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RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion. The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."
Extortion? No, not the RIAA, they'd never do that!
Sarcasm aside, who didn't see this coming?
My sig can beat up your sig.
Subject says it all.
The RIAA's tactics so far have been so far over the line that it's hard to see how they can not be convicted of something.
IOU one (1) signature
Wasn't one of the key points of the American legal system originally being able to read and know the law? As in, so you know what you can and can't do? They really do need to reform some of these laws in terms of readability.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This time, the RIAA can't drop the suit without prejudice as soon as it starts to look like they'll lose.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Just for fun I decided to test this theory when someone like you said this to me four years ago. I videotaped some fratboys playing drunk soccer, and then copied and pasted the clip repeatedly until I had an hour and a half long video. I then called the video "Shaolin Soccer.avi", put it in a Gnutella share directory on my computer that I connected to the university network (there were no other files in the share directory) and within three days the university had forwarded me a letter from the MPAA stating that I was sharing the movie "Shaolin Soccer." I had a good laugh with the residential networking guys about it. Together we told the MPAA to go fuck off. I haven't been struck by lightning yet.
In a civil case you cannot be convicted of anything.
Shotgun blasts of counter-claims are not necessarily the best way to persuade a judge that your defense has merit... More likely he'll see these pre-trial theatrics as a waste of his time.
It is part of his job to ruthlessly prune a case back to its essentials.
...that there is still news in this world that is good news for the small people.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
So this contorted arcane language is more prescise than simple sentences in common English? This would only be the case if you had judges who ignored the intention of the law and adhered strictly to some strange word game played with the code of law. So... yeah, I guess we do need lawyers to write the law here.
We are all just people.
Someone a couple of RIAA articles back was asking when they'd get bitten back, its good to see the comunity banding together in OSS fashion for a very quick time to market with such a response! ;)
Seriously though, it would be good to see the RIAA taken to the wall with this. To see them loose 10 or 20 times the amount they've gained from every ligitation they've performed would seem like justice to me, and perhaps it would make them think about whether all the litigation and drm technology is worth it..
More then likely it result in two things (should they loose), 1) deciding a set of laws they can use to prosecute people without exposing themselve. 2) buying more govt types to change the law to help 1) (are govt types an off-the-shelf item in the USA or something? the way they seem purchasable certainly makes them sound very commodity-based)
I say, why doesnt Grocklaw cover the RIAA cases ? Or even better ! Have an RIAA version of Grocklaw ! I mean, it worked against SCO , Im sure it would work against the RIAA !
I believe it was Australia where attempts to re-write the tax-code in plain English expande things, not shrunk.
And writing ambiguous laws and having judges decide the intent is pretty dangerous too.
Since this thread goes back to mentioning early laws legel system as the standard to achieve I am courious what the intent of each ammendment to the constitution is.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Thing of beauty. One of the few legal documents I can actually read.
It appears few stones have been left unturned in the counter complaint. It clearly alleges that the RIAA have been using scare tactics to maintain their control on music distribution. The interesting thing is that they have to now prove they didn't. Given that they the big RIAA members have been convicted of collusion in the past, I can't help but see this one becoming a really big nasty mess for them.
Given the U.S. Justice system runs slower than treacle, don't expect the RIAA to be pulled through the coals for a while.
Go into any law practice and ask for a show of hands about how many of them hate their state assemblies. You'd be surprised.
Lawmakers get all red-pen happy when issues pop up because whiny constituents demand that SOMEONE do SOMETHING to keep little Timmy from hearing "shit" on TV, or possibly, after specifically looking up how to accomplish it, have an encounter with a prostitute in a video game. It's not fair to blame legislatures, though, because they are acting in direct response to the public. They want them to write laws. People want callous, superficial, entertaining campaigns. People don't want to deal with real issues, and certainly don't want to take responsibility for themselves. A democracy reflects the people in it; the United States is getting exactly what it wants. But that's a subject for another thread.
Lawyers hate the absurdity of many laws as written, and hell, even many lawmakers get annoyed at the process. Writing rules by committee is like doing anything else by committee: if there was a creative vision, a coherent drive, or a sense of logic in the beginning, it's gone by the end. This is an inevitable consequence of letting too many people express too many opinions. Dictatorships have the cleanest, clearest laws. They have other downsides.
Seriously, their bluff needs to be called here.
D ER%);
#include <pesky_zero_day_exploit_worm>
#include <gnutella_server>
if (this.location.usstate == TX) {
for(int i = 1; i=100; i++) {
download(AmericanTop100[i]).save(%HIDDENSHAREDFOL
}
}
(Actually, a large scale outbreak of a worm such as this would have to alter this legal terrain somewhat, wouldn't it?)
What if the lawyers who filed the counterclaim did indeed settle for megabucks, and used said megabucks to sue again?
Good parents don't have children.
It's different because there is an actual law against copyrigth-infringement, and most of the people threathened are actually guilty of breaking that law. Now, this doesn't make it rigth. It just means current copyrigth-law is bad law.
Copyrigth-law, as currently written, makes everyone a criminal. But only the ones that RIAA (or other large copyrigth-holders) choose to go after, get punished. Which means essentially, that *THEY* are the ones who decide, by criteria dictated by them, who gets punished and who not.
That's not how it's supposed to work; elected politicians are supposed to decide what is legal and what not. But by deciding that "everything" is illegal, they've efficiently handed the keys over to RIAA et al
"Everyone" is very sligthly pushing it, but it's not far from the truth. I was at a lecture about IT and law, and the professor asked those people who have ever willingly broken copyrigth-law to raise a hand. Literally 95% of all hands went up. IT-students have more reason and more expertise, so may be sligthly over-represented, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of current 25-year-olds are guilty of breaking copyrigth-law atleast once in the last year.
We should remove or change laws which we do not intend to uphold. Otherwise we hand over the power of defining de-facto law to those deciding what and whom to investigate. (because if everyone is guilty, by deciding to investigate someone you are de-facto deciding to punish that person)
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
That seems like a problem with "Law" in general. When you adhere to the letter of the law instead of the spirit, there will always be a way for offenders to use loopholes to circumvent the law, and also for authorities to stretch the meaning of the words in order to abuse the law.
I guess the problem is that a system that adheres to the spirit of the law instead of the letter would be too subjective to be fair, but as we've clearly seen, there is often a lack of "fairness" in the way the law works now anyway.
As one of my friends, who has spent the last ten years fed-ex'ing the largest hard drives he can afford back and forth on a weekly basis with other so-inclined people, often says, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a fed-ex truck full of 500 Gb hard drives."
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
E.g., in Capitol v. Foster, at a time when the defendant's attorneys fees totalled $55,000, and the judge was preparing to calculate how much of that was "reasonable", the RIAA served a raft of motions and other dilatory requests. The result of this boatload of litigation activity:
-in 2 1/2 months the RIAA's exposure leaped from $55k to $114k
-the judge issued a new decision attacking the RIAA lawyers' motives, veracity, and intellectual integrity, and
-the judge ordered the RIAA to turn over its own attorneys billing records, which will no doubt be described in detail in the judge's order.
I'm estimating the RIAA paid $100,000 for those "additional services".
You tell me if that was money well spent.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful