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."

Comments

Re:Wierd

[larry bagina]

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.