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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?
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.
Except that this was 2 years of litigation. Attorneys aren't going to work for free for years. Also, her time, and distress. That's 2 years of her life she's never going to get back, and in the end they just said "Oh, nevermind. Have a nice life!" At this point she's probably had to put her home into hock in order to defend herself. Now here's my question - how many of you are willing to put your home/retirement/both on the line to stand up to them?
That's why their tactics work. They know most people cannot afford to risk it. I'm thinking that wherever that special hell is for child molesters, the people that decide who get sued this way belong there too. It's one thing to be tangibly harmed by someone and have to seek legal recourse. It's another to not be harmed *at all*, and throw someone's fiscal wellbeing into jeopardy over your bottom line.
I'm sorry. I'm a forgiving person. I'm a kind and loving person. I would love nothing more to punch a few lawyers and corporate big-wigs in the face over this one. Comparatively speaking they have nothing to lose, but from a financial standpoint, the people being sued have everything to lose by standing up for themselves. They know this, and they're doing it anyway.
That's where I draw the line. Straight to that special place in hell with you.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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."
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