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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 real kicker here is not that it is a school day, but it is during Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test week as well and the one day notice.
The day in question was one in which the student was required to show up to take the TAKS test, a state-wide standardized test that's required for graduation.
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."
How about some time after 3 PM? That's when school lets out around here - most businesses are open until at least 5. The motion also specifically noted that the student was supposed to take the TAKS test today. TAKS is our statewide standardized test which must be passed for promotion to the next grade or for graduation at the end of high school. If he misses the TAKS test he'll have to make it up at some point, forcing him to miss another day of school. TAKS days are only ~5 days out of the school year depending on grade level. Asking for a deposition on a non-TAKS day would be much less of a burden.
I'm convinced the school-day deposition request is very intentional. They want the other kids to know the boy missed an important school day because he was in hot water over file sharing. It's all part of their perverse scare tactics.
Dispositions are required attendance, which is why a subpoena is generally issued to enforce them. If he blows off showing up, the consequences (if any) are entirely up to the judge who issued the subpoena.... who, if particularly pissed off that day, could find him in contempt of court and sentence him to jail time. Under the circumstances, though, I can't see any (reasonable) judge doing this.
"Why does the music industry feel it should tamper with the education of our minors just to placate some facile legal action?"
Dude, get a clue: these are *pirates, they don't care about education. All they care about is stealing, stealing, stealing other people's intellectual property.
If anything is tampering with their education, it's the alien viruses in their brains, which impel them to download our songs for *nothing, thereby descrating our intellectual property. The same intellectual property provided for in the Constitution, section IV, which says
"Intellectual property rocks. We should have lots of it."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
OK - I am posting anonymously because I am a lawyer. First - When you subpoena someone to appear for deposition, Rule 30(b)(1) says you must give them reasonable notice. The Court is very, very likely to say that 24 hours notice is not reasonable notice. Second - It is extremely bad form, though not actually improper, to just notice someone for deposition without talking to them first about the date. Just leads to exactly this kind of problem. Third - RIAA is represented by lawyers who know better. Gardere Wynn is a Really Big Firm. They know better than to behave this way in front of Judge Atlas. Shame on them. Federal Court practices demands a higher standard of behavior on the part of the lawyers. Fourth - You have to properly serve the witness. Emailing the mom's lawyer in an attempt to serve the kids is not proper service. However, it does make sense to email mom's lawyer and ASK whether he would accept service so that you don't have to send a process server out to serve the kids. All in all, I would not expect Judge Atlas to be pleased with Gardere, Wynn's behavior here. Judge Atlas is a good judge. I'd expect her to make RIAA play according to the rules here. One of the great things about federal court is that the judges are generally of very high caliber, are extremely/proudly independent, and don't take no shit off of nobody. As long as you play by the rules, are prepared and don't waste the judge's time the solo lawyer with a brand new law license will be treated the same as hordes of grey haired lawyers from a mega-firm.