Slashdot Mirror
Judge Deals Blow to RIAA
jcgam69 writes "A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names "Does 1-16," who allegedly engaged in copyright infringement using the University of New Mexico's network. In a ruling issued last month but disclosed today by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University."
Instead of paying RIAA money by the shovel, the labels should wake up and realize the utter futility of RIAA and stop paying their lawyers.
Instead the labels can put more effort into a more generous licensing model, pay artists slightly more, and release tracks as MP3 in iTunes.
They could also try to identify real talent (Nor Ashlee) and promote them free of cost until the artist wants to sign an agreement.
The labels should wake up to the reality that paying lawyers shitload of money does not mean they win every lawsuit.
Spend on the money on identifying new lines of operations, and promoting music (schools concerts, etc) and STOP insisting on getting paid each time i sing a tune in the bathroom.
Labels: The more your RIAA goons try to restrict us, the more customers you are losing to emusic.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
1. nobody attended the court to hear the motion being ruled upon
2. nobody read the court filings after the ruling
3. nobody bothered to get a transcript of the trial to see what happened.
In other words, the trial wasn't all that important to [news organizations].
And why wait a month to 'disclose' the ruling?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The article mentions a New York judge that ruled the opposite way in a similar case. Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone explain exactly how it's deemed even mildly legal for the RIAA to file suits against individuals and have motions against them when they're not allowed to face their accuser due to secrecy? This seems like an open and shut case to me.
A serf is an indentured labourer who works on the land of the lord (not lord god, lord farthingsworth etc), I cant remember the term but you probably meant freeholder or something like that
Actually they went after both.
Serfs often had other assets: houses, tools, money, jewelry. Also, serfs weren't just interchangeable workers, ala migrant farmhands. Serfdom was a two-way obligation. Serfs typically (depending on country's rules, of course) had an inherited right to farm a PARTICULAR chunk of land for a cut of the profits.
If the serf (or his ancestors) had put in a lot of work on the land (like by putting in deep wells, constructing good buildings, treating the soil right, etc.) he would improve its value, both to the lord and to himself. The serf could become very well-to-do if his land produced lots of crops, the plants were hardier and resisted plant diseases, his wells didn't run dry while everybody else's did, his animals survived bad weather, etc.
Of course when there was a bad year and everybody else's wells ran dry or crops failed and mistreated, starved, and overcrowded animals got sick, while Mr Hardworking Serf's crops, livestock, and wells did just hunky-dory, it could easily be used to start rumors of witchcraft.
Once the pesky serf was eliminated, not only were his liquid assets divied up, but the Lord was free of his obligation to let the serf continue farming this particularly good hunk of land. The lord could then add it to his personal estate, farm it with his household staff and get ALL the profits, make a new serfdom arrangement on better-for-the-lord terms with another family, etc.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"etc." includes "sell it to a freeholder and add a nice hunk of change to his treasury (or pay off a bunch of his own debt)."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Since when was a posting on /. considered to to be "formal style?" I think internet discussion boards are pretty much generally considered "nonstandard speech or casual writing."
:)
As much as the editor in me hates to say it, correcting someone on a site like this about grammar or spelling pretty much just makes you look like an ass who can't come up with a good argument against their idea and has to resort to attacking how they stated the idea instead. This rule, of course, does not apply if the person is pretentious (for example trying to use too many big words they don't exactly understand or can't spell) on top of being wrong. Then slamming grammar mistakes after smacking his/her argument down is just icing on the cake.
It's not just that they file a John Doe suit, it's that they join dozens or even hundreds of unrelated parties into a single lawsuit. The one and only basis for that is that all the Does in that lawsuit share the same ISP, which is not, to my non-lawyerly knowledge, a permissible reason for joining parties according to the FRCP. One Texas judge ordered them to put a stop to that very practice of "defrauding" the state of its rightful filing fees, yet the practice continues in other venues.
:-) For all I know, I'll end up being one of the Does by mistake someday (I don't listen to or like their crappy music, why on earth would I waste HD space on it?). I'd like to say that might even make them waste a little money responding or objecting to it, but I bet they'd make a form letter brief to reply to them if anyone made a habit of it...
Also, even once they have someone's identity, they've been known to play tricks with John Doe suits. I believe that, in the case of Mr. Merchant, he retained a lawyer and they offered to make his hard drive available, but only to outside counsel. The RIAA withdrew that lawsuit before they filed an answer in court (you can do that, it's a free pass to get out of court) and filed another John Doe suit in an attempt to get his hard drive directly, where they could have in-house people fish through it at will. By virtue of that being a John Doe suit, they meant to keep his lawyer out of the courtroom, preventing the counsel they knew he had from responding to their dirty tactics.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that although John Doe suits are perfectly normal, the way the RIAA uses them is not. They use pretty much any trick they think they can get away with, however dirty, even if it's contrary to the law. And when they pull these tricks, they try to make sure that no one is able to object.
To be honest, it tempts *me* to do things that I sincerely doubt are well supported by any laws at all. For example, can you file amicus briefs in random John Doe suits pointing out that Texas case? I have no idea, and incredibly dubious, but it might be worth the price of a stamp, especially because I could ask that the judge give those facts judicial notice even if the amicus itself was thrown in the trash... The other trick might be doing so anonymously. Can you even file an amicus anonymously? I haven't the foggiest. But I'm pretty sure I could just not sign my name. And I'm also pretty sure I could sign it "John Doe" out of an abundant sense of irony
Of course, these things being done ex parte also makes it pretty hard for me to find out about them before they're over...
