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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."
How is it tha I pirate music all the time and nobody comes after me, but the RIAA seems to go after many people who clearly have no evidence against them?
Sounds like a case for having the RIAA back off a little.
Loosing cases like this would only embolden piraters(according to RIAA thinking). Even massive amounts of having to pay attorney's fees won't slow the RIAA down, that's chump change. Still, being forced to pay the fees is a bad sign for them. Not only do people see them loose, but loose so badly they have to pay the person back, making them more or less whole.
I don't read AC A human right
Haven't you ever heard of broadband gnomes? They crawl around the intertubes with their little notepads jotting down your favorite porn sites and p2p exchanges!
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
No, you don't get those people. While I don't agree with most of what they're doing, they're certainly not monitoring your cable connection.
For example, they could simply do a search on limewire, The Pirate Bay, or wherever for a piece of copyrighted material that their member organizations own. They could then download the file, watching all the IPs that offer a piece of that file up to their computer. If, upon downloading the file, they find that it is indeed copyrighted material, they have strong reason to believe that each of those IPs represents someone illegally offering the file for download to others. That's not monitoring your connection, it's monitoring their own.
Of course, in cases like bit torrents, people will tell you that because only a small piece of the file comes from a given computer, there's no way to prove that someone had the entire file. If they didn't have the entire file, they might not have known what they were downloading and making available to others. Frankly, I think that's stretching "reasonable doubt" a little far, but I guess it's for the courts to decide.
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."
No, the one with the indestructible chair with indestructible straps, where you're straped in and forced spend eternity watching, and even wose listining to, Bill O'Reilly...
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.
Also, mod CowboyNeal down for misleading article title.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
1. Don't blame Cowboy Neal, I wrote the heading and take full responsibility for it.
2. I don't consider it misleading. The cases are brought by the RIAA on behalf of 4 big record companies. The cases are controlled strictly by the RIAA. I use "RIAA" as shorthand for "The four major record companies who have authorized the RIAA to bring suit on their behalf". It would be way too time consuming and space consuming to keep on referring to the 4 suing companies + the dozens of affiliated labels who wind up as plaintiffs in these cases. So technically it's the record labels that appear as the plaintiffs who have been sued, but I think just about everybody knows what I'm talking about, especially if they read the article.
3. How would you have written the headline within the space constraints of a Slashdot headline (approximately 5 or 6 words)?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Has anyone who wasn't seeding massive amounts of people on bittorrent ever been sued? All the cases I hear about seem to involve P2P services like limewire, which seem to me at least to be what only a small percentage of people use to get music and movies, most people use torrent sites like the Pirate Bay.
First, she isn't, but others have already answered that.
Second, the RIAA comprises those companies. There is no difference between saying "the RIAA" and listening its members. If you and I started a company, calling it by name or calling it "JSG and Builder, Inc." would both be accurate. In either case, it's the same thing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Do they go after people with lots of files shared as they once said they did? Seems to me that number of shared files, once said to be >1000, is now <600, and maybe much lower still.
Are certain songs, artists, and/or new hot sellers more likely to draw lawsuits? The supposition is that the are telling the truth when they say they log into P2P systems like any other user, search out specified files, and then list out entire shared directories. When they pick a target, they download one or two dozen files as "evidence", copying down the apparent IP address and time. What files seem to attract their attention? And what if you just didn't let any single user d/l more than 2 files from you. Might they stop by not being able to collect enough "evidence"?
What P2P systems are they searching? KaZaA? Yeah! Limewire? Apparently on occasion. What other systems have they sued people for using, and how often?
There are now reportedly 30,000 cases they've pursued far enough to identify users and attempt to extort settlements from. An analysis of all that data, which must be available in the John Doe ex parte lawsuits used to identify these users, ought to prove interesting enough to someone writing a paper about it and sharing their findings by now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."