposition on Saturday or some weeknight.
The 24 hour notice thing is called abuse of process. It goes beyond the fishing expedition aspects, and gets into "now we're going to use this to screw up your life."
BTDT.
Because this is one of the RIAA file sharing lawsuits. Making people suffer is their primary objective. The greater inconvenience in the initial stages, the less likely someone will actually challenge them. This is the RIAA saying "We can make life miserable for you and your entire family, and it's completely legal. So cough up whatever amount of money _we_ think is fair, and we won't keep you dangling in legal hell for the next decade."