I know how you feel. I came here to read what people thought about this decision against the RIAA and instead I've scrolled through 50 posts about "irregardless"! I wish there was an option to collapse individual threads. I see stuff like this all the time. I've seen many discussions devolve into whole pages about some slightly related topic. I mod it offtopic when I can but it almost always gets overridden. Yes, the post was "Insightful" but it wasn't what we were supposed to be talking about.
I once modded some guy's comment in a Vista thread as "Redundant" and he came back to complain that it was the first time something like that had been said in that particular posting. If I decided to lose my power in that thread I would have said,"Your right, it hasn't been said in this comment section yet, but it has been said a million times in all the other Vista threads. It is the same crappy, misinformed "issue" that pops up every single time, therefore it is redundant."
Are the addresses for judges freely availiable in the US? Work address should do fine, no need for personal.
When reading this, I just kept thinking to myself: What if lots of people that are against RIAA tactics sat down and wrote a short letter each? Some positive words showing him that this is an issue that people actually care about. It's obvious that there are a lot of supporters on the net.
BTW, how many praise-letters does a judge need before it itself would become a news item?
I lost my sig.
That's why traditions are so important.
Universities were the 'bastions' of knowledge. Check out the old gates at Oxford Uni (UK) and you will find that it shows axe and sword damage as authorities and other groups wanted to enter its domain without invitation.
I know that in the early years of Australian universities, police had to be invited in and generally had no access otherwise!
Although I can't speak on US universities, you will find that in other countries, universities are(were) a protected institution with their own governance (Chancellor), disciplinary laws and so on.
Some of these are still in operation. For example, in recent times, an Oxford student sitting for a long exam, demanded a pint of ale from the supervisor. Prior to the exam, the student went through the charter of the university and found this as a standing rule(15th Century). The supervisor had to call out for a pint of ale and gave it to the student.
The next day, the supervisor fined the student a pound sterling for not wearing his sword!
If you received a 'Bachelor' of Arts, Science, Law, Medicine etc, then your 'Masters' was automatically given to you on proof of marriage!
So I think that the university has some right in standing up to a commercial group like the RIAA, to protect their students' anonymity, regardless of the charges. In lieu, the university should make its own investigation, and discipline those if warranted. That's the proper course of action for a university.
A similar thing happened at a local school here (Australia), when a staff member was almost charged by police for a misdemeanor just outside school grounds. The police dropped the charge when they were assured by the school principal that it would be handled internally.
So morally, the university does have a right to protect their student body.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"Serfs often had other assets: houses, tools, money, jewelry."
They didn't have houses because they weren't allowed to own land, or leave the plot they were tied to without permission.
"Serfs typically (depending on country's rules, of course) had an inherited right to farm a PARTICULAR chunk of land for a cut of the profits."
They had no rights, because feudal courts refused to hear claims of villeins (the class most serfs belonged to) against their lords, so a lord could simply expel a villein and his entire family whenever he felt like it without any repercussions whatsoever. You seem to be confusing the fact that serfdom was inherited (i.e. the child of a serf was a serf), and that each serf was _tied_ to a piece of land that they could not leave without permission, with them having a right to that land, when in fact the only person with any rights to it was the owner, who could sell it at any time, and any serfs who lived on it went to the new owner along with the land itself (worked land with serfs living on it was worth a lot more than empty land)
"The serf could become very well-to-do if his land produced lots of crops, the plants were hardier and resisted plant diseases, his wells didn't run dry while everybody else's did, his animals survived bad weather, etc."
This tended to please lords, because such a serf would be paying his taxes when others couldn't. The land a serf lived on had to be worked at his own expense in his spare time, and the vast majority of it was taken up with growing wheat to pay the lord's taxes with (tithes were customarily paid in wheat) because mediaeval agricultural techniques provided extremely low yields. Anything remaining was used to feed his family, pay other taxes such death duties, daughter marriage taxes (the daughter was considered the lord's property), water tithes, milling and baking costs (the lord owned these facilities), tool, cart, and barrel repairs, Easter and Christmas "gifts" to the lord (eggs and geese respectively, which would have to be bartered for by those who didn't produce them), etc., etc., etc. The very small number of those who managed to have anything to sell at market after the lord had taken his whack usually saved up to buy their freedom, after which they ceased to become serfs, so while there may have been some wealthy (by serf standards) serfs, they would have been extremely rare.
"Of course when there was a bad year and everybody else's wells ran dry or crops failed and mistreated, starved, and overcrowded animals got sick, while Mr Hardworking Serf's crops, livestock, and wells did just hunky-dory, it could easily be used to start rumors of witchcraft"
It did indeed. However, such claims were usually levelled at women, the serf varieties of whom were considered to be of little value due to their inability to carry heavy loads for long periods and their exemption from enforced military service, and accusations were invariably from neighbours or church emissaries, not the lords whose lands the peasants worked. This is because it simply didn't make financial sense for a landlord to divide up the meagre wealth of a serf with the state, church, and other serfs, when he could get the whole lot by simply booting them out and keeping all their possessions for himself.
"Once the pesky serf was eliminated, not only were his liquid assets divied up, but the Lord was free of his obligation to let the serf continue farming this particularly good hunk of land"
Lords who wanted to eliminate serfs could do so without the need for resorting to things like witchcraft trials.
"The lord could then add it to his personal estate, farm it with his household staff and get ALL the profits"
As opposed to a mere 99.9% of the profits that he was already making from that farm without any effort whatsoever on his part.
"make a new serfdom arrangement on better-for-the-lord terms with another family, etc."
If there had been a form of serfdom that was better for lords, then it would have bee
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.