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Washington Woman Sues RIAA for Attorneys Fees
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A Washington woman sued by the RIAA has asked the Court to award her attorneys fees, after the record company plaintiffs (Interscope Records, Capitol Records, SONY BMG, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, and Virgin Records) dropped their case against her after two years of litigation, in Interscope v. Leadbetter. The brief submitted by her attorneys (pdf) pointed out the similarity between Ms. Leadbetter's case and Capitol v. Foster. In the Leadbetter case, as well as Foster case, the RIAA sued the woman solely because she had paid for an internet access account, and then later in the case attempted to plead 'secondary liability' against her without any factual basis for doing so. This tactic had been repudiated by Judge Lee R. West in Capitol v. Foster as 'marginal' and 'untested' in his initial decision awarding attorneys fees, and in his later decision denying the RIAA's motion for reconsideration."
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Not every jurisdiction has prohibitions against entrapment, entrapment only applies when the entrapping agency is an agent of the state, and it only applies (IIRC) in Criminal matters. Also, to mount an entrapment defense, there needs to be good reason to believe that the entrapped person would not, but for the entrapment, have committed the act of which they are being accused.
IANAL, take it for what it's worth. However, I'm pretty sure in these cases, none of the above are met.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Thats because tort reform is a complete scam, paid for and designed to benefit one industry - the insurance industry. Insurers are not hurt by these suits (insurers can't indemnifiy insured for statutory fines and I don't think they even have a duty to defend the insureds in these suits), so they have no interest in making an issue out of them.
Also, copyright infringement is not a tort. Its a federal staturory civil offense. So there would be no need for tort reform, just action by 269 people in D.C.
The only ones who benefit from tort reform are insurance companies. While it is true that trial lawyers, primarly PI lawyers (who are always portrayed as the "bad guys" by the insurance industry) would be hurt by tort reform the people who are actually injured would be hurt far more than the lawyers.
When the Bankruptcy Chapter 7 and 13 amendments were debated, one of the primary benefits cited by banks and the credit industry was that average American's interest rates would go down. Let me ask you - how much have yours gone down? If the insurance industry is able to limit damages, do you think premiums are going to go down? At least banks were honest enough to advocate in public and not use PACs and hide who was spearheading the intiative.
Insurance companies and corporations have completely f**ked the Workers Comp systems to their benefit throughout the country and are trying to do the same with negligence and products liability.
Sorry for the off-topic rant. (And no, I am not a PI lawyer).
Doesn't anyone ever RTFA? I can understand you not doing it [although you probably spent more time asking the question then you would have if you'd just clicked a link and read]. But then to get modded up as insightful? Jeez....
From the first freaking link:
"Dawnell Leadbetter, the successful defendant in Interscope v. Leadbetter, has brought a motion for attorneys fees against the record company plaintiffs, Interscope Records, Capitol Records, SONY BMG, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, and Virgin Records."
Downloading is not a crime. The RIAA will never sue anyone for illegally downloading music. Why? A downloaded song has an established market value of $0.99.
Uploading music (without permission) is a crime, with statutory damages of $750 per song. Whether the downloader (eg, RIAA's p2pbot) ha permission to download it is irrelevant because you didn't haver permission to upload it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This is why California has speed trap laws http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/trans/trafficoperati
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
This is off topic but I think the prior post needs a response.
In the case of the medical liability malpractice crisis - tort reform in Texas worked as intended. In Texas we were down to 2 insurers - one of which was started by physicians. Since Prop 12 - the number of lawsuits is running about 50% of prior lawsuits which I would interpret as the reasonable cases are probably still being filed and the 50% of nuisance cases are not being filed. The rule change allows unlimited economic damages but limited noneconomic damages to $500,000.
We now have several insurers and the TMLT rates (my insurer) has gone down a total of 29.5% with a sign of more to come. http://www.tmlt.org/newsroom/press/index.html More important for patients, we see return of high risk specialties (Oby, Neurosurgery) back to areas where they had left.
All the cases I've seen deal with FastTrack rather than BitTorrent.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